Digital marketing is continually evolving. An email list, also referred to as a mailing list or subscribers list, is a collection of email addresses from visitors and customers who have consented to a business sending them communications, such as information, updates or discounts. Your list may grow and shrink as followers unsubscribe or new ones join over time.
Email marketing is effective in acquiring and retaining new customers than social media, and it has a significantly higher click through rate than social media posts, which means more customers receive and read your content than they would if they came across your content on social media.
There are many ways to grow your email list organically.
1. Create valuable content
Your followers signed up to receive emails from you for a reason. Your job is to make it worth their while by providing interesting, engaging content.
2. Know your audience
Knowing your audience will help you create content they like. You can use email analytics or information you’ve collected on your own to inform your content. Look at things like demographics, customer behavior and clicks to better understand your audience.
3. Make it easy for followers to share your emails
Include buttons that link to your social media and “email a friend” links in each of your emails to make your content easily shareable. You don’t want your subscribers to have to work hard to send your content to another potential customer.
4. Segment your lists
Once you understand who your audience is, you can segment them into groups for example, by age, location or buyer behavior – and send emails based on those groups, making your messages more targeted to each part of your audience for a more positive effect.
5. Send out an opt-in campaign
If you have an old email list that doesn’t yield much engagement, you can send out an email with an opt-in message and a promise to remove any email addresses that don’t respond. While it might seem counterintuitive to remove contacts from your list, it can actually give you better results by ensuring you only send emails to people who want to receive them.
6. Host a contest
You could host a contest and require an email address for entry. Post about the contest on your social media pages to drum up interest and awareness, with a link directing viewers to where they can sign up on your website.
7. Have a pop-up on your website
Add a pop-up to your site to ask for an email address to send updates. The strategy still works, especially if you cookie the visitor. Make sure the incentive is clearly articulated and relevant to your brand to maximise conversions.
8. Put a call-to-action button on your social media
You can add a CTA to sign up for your email list on your social media pages to make it easy for interested customers to sign up to receive your emails.