How to Build an Email List

Why Build an Email List?

In the age of social media, a lot of people don’t think about email as much. However, email marketing is still a powerful tool for any online business marketing strategy. Email marketing has the power to create relationships with your customers and keep them up to date on new products, events, blog posts, and other important business happenings. 

Email lists can include people who have:

• Purchased something from you
• Subscribed on your website
• Signed up for your product
• Given you their business card in-person

Step by Step Guide to Building an Email List

1. Choose an Email Marketing Platform

In the early stages, you may be able to manage email campaigns yourself from your business gmail account, but as your business grows, a reliable email marketing tool will help you grow your email list and send automated email campaigns. Sav partners with MailChimp for email marketing associated with websites created on our website builder, but you’re welcome to choose another one as well. 

2. Give People Incentives to Sign Up

Some people may just give you their email address because they’re fans of your products. For others, you’ll need to sweeten the deal. Your lead magnet could be:

• A free eBook
• A checklist summarizing steps from a blog post
• A PDF version of a blog post or case study
• A cheat sheet
• A coupon
• A webinar registration
• A template or worksheet
• A free course or email series

Pop-ups may have an annoying reputation, but they can help build your email list fast if they’re done right. 

A successful pop-up form should: 

• Entice potential customers with an appealing headline
• Increase the conversion rate with a short, concise description
• Make it easy with a contact form that only asks for necessary contact information
• Include a specific, appealing call to action into the subscribe button

4. Place Sign-Up Opportunities

Here are a few places on your website and beyond that are great for placing sign-up opportunities for your email list: 

• Checkout or sign-up process
• Blog sidebar
• Website footer
• Contact us page
• Social media profiles
• Email signature
• In-person point of sale

Be sure to use compelling CTAs in each of these places to grab visitors’ attention without looking demanding and spammy. 

5. Leverage Your Social Media Accounts

Sign-up buttons and opt-in forms in your social media bios are just the beginning of how you can leverage your social media channels. Creating digital marketing campaigns for the purpose of getting newsletter sign-ups can take your email list to the next level. Facebook, and by extension Instagram, is known for their audience targeting and segmentation capabilities. Create some ads that lead to an email sign-up form or a landing page. 

6. Create A High-Converting Landing Page

Your social media campaigns have to lead somewhere. That’s where landing pages come in. Visitors who click on your LinkedIn and Facebook ads should be led to a landing page that invites them to sign up for your email list and offers them something in return. This leads to more conversions than sending these visitors directly to your homepage. 

High-converting landing page need these three pieces:

• a strong headline emphasizing the benefits for the user
• enticing copy to capture their attention
• a powerful image to accompany the message

7. Run A Viral Contest

A viral contest is a contest that gives people more entries in exchange for referrals. If every entrant enters their email address, that makes it a solid list building technique. It’s also a great change to encourage user generated content and leverage your customer base to do a little marketing for you. After all, a company looks much more trustworthy if the recommendation is coming from a friend. 

8. Manually Reach Out To Your Contacts

People you already know are an underrated part of a list building strategy. You probably won’t get all of your friends to sign up, but you can probably get a few. If there’s anyone you have in mind, let them know that you are creating an email list and what they can get out of signing up. If you want your invitation to go further, ask them to invite their contacts. If you have a customer base but don’t have an email list yet, reach out to your customers in the same way. 

9. Create A Referral Program For New Signups

Email subscribers inviting other people to subscribe will help you grow your email list fast. The power of a social proof is a valuable thing for marketers to harvest. You can do that by creating a referral program for new subscribers. People may not think to recommend your email list to a friend in a normal conversation, but prompting them to refer a friend in exchange for a discount or special offer, they might think of someone. You can create a referral program with tools like ReferralCandy, Tapfiliate, and Partnerstack, to name but a few.

10. Host A Giveaway

Giveaways are another popular tactic for email list building, particularly for ecommerce. The news spreads fast, especially on social media channels. That way you can collect a lot of email addresses in a short amount of time and increase brand awareness. Just make sure the prize you’re giving away is related to your company and target audience. Otherwise your new subscribers might not be new leads, but randos who will unsubscribe as soon as they get that welcome email. 

11. Use A Scroll box

When it comes to presenting a CTA for lead generation, timing is everything. Scroll boxes can help with that. 

Triggering a popup when website visitors reach a certain point can be a subtle yet effective way to get their attention. The right time depends on your website, but you can find out by researching your visitors’ on-site behavior. 

How Sav Can Help

We partner with MailChimp to make sending email newsletters and email marketing easy for all of our website builder users. Users with Advanced and Unlimited plans can send automated emails when customers take certain actions on the website. Start sending today!