How to Build Your Email List The Right Way

July 9, 2021
email list

Efficient email lists are a timeless resource in the dynamic business world. It is connected to its media that does not get affected by sudden changes in the algorithm. Whether the SERP rankings of your website drop or a social platform suddenly brings some algorithm changes, you will find your email list unaffected by this.

Building an email list implies gathering the email addresses of a website’s users and visitors. Email lists help the website’s owner grow the subscribers who might later be prospective clients.

However, without an effective strategy, building an email list is not much of an easy task.

In this article, we’re covering why email lists are important, and offering you some valuable tips to build your email lists the right way.

Email List Building At A Glance

Email lists consist of the personal information of your potential customer. This personal information might include the name, email address, location, contact number, occupation, even gender of a person.

When a business follows a technique to gather the emails of potential clients, it is called email list building. Email list building is done from a lot of places such as sign-up forms, websites, social media accounts, webinars, and more.

Why Are Email Lists Necessary For Businesses?

According to DMA Marketer Email Tracker, you get $42 for spending $1 behind email marketing on average. Therefore, email marketing is the most desirable marketing channel.

Irrespective of how small an organization is, an efficient email list contributes a lot to the success of promotional campaigns of the brand.

Assessing the needs of your customers is easy by analyzing the click-through rates and email open rates. You will understand what moves you need to make by A/B testing email subject lines.

The CTR rate, open email rate, conversion rates provide a great insight into what values your branding.

12 Actionable Tips for Building an Email List from Scratch

1. Tailor your CTA for every blog post or landing page

People are visiting your website for a specific reason. A personalized Call-To-action can help you guide them towards an action.

Suppose you have a blog article on your website on how to grow your email list. A CTA as "Click here to download the PDF on Ultimate strategies for list building" will be enticing for the readers. In this scenario, the CTA is meeting the needs of a person who is looking for tips on growing their email list.

These offers on CTAs can include toolkits, articles, PDFs, even fun quizzes as well. But before you proceed with offering content, make sure your contents are relevant to the needs of your customer.

2. Add Value in your CTA

Some simple phrasing can have an enormous impact on your branding. Using phrases like "Get Access," " Download," "Exclusive," and "Featured" instead of "Subscribe" or "Sign-up" will add more value to your CTAs.

Furthermore, let the visitors know that signing up will give them an extra benefit that is not accessible to website visitors.

For instance, you can write, "Get Access to All our exclusive offers by filling out our email subscription form." This CTA clears the vision of how signing up to your email will be beneficial to the customer.

3. Optimize your About Us Page

You will only visit an About Us page of a website when you are interested in purchasing the service they are providing. Hence, to attract these prime visitors, you need a CTA as bait to sign up for your newsletter.

4. Add humor to your CTA/Forms

“Yes,” or “No” options are pretty boring. Nobody barely notices them anymore. Injecting some humor will add personality to your CTA.

For example, if you own a dating website, instead of a bland “No” you can write, “No, thanks. I want to die single.”

This would make the visitor reconsider their decision to avoid the offer, and put a smile on their face as a bonus.

5. Pop-Up or Slide-in for Every Page

You might consider pop-ups to be annoying. But they are helpful if placed with the right content at an appropriate time. Instead of some boring sign-up pop-ups, think outside of the box.

After spending a certain period on your website, if a visitor gets a relevant pop-up, it might have a positive impact.

For example, if your website is related to health & beauty, you might add an ebook on weight loss. The pop-up ad should appear after 15 or 20 seconds a visitor spends on the site.

Exit pop-ups and scroll pop-ups are also useful in this regard. Offering meaningful content in pop-up ads will have a tremendous effect instead of being obtrusive.

6. Align Pop-Up Surveys

If you want a visitor to subscribe to your newsletter then you have to ensure that the visitor is invested in your provided content. Without this, requesting their emails will be of no help.

Moreover, a long sign-up form is too bothersome and sometimes potential clients will back off. Simple options like “Yes" or “No” will work as bait for building your email list.

7. Create a Sense of Urgency to Subscribe

When offers are placed with bonus incentives with the right subject lines, it will make the visitor sign up immediately. Ensure that your CTA reflects the image of your newsletter purpose.

Adding numbers, as in, setting deadlines will create a sense of urgency that might make the visitor sign up immediately

8. Create personalized Landing Pages

The needs of your visitors vary in individuals. Therefore, personalized landing pages will play a crucial role in building your email list.

Personalized landing pages answer the concerns of every visitor, making them sign up for your newsletter. A number of landing pages will help you appeal to a broad audience.

9. Use Social Media to Build an Email List

Apart from website visitors, you have a large community on social media as well. If done correctly, pitching your email newsletter on social media is nothing but a cakewalk.

We spent a significant time of the day using social media i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Following your page on social media means they are already interested in your service. Utilizing this loyal fanbase with standard content will result in growing a huge email list.

You do not have the emails of every follower of your social media accounts. Giveaways, Live events, webinars will allow you to have their emails. Besides, these will work as brand promotions that will result in an increase in organic followers.

10. Craft engaging email content

Your emails should have entertaining as well as informative content that will make the recipients look forward to receiving emails from you.

