Important Things You Need To Know About Building A Mailing List

A mailing list is probably one of the most important and effective marketing methods you can utilize as a business. Take President Obama for example. In 2012 his team used email marketing to raise more than $690 million in donations. They built an email list with millions of people and successfully motivated those people to donate. How did they do this?

Drive traffic

Before you can get subscribers to your email list, you must first get them to your website. You will need to start building traffic. You can do this through giveaways, contests, special offers, free products such as eBooks, etc. You can use these promotions to your advantage by making people sign up for your email list, or having them share your content on social media. You can test your offers and giveaways to see which ones are more successful than the others. Targeting a specific audience instead of a mass amount of people is a good way to develop a successful list.

Write posts on popular blogs

Using popular blogs to write good relevant content is a great way to build a list. Some SEO scammers use these blogs and websites to put “illegal” backlinks to other websites. This can dramatically decrease the credibility of these blog websites. However, adding good content will eventually push down the blackhat SEO techniques, making your content more relevant. Using websites such as Problogger and taking advantage of blogs with large followings are good ways to get your content seen. Finding a blog in your niche and offering a product or offer to subscribe will help your list grow.

SEO

Optimizing your website for search traffic is a no-brainer way to get people on your mailing list. When people specifically search for your business or service, they are likely to click on your website. If you have an offer such as a free eBook, they will be more compelled to enter their email address. Using social media alone is not a great way to leverage search engines. Since people looking for services and products are not likely to find them on Facebook or Twitter.

Converting your visitors

Once you get people to your website, you need to give them an incentive to sign up for your mailing list. Giving away a free eBook initially is a great way to get their attention at first, but your mailing list needs to offer them something that they would not otherwise receive.

Create incentives

By offering ongoing deals, coupons, and free products, people are more likely to sign up and stay subscribed to your list. You will need to offer something of value to them such as articles not available on the website, special percentages off products that are not available anywhere else, etc. By increasing your value to your customers, you are basically telling people that by not signing up for your list, they are missing out.

Add an exit pop up

If you want people to really notice your email list signup box, you’ll need to put it somewhere they will notice it. You can have it off to the side by your ads, but it is not likely going to get a lot of attention there. Instead, have it as a popup. Have the optin box pop up on the page about 5-10 seconds after coming to the website. This way the email box is right in front of the customer. If they do not want to sign up, they have the option to click the “x” on the top right corner. On your opt-in form, you can list the reasons and benefits of joining the list.

Test your forms

Different colors, fonts, pictures, email sign-up placement, and styles all can have an effect on how many visitors convert to your mailing list. Test different optin boxes and see which ones convert the best.

Engage your subscribers

Now that you’ve got a massive list of subscribers, how do you keep them?

Send, send, send

Sending too many emails makes people want to ignore you or unsubscribe right? Not exactly. In email marketing, sending many emails to the right people equals conversions. At the beginning of this post, I mentioned President Obama’s team using email marketing for their fundraising efforts. Well, in the last few weeks of the campaign, his team increased their volume significantly, and their open rates increased by 14%! The Presidents real fans were happy to receive more emails and thus were more likely to open and engage.

Personalize

When you create emails, personalize the first line. This can be done easily through your email software. You can also personalize emails based on past purchase history or services rendered can have a positive effect on open rate and conversions. This probably will not be a priority until you have your list for a while and develop more of a relationship with your subscribers.

Mobile optimize

About 66% of emails in 2014 were opened on a smartphone or tablet. If your email template is not optimized for phones and tablets, it will end up looking awful and will most likely get deleted. Search for companies such as Crocs which have run tests on different responsive designs and see what their results were. Or run your own tests.

Building an email list takes time and patience. Do not buy or rent a list, and do not sell or rent out the email addresses you receive. By growing your list organically, you will develop a list that wants your product or service and will be more likely to convert.