Marketing is a never-ending quest to connect with new prospects, new customers and new email subscribers. This makes a high-performing email contact list one of the most impactful tools in any marketing professional’s arsenal, no matter what their core business.
Unfortunately, the average email list churns by about 30 percent every year. To keep this pool of prospects fresh, marketers must employ a number of tactics to consistently cultivate a vibrant and vested subscriber base. To help, here are a few easy steps to help build your list—and boost your business.
1. Don’t Create Unnecessary Barriers to Sign-up.
Many company websites corral links in footers for the sake of design. Sure, it looks clean—but this is a sure way to miss out on opt-in opportunities. Don’t make site visitors work to make a connection; put your signup form at the top of your home page alongside some other engaging content. You’ll get the largest possible number of eyeballs on your form without requiring site visitors to scroll all the way down to the bottom.
2. Put Your Sell—and Your Story—Front-and-Center.
We’re all storytellers. In marketing, your story is the center of your strategy. Every organization should have three to five key messages ready to share with prospects at any time. But many organizations fail to plug these messages into channels that can help you grow your list, resulting in missed signup opportunities. Adapt one of your core messages to create a clear call to action for prospective subscribers. Then, use this new messaging to promote your company’s signup link on social media—not just once, but on an ongoing basis.
Your social audience has already shown interest in your organization, so don’t play hard to get! Invite friends and followers to take the next step in engagement by sharing your signup link across social channels regularly.
While you’re spreading the word, don’t be afraid to harness the social power of your staff and stakeholders. These “insiders” have a vested interest in your company’s success, and can be some of your best ambassadors. Ask those in your inner circle to share your emails with their social networks, or encourage them to post a link to your signup form on their personal social channels to get more exposure with new audiences. Third-party validation is powerful, and the really successful brands do a great job of leveraging the fan base they already have.
3. Provide a Preview.
Don’t’ be afraid to tease prospective subscribers with strategic shared content. There’s no better way to show the value of being on your email list than to preview content on your own social networks. By offering a sneak peek at the goods (your valuable content), interested consumers might be motivated to sign up for future messages. Email conversion rates are 40 times that of Facebook and Twitter, so moving fans or followers to email subscribers puts them in a really good position to become customers. By offering a glimpse behind the veil, you’ll draw in quality subscribers who really value what you have to say in the inbox.
4. Expand Your Network Through Everyday Engagement.
If you’re like most people, you send scores of emails every day. Now consider all the emails your colleagues send, too. Each recipient could be a future member of your contact list. Consider adding a signup link to every employee’s standard email signature. This simple step makes every email a gateway for someone new to join your list.
5. And Don’t Forget: Events are also a fantastic opportunity to capture new subscriptions. If you regularly attend networking functions, conferences or professional meet-ups, consider ways to convert introductions into signups. A simple pad of paper and pen will do in a pinch, or you can use apps and other tools, to avoid the messy handwriting guesswork and automatically populate your list with new connections.
Marketing allows us to mobilize different channels and strategies to accomplish the same goal. Consider deploying a combination of these four simple steps, and you’ll open up all kinds of new avenues for adding email subscribers.
Christopher Lester is VP of sales at Nashville-based email marketing software and services provider Emma. Reach him at [email protected].
