Building an email list is one of those old-proven methods which still holds prominence in today’s online marketing space. Whether you’re an individual freelancer or a business owner, having a solid email list can be game changer for you.
It will help you connect with your target audience, increase your conversions, and ultimately drive the results you are looking for.
In this blog post, I will explain how to build your own email list and engage your audience. By the end of this post, you’ll feel more confident and motivated to take your email marketing game to the next level.
Why email marketing?
It’s a powerful mechanism for connecting with the potential customers and nurturing the existing ones. Despite the surge of social media platforms, email marketing continues to offer an unrivaled reach and a high return on investment.
Why so? It’s simple. Almost everyone has an email account. Studies show that the number of global email users is expected to reach 4.48 billion in 2024. This vast user base provides a massive opportunity to connect with people around the world.
But why email marketing is so effective? Because it let’s you maintain a direct line of communication with your target audience. It gives you the control that social media platforms often withhold with their ever-changing algorithms.
In essence, it empowers you to deliver the right message at the right time, which is vital for building strong, meaningful relationships with your subscribers.
Why freelancers/business owners should care?
No business can grow and thrive without building trust and foster relationships with the audience. Email marketing enables you to achieve this in a better way.
What’s more, it’s cost-effective too. If done in the right way, the return on investment from your email marketing efforts can be outstanding. For every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 on average.
But it’s not just about the money. Email marketing also offers a wealth of data that can help you understand your audience in a better way. You can gain valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t, making it easier to tailor your strategies and improve your results.
What makes an email list valuable?
The purpose of your email marketing program can only be met if the email list contains signups from the relevant audience having interest in the product/services you are offering. It’s important to follow the below hygiene rules:
- Consent: Just like you wouldn’t like any uninvited unknown guest coming to your home all of sudden, the email recipients also wouldn’t appreciate their inbox full of emails from unsolicited services they never opted for. As a hygiene, send emails only to the people who have voluntarily provided you their email address. Never buy any email list. This will help you comply the data privacy regulations and will also maintain good delivery rate and open rates.
- Relevance: It’s important you should use only the channels where your target audience is. Collect emails from the audience your product and services are meant for. There is no use of nurturing an audience who is not even close to your ideal customer profile (ICP).
- Segmentation: Your email list will have people from different demographics (e.g. age, gender, income level, education, location). Segmenting your email list in smaller groups of the basis of one of more common conditions will allow you to send personalized content tailored to the specific group.
Getting started with email list building – steps involved!
Understanding your target audience
This step is often disregarded despite being one of most crucial stages in the process of building an email list. Without a clear grasp of who you’re trying to reach, your efforts could fail to bring the desirable results.
Always start any marketing campaign by defining your ideal customer. You should be able to answer:
What demographics do they belong to?
What are their interests, needs, and pain points?
What problems can your product or service solve for them?
By answering these questions, you can form a comprehensive understanding of your target audience, providing valuable insights to shape your email marketing strategy.
Next, consider their online behavior.
What social media platforms do they use?
When are they most active?
What type of content do they engage with?
This information can define not only the content of your emails but also the timing and frequency of your communication.
Remember, the goal of email marketing is not just to grow your list but to attract the right subscribers – those who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer and are more likely to convert.
By understanding your target audience, you can tailor your approach to resonate with them, increasing the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts.
Define a clear value proposition
Your value proposition communicates why someone should subscribe to your email list.
What are they going to get out of it?
What makes your emails worth opening?
Why your audience will wait for your next email?
It should convey the unique benefits subscribers will gain – exclusive content, early access to new products or services, insider tips, special discounts, or anything else that sets your email content apart from the rest.
A compelling value proposition goes beyond a simple promise of updates or news about your business.
Remember, people are protective of their inboxes. They won’t give away their email addresses without a good reason. Your value proposition should give them that reason, compelling them to hit the ‘subscribe’ button.
So, take the time to craft a persuasive value proposition – it’s a vital ingredient in your email list building recipe.
Setup your email stack
You need an email marketing platform to effectively grow and organize your email list and also to send the automated emails. Choosing the right platform will help you scale your campaigns smoothly and will also save your precious time.
Finalize a compelling incentive
Think about this: Why someone would share his/her email to you?
Getting email address (with consent) of your target audience is not easy. You need to entice them. Look back to the target audience and value proposition you defined earlier and create an incentive that could entice people to share their email. Don’t do false promise.
Here are a few ideas:
- A free resource (e.g. ebook, checklist, case-study, worksheet)
- Free consultation
- Webinar
- Trial offer (limited access)
- Free course
- Contest
- Email series
- Discount code
You can also use a combination of more than a one ideas.
Create a landing page that converts
This will be your digital showroom where your target audience will discover your incentives and will signup for it. You will need to focus on these three key elements:
- Headline: Put a compelling message which could grab the attention of the visitor.
- Incentive details: Clearly highlight the benefits this incentive will bring to the user. Back your claim by using reviews, testimonials and social proofs.
- Lead capture form: This is where the visitor will provide his/her details like name, email, phone etc. Keep the form short. Make sure it looks good and is placed prominently.
You should create different landing pages for different incentives. This will help you measure clearly which incentive is giving the best results.
Automate your workflow
What happens when someone signs up for your incentive or simply subscribes for your newsletter? What if more than 100 people will signup on the same day?
Time is money and you cannot respond to each signup manually. You need to create a step-by-step workflow and automate it different sequences like welcome email and delivery of the incentive. This can be done on the email marketing platform. For complex automations, you can also use platforms like Zapier.
Bring the relevant traffic
Now when your tech stack is ready, it’s the time you focus on bringing the rights visitors on your website/landing pages. To start with, you can think what are the lower hanging fruit opportunities for you. It can be your social media accounts, facebook groups or other communities.
You can get early signups from here but if you are expecting good volume then you would have to run paid campaigns through platforms like meta ads and google ads.
To see results, you need to ensure you are targeting the relevant audience.
Takeaway
Building an email list is a step by step process where you define what you have to offer, who is the ideal target audience, why the visitors will provide their detail, how you will bring the visitors and what will happen after they will signup?
It might look like a daunting process but if done right this can be highly rewarding too.
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