Email marketing has been a major marketing channel for over a decade now. In fact, it can almost be a case of the marketer that can build the largest email list wins.
It serves as an avenue for brand building, direct sales, and also building connections between the company and its clients.
Just like it has become harder to build an audience on social media compared to a decade ago, it is also becoming increasingly hard to get the email addresses of customers online.
It’s hard, but it’s not impossible to build your own email list. Email marketing still has a stronghold on the effectiveness of any marketing campaign. Hence, there is still a huge need to invest time and effort into building that list!
One last thing to know is that Apple Inc.’s battle for “user privacy” will have a major effect on email marketing. With recent developments in the iPhones, users’ data (including whether they open the mail, their approximate location, etc) that are transferred to the owner of the list are now being restricted.
This will cause a major blow to mailing list holders because this new technology will tell you that iPhone users have opened your mail even if they haven’t.
Read more about this technology here
Now, to the 5 ways to build your email list!
5 Ways to Build Your Mailing List
1. Create a Landing Page
This may seem very obvious, but it is not as utilized as it should be. Most websites only have pop-ups and banners that prompt visitors to submit their precious email whenever they try to leave the page.
While there is nothing wrong with this format, it still doesn’t pay enough attention to the importance of the mailing list.
You should try to build a page dedicated solely to capturing leads. On this page, you should:
- Explain why people should join the list
- What they have to gain
- The exact process through which you will communicate with them.
- How frequently they should expect to hear from you
Creating a page dedicated to lead generation will help you get more leads faster and more reliably than the pop-ups.
2. Launch a newsletter
People will only give their emails when they feel like they will get something valuable from the service.
Launching a periodic newsletter will put you in the position of a “value provider” and you will attract more audience to you.
If you’re wondering how people like Seth Godin and James Clear got millions of active subscribers, it’s because of their very valuable newsletters.
It is very hard to resist a good and valuable offer.
Create a newsletter, decide on a topic you want to write about and how often you want to do it, then go on and launch it.
NOTE: Although you have the intention to capture people’s email, that shouldn’t be your only motivation for starting a newsletter. You should also be committed to help people solve certain problems and give them unique insights. Otherwise, your newsletter may fail
Read also: The 3 P’s to improve your content marketing.
3. Request for email at the point of purchase
This is especially true for businesses doing business in store or transacting physically with customers.
These businesses are usually the ones with the lowest number of email subscribers; some of them don’t even have an email list. This is because they feel their business is offline, so getting emails is useless.
The reality of the world today is that every business is an online business. Even if you operate the traditional brick-and-mortar business, you still need to interact with your customers online.
Since you’re probably selling physically to your customers (if you fall under this category), you can ask them to fill forms or simply request for their email after purchase so you can keep in touch.
After getting the email, upload it into an email marketing software so you can always get access to it.
4. Send feedback forms to past customers and request for their emails.
If you’ve been in business for a while and haven’t been collecting email addresses of your customers, you can still get them.
Maybe you didn’t have an email marketing plan when you started out, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get the email addresses of past customers.
Send them feedback forms requesting for their email addresses. The feedback forms may be sent as a link embedded in an SMS (if you have their mobile numbers) or you can simply hand them physical forms to fill.
Of course, not all your customers will respond positively. But even if it’s just a handful of email addresses you get, it’s still worth it.
5. Publish your products on an online store.
What if I don’t have a website?
That’s not a problem at all. The world is now way better and easier.
You can upload your products (or even services) on online stores like Paystack, Flutterwave, Stripe Payments, or a host of others.
These platforms provide the opportunity to sell your products online and also collect contact addresses of customers.
Like I said earlier, every company is an online company. The only excuse you can have is that you don’t want to do it, not that there is no means to do it.
Finally…
Do not forget the reason you are collecting email addresses. It is to help you build a solid base of customers that you can always return to.
Email marketing is much more reliable because signing up for an email requires much more effort compared to following people online.
While your audience on social media can be a great source of comfort, it is not very much reliable.
Build your mailing list today!
