As many of you will know, I am a big fan of email marketing. I think it is a gift for a business of any size, but in particular for small business owners. Email marketing enables us to be personalised in our communications and engage directly with our audiences, plus we also own the data. Email marketing is part of the marketing mix and I often get asked the best way to grow your email list. Of course, you can purchase data but proceed with caution. If you do purchase email data, ensure the supplier is GDPR compliant and they have the right contacts for your audience, it will generally be easier to gain large corporate data vs small business data, for example.
It can be hard to build your email list as there is a natural churn of contacts who no longer wish to hear from you. This is OK, it is better to have a smaller list of an engaged audience vs a larger list of people who do not read your content. Make it a strategy to build your email list across all of your marketing activity.
Some things to consider
Before we start to think about the tactics we can employ to grow our email list, there are a couple of things we need to consider first.
1. Some pre-thinking
As with any marketing activity it is important to first take some time to plan our marketing strategy and be clear on what you want to achieve. We also need to define our target audience as this will guide our content, visuals and media choices. Once we are clear on what we wish to achieve we can then move to the implementation phase.
2. Content
Think about what kind of content we are going to share with our audience and most importantly the value this brings. If our clients are going to give us their email addresses, they need to receive something in return. There are lots of things you could share but by understanding your audience and the value you bring to them will help you to curate this. Things like offers, business updates, sharing knowledge and client testimonials are just a few ideas to help you get started. It is important to ensure your email marketing activity is integrated with your other marketing activity.
3. Email Deployment tools
There are many email deployment tools out there. Which one you choose will depend upon what systems (eg: CRM) you have already in place plus, how you wish to manage your base. Mailchimp and MailerLite offer some good free or low budget solutions to help you get started. However, for slightly larger businesses tools such as Hubspot, Constant Contact and Brevo are also worth checking out.
4. Segment your list
Being able to send personalised messages to individual customers is one of the key benefits of email marketing. Thinking from the beginning about how this might work for your business would be good, it can be time consuming to do this at a later stage. You might segment your base by what product or service they brought or where they are located, for example.
Tactics to grow your email list
Below we share some ideas of what kind of things you can do to help grow your email list:
- Attend local network events: virtual or in-person events so you can start to build up a community, don’t forget it is not just about the individual you meet but also others they may know.
- Webinars: Implement a series of webinars to help answer key questions for your audience, this is also a way of showcasing how you work.
- Blogs: Write a blog, answering key questions your target audience may have, don’t forget to include a call to action (CTA) to invite them to sign up to your newsletter.
- Guest blogs: Write a guest blog to help increase your audience reach.
- Social media: With an integrated campaign, don’t forget to invite your social media followers to also sign up for your newsletter.
- Website Pop-up: Add a pop-up to your website, inviting your audience to sign up to your newsletter, if it makes sense, offer them a discount on their first order with you as a thank you.
- Lead Magnet: Create an e-book or downloadable content to encourage people to provide their email addresses.
- Email Signature: Include an option to join your mailing list on all of the emails you send.
- Run Facebook or Instagram Ads: consider how this can be used as part of your customer journey, would you offer an e-book or a chance to join a webinar for example,
It can take time and patience to grow your email list, but by integrating it into all of your marketing activity it will grow. As with all marketing it is also important to continue to test and learn as you go along. Good luck and if you would like some help in getting started with your next email marketing campaign, please get in touch.
