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Wikus Engelbrecht is a writer, journalist and digital poet at GraphicMail, an international email and mobile marketing service provider. His professional career in language and media has traveled the film, print advertising, magazine publishing, food theatre and online content industries since 2003.

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Three Easy Ways to Build Your Email List

Written on
Jan 24, 2012 
Author
Wikus Engelbrecht  |
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Three Easy Ways to Build Your Email List

GRAPHICMAIL – When it comes to your address book, size does matter.

The more people you have on your email list, the more marketing messages you can send out and the more responses you can potentially get. But, growing an email list can be a slow and difficult process. There are no shortcuts to building a large, qualitative list of subscribers. In fact, it can be so much of a bulk email marketing migraine that after a while some people might feel like giving up on promoting new sign-ups altogether.

So, how do you build your subscriber database without all the worries?

1) Make signing up as simple as possible

Email opt-in should be made easy. The more clicks and keystrokes a potential subscriber needs to make in order to sign up, the more of them will abandon the process before you have them securely on your list. Why force a person to take multiple steps to do something that they want to do, if there are ways for them to do it with just one?

Lubricate your subscription process by testing the success of rate of single opt-in versus double opt-in. Think about reducing the amount of required fields on your subscription forms — most of which are always details you can ask your subscribers about later. And rewrite your confirmation emails to be as brief and skim-easy as possible.

2) Focus on converting web visitors

If (like most marketers these days) you are promoting your business via online channels, chances are that your website will be a hotspot for catching new sign-ups. This means that your email newsletter opt-in should be compelling, obvious and everywhere. Make sure the form is prominently placed on all your web pages and make it stand out visually. Also place, sign-up promotions on relevant content such as within articles and blogs, and at the end of slide shows.

(This area is where email marketing services need to help their clients. For example, my company, GraphicMail, offers marketers lists and contacts tools, and even the capacity to  import all your subscribers from other emailing programs and cloud-based CRMs, such as Salesforce, or sync up your address book with Outlook.)

You’ll also do well if you sell your newsletter to potential subscribers by adding a line or two about the benefits of signing up, such as mentioning special deals or exclusive content, or adding some testimonials by a few clients who’ve found it useful.

Once your website’s sign up forms have all been set up and testes, focus on driving traffic to your sign-up forms through all possible channels; such as your social media pages and PPC campaigns.

3) Leverage word of mouth and social media

Word of mouth is a powerful technique that works great with email marketing. If your readers find the content you share with them to be useful and informative, they will pass your newsletter on to their friends, which can be a good source of new subscribers.

A really great way to grow your list is to allow people to share your email with others. This adds a social component to your email, which increases the possibility of you message going viral. Add a “forward to friend” link and newsletter social share buttons to your template. Even think about including an incentive for both sender and recipient, such as a voucher or free credits. You may be surprised by the amount of referral activity you can generate if you just take the time to ask.

It all comes down to asking everyone, everywhere and at every opportunity about whether they would like to hear from you via email. Be sure to tell them what benefits there are if they sign up, and then make it easy for all subscribers to share your email newsletters so other people will see the advantages.





Reader Comments.

When doing my marketing I have found that the best way to generate leads through cold calling and cold emailing is to start with a good list of the right people to contact.

If you click on my name here, you will go to a great online service where you can get FREE emails and phone numbers for people you want to contact.

Posted by Jeff the Marketing Guy | 10:54 am on January 27, 2012.

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