Collecting emails might not seem like much. However, each new email collected is like welcoming a new potential customer. For small businesses, it is a step towards generating a stable audience. For large, established companies, it is a sign of continued growth.
Numbers-wise, up to 4 billion people use their emails daily. Imagine being exposed to even a tiny portion of that. Not only that, email continues to outperform other means of marketing. In fact, even social media still gets one-upped by emails up to 40 times in terms of customer acquisition.
The greater your contact list is, the more exposure your brand has. What’s more, email marketing has one very handy benefit: you have a much fuller control over this marketing
Given all that, collecting new emails not only allows you to promote and expose your business to a wider audience. It also grants you the opportunity to generate greater potential income which is very important in the case of email marketing for small business.
Collecting emails may sound like an easy task, but it can be quite a challenge. These techniques can help you reel in some more email addresses with relative ease.
One easy and trusted method of obtaining emails is through opt-in forms. These are short, easy-to-fill-out forms strategically laid out on your website to collect emails from people who visit your website.
These forms can often be overlooked, so it’s essential that you make sure that they stand out from the rest of your page and are easily seen by potential subscribers. You can use contrasting colors, attention-grabbing fonts, or other strategies that make them pop – which brings us to another technique!
You could present your visitors with email sign-up forms through pop-ups, modals, or overlays. These components usually come up on top of the page viewers are looking at to get their attention. You can have them appear automatically or get triggered by a certain action.
Pop-ups are a curious thing. While over 80% of users seem to hate pop-ups, they outperform embedded website forms 3 times. So pop-ups are highly effective, but they can come off as annoying, so best use them sparingly. And whichever one you use, make sure to properly highlight the area where they can type in their email address.
Lead magnet is a marketing term used to refer to products and services that you can offer to your potential customers in exchange for obtaining contact details – in this case, emails. This can be great for both business-to-business (B2B) marketing and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing. There are two kinds of lead magnets that you can possibly go for.
Offering valuable resources can be a great way to get people’s emails. You could do something along the lines of providing them with a free ebook, a free trial, or other exclusive content in exchange for signing up for your newsletter. For example, here at Selzy, we invite people to sign up for our digest by offering them our epic guide on list building. Try it out too, it’s two birds with one stone. 🙂
Promoting your newsletter with exclusive coupons, discounts, and freebies is also a great option. Let’s face it, nothing gets existing and potential customers more excited than a terrific deal. So, in exchange for a newsletter sign-up, you might want to give your subscribers a discount or a welcome package with product samples.
Quizzes are all the rage now. It seems like everyone wants to know what Avenger they are or which Kardashian would most likely be their best friend. Other websites have taken advantage of this and begun creating quizzes in line with their products and services. It is a fun and effective way to collect emails.
Swipe to see an example:
You could ask for your visitor’s email right before the quiz starts. However, it would be more effective to have them do the quiz and then ask them for their contact information. They have already invested time and effort into answering the questions. Consequently, they are much more incentivized to take this final step and type in their email address.
Exit pop-ups are a last-ditch attempt to recapture your audience’s attention before they leave your site. These should come with discounts or offers that are hard to resist so as to convince them to buy one of your products and services.
How can these be used to collect emails, you ask? Well, you can design them to look like this:
This technique not only entices people to sign up. They might end up staying on the website longer and convert into loyal customers.
Contests and giveaways can also be a great way of collecting emails. You could tell your potential customers to fill out a short form to participate. In the form, you could have them type in their contact information. You could also ask them whether they want to receive your promotional emails. Just make sure you put a sweet prize on the line for maximum effectiveness.
Imagine this – you visit a blog site looking for a specific article. However, you do not get access to the full article. You probably get the introduction or a paragraph or two. To view the whole thing, you need to create an account or perform a specific task. This is an example of a content upgrade.
Through the content upgrade, you can obtain emails by offering people an upgraded version of what you already offer. It could be more content, the ability to download it, or other things that are related to your products or services.
With nearly 2 billion daily users, Facebook truly is among this generation’s most popular social media platforms. Given that, you can utilize it as an effective tool to boost your email list. This can be achieved through Facebook Ads.
All you need to do is create an ad that promotes your service, product, or event and pair it with a link to a landing page. When people tap on this ad, they will be redirected to your landing page. There, you can collect their emails in exchange for something, such as a discount code.
Facebook Ads are easy to set up and come at a relatively low cost. It is also an example of utilizing a different marketing approach (social media marketing) to strengthen another (email marketing).
Even the perfect strategy doesn’t guarantee collected emails. So, if you want to get the results you’re going for, you might want to keep the following tips in mind.
As already mentioned above, one surefire way to get people hyped up to join your email list is to give them something back for their subscription. That something can come in the form of discounts, freebies, and exclusive content, among other things.
Make it seem like a win-win situation for both of you. Think about it – you’re getting something from them, and you give them something back. Just make sure not to overdo it.
Keep things as simple as possible. Nothing puts a potential subscriber off like a complicated sign-up sheet that is way more trouble than it’s worth. Instead, you can go for an optional automatic subscription that activates once you purchase an item or sign up for the website. Clicking a button that says subscribe and inputting your email in a textbox on the screen are also viable options.
You should also make sign-up sheets prominent and easy to locate. That way, those interested in receiving emails from you won’t need to go digging around to look for them.
This is simple enough. Ask for your visitors’ emails and consent. Ensure that your intention to get their email and provide them with promotional information and offers is clear.
There are many ways to go about asking for it. You can do it as soon as they enter your website. You can also remind them that it is an option when they create an account or after they have already spent a specific amount of time on your website.
Millions of people have FOMO, which stands for fear of missing out. You can take advantage of this phenomenon and create a sense of urgency to encourage people to sign up for your newsletter. For instance, if a visitor subscribes in the next two hours, they might receive a special discount code. This can trigger the impulsive part of your customer’s brains and give them a well-meant nudge to join your mailing list.
After you’ve decided which approach you want to go with, build a system that monitors its performance. See if you’re getting the number of subscriptions that you want.
If you do not see the numbers you want, find ways to improve or change your approach to the whole thing. And if you are getting desirable results, look for even more effective ways to grow your mailing list.
It seems like email list building will never be an easy task. However, with the right approach, you might just start seeing the results your brand needs.
Always remember that when collecting emails, you must:
Collecting and sending emails to addresses that have not agreed to receive correspondence from you is an easy way to get marked as spam.
Consumers and potential customers will be more willing to provide you with their email addresses if they get something out of it.
There are many ways of collecting emails, as mentioned above. Go for the one that you feel will suit your brand and your services best.
Customer behavior changes over time. Be ready to adapt and change your approach to stay relevant and keep your consumers engaged.
To learn more about this topic and make your email marketing campaign more effective, check out our best tips on how to build an email list.