Not only that, emails with standard and quality content will make the recipients forward them to their network that will result in substantial exposure for you along with gaining new subscribers.

11. Segment Your Audience

While building an email list, categorize the clientele by analyzing their interests and needs. Send them emails catering to their specific interests that include the contents they require. This will result in having a positive image of you and your business.

12. Add a Smart Bar

Adding a smart bar to your website is the most natural yet enticing way to increase your subscribers. No matter how much a visitor scrolls, the option of sign-up will be there on the top of the screen.

It takes a few minutes to install a smart bar. When a visitor clicks the Sign-Up button, they are directed to a pop-up to subscribe for the newsletter.

Do’s and Don'ts of Building Email Lists

Like any other marketing channel, some practices are recommended for email marketing that will work as a blessing to your email marketing efforts.

The Don’ts of Building Email Lists

Don’t: Purchase email lists

Purchasing email lists are not wholly illegal, but they are highly discouraged. Because there is a set of rules involving GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation, United States 2003 CAN-SPAM act, European Data Privacy Act. These laws place certain restrictions on business owners. Breaching these laws will result in significant financial sentences.

Don’t: Ask for too much personal information:

Requesting too much personal information will scare away your potential subscribers. Your email list must consist of every client's necessary information, including name, email, birth date, gender, location, occupation, and more.

However, it is not necessary to gain all of them at once. A client’s first approach with you is signing up for a newsletter. Hence, asking intimate questions at first is intimidating for obvious reasons.

Take one step at a time. While gathering info about your client, proceed slowly. Let them be comfortable with you first and then make a move.

Don’t: Be inconsistent with Your Emails:

A common rookie mistake is sending too many emails to the subscribers or being reluctant to send emails. Having a massive pile of email lists is pointless unless you are consistent with your emails.

Sending too many emails will backfire on you and increase the unsubscribe rate. These days, your clients are smarter and have basic knowledge of marketing. Hence, too many promotional emails will make them think that you are manipulating them to make a purchase.

A savvy yet straightforward step is to schedule one email per week. It's enough to make them aware of your services.

The Do’s of Building Email Lists

Do: Make the Subscriber Feel Special

For us marketers, every subscriber is just a number. But you can not let your subscribers know that. Instead, welcoming them with a personalized email will make them feel special.

Besides, a subscriber should have a clear vision of the services you provide. Hence, with a warm welcome, introduce your business to your subscriber.

Do: Portray Your Business as a large community

Showing your business as a large community injects trust in the visitors' minds. For instance, pop-up ads saying "Join the community of 150k fans" or "Join over 250,000 subscribers" will significantly impact the visitor's mind.

Do: Have an Unsubscribe Option

An unsubscribe option has a powerful influence on visitors' psychology. Well, signing up for any newsletter most of the time means flooding your inbox with unnecessary emails. When a person hesitates between signing up for such a nuisance or avoiding it, a simple sentence "Unsubscribe at any moment" will make them click on the subscribe option.

Do: Ask for Feedback:

The main goal behind building an email list is to attain insight from your subscribers. Failing to get any feedback will make the marketing efforts go in vain. Therefore, feedback is an integral part of your marketing activities.

However, while asking for feedback, do not add too many questions. The feedback survey should take less than 5 minutes. Otherwise, the subscribers will find it annoying.

Bottom Line

Email list building is a key aspect of email marketing. A great email list will ensure that your marketing efforts are channeled to the right audience.

But growing an email list overnight is impossible. However, the strategies presented in this article will allow you to build a comprehensive list of emails over time.

Having a large email list isn’t enough. You need to make sure you have accurate and updated information about your subscribers. This is why you need a good email verification service.

If you are looking for an intuitive, feature-rich email verification platform at an affordable rate, VerifyBee is the perfect tool for you.

Get started for free and start verifying your email lists today!

September 15, 2022
How to Avoid Spam Traps and Protect Your Sender Reputation in 2022

Building an email list from scratch takes a lot of effort and time. Nothing is more frustrating than discovering that spam traps have infiltrated your email address. It is not unusual for spam traps to occur even if you follow email best practices. But if you communicate with your subscribers with the best intentions, care […]

Read More
July 1, 2022
How To Ping An Email Address To Validate It

Do you ever wonder whether an email address is a legitimate or a false email address when it bounces back? Probably the easiest method to handle this is to ping an email address, and in this article, we will demonstrate how to ping and validate an email address. Validating emails by pinging different addresses is […]

Read More
June 29, 2022
The Best Email Services To Not Ask for Phone Verification

With everything becoming tech-based around us, it only makes sense that we turn to the internet for required services and needs. However, that is also when we truly feel the importance of "Emails." Today, an email account is the one thing that can help you sign up for any service or platform. It is one […]

Read More
May 16, 2022
How Email Verification Works: The Ultimate Guide

Following the creation of your email lead list, email verification is one of the most critical phases in any email marketing campaign. If you don't verify your emails - all the hard work you put into your email marketing campaign essentially becomes worthless. Now you, along with many others, might be scared of your email […]

Read More
envelope-ophoneinstagramgraduation-hatstorephone-handsetchart-barseartharrow-right