How to grow your business’s email list.
The No. 1 asset in your marketing toolbox is your email list, not your website or Facebook page.
According to a study by eMarketer, 69.7 percent of Internet users prefer to receive communications from businesses via email. And they buy from offers in email. I’ve seen effective emails conservatively generate between $2 and $5 per month per subscriber. This means that an engaged list of only 1,000 people could be worth between $24,000 and $60,000 annually.
We’re not talking about buying lists of email addresses and cold-emailing that list. We’re talking about building your own list of leads and customers. These are people who have given you permission to email them with updates, promotions and other interesting information from time to time.
Many business owners tend to put too much attention, time and money into their website and social media presence without a thought of how to use these tools to increase the number of email subscribers on their list and, ultimately, number of customers.
How Do I Build My List?
Building an email list may sound like a daunting task, but it’s not. You just have to get started. Nobody with a 100,000-person subscriber list started with 100,000 people.
First, make sure you have a service that allows you to manage your list and send messages to large numbers of people. Some will allow you to start with a free account and upgrade as you need more functionality and as your list grows. You have several options: MailChimp, emfluence, Constant Contact, InfusionSoft and more.
Some people spend months looking for the perfect mail application for their business. Those are months wasted in not building a list. Pick an email client and move forward.
Start by adding customers that have given you permission to communicate via email to a list. These are the people who are most likely to buy from you again and refer others to your business.
Add a Subscription Form to Your Website
Next, focus on your website. You probably already have traffic coming to your website, and this is the best place for you to start finding subscribers.
Set a goal of how many email subscribers you want to add to your list. To determine a number that is reasonable, look at your website traffic and make a conservative estimate that 2 percent of your traffic will convert to being subscribers if you just have a simple form that says “Subscribe to Receive Updates.”
So, if you have 100 visitors to your site a day, two people will opt in to your list with even a simple addition like this.
Install an Exit Pop-Up
An exit pop-up appears when somebody is already getting ready to leave a page or your website. (As soon as visitors mouse over their browser’s address bar or navigation bars, the pop-up will appear.) Visitors have looked at something on your page, and hopefully found something interesting or appealing. Now is your time to attempt to capture their email without interrupting them.
A properly done exit pop-up has conversion rates that typically range between 5 percent and 30 percent depending on the value you provide in the pop-up.
You need to figure out something you can give them in return for their email address. Preferably, this needs to be something you can email to them. Videos, guides, product discounts and free consultations are just a handful of examples of what you can offer.
To set up an exit pop-up, check out tools like LeadPages that allow you to quickly and easily install these on your site, or talk to your Web developer.
Add Subscribe Links Strategically
If your website has a blog, consider putting a subscription link at the bottom of your blog posts. For example, your call to action may be “Like what you’ve read? Subscribe to have articles like these delivered directly to your inbox weekly.”
Although there are certainly better calls to action and more to offer, this is a place to start.
Get Started
The important thing is that you start and refine over time. If you make your plan too complex, you will never execute.
To increase the numbers on your list, you can either increase your website’s traffic or increase your conversion rate. Increasing your traffic is the more difficult route. The better option is to work to increase your conversion rate.
Over the next seven days, I challenge you to maintain an intense focus on building your email list. Put in the foundation above and watch your business grow.
