Business thrives on e-mail marketing. According to EmailMonks, “e-mail has a median ROI of 122%.” There’s no doubt, that marketing via e-mail is a great way to cultivate leads and convert them into loyal customers. In addition to lead conversion, there are many other ways you can use your email list to help build your business such as getting referrals, promoting events, establishing your own community, and disseminating important information to your customers. However, building a good e-mail list takes hard work and strategy. Here are 5 great ways you can collect email addresses for email marketing.
Lead Magnet on Your Website
It’s important to capture emails from people who are coming to your website. Website visitors are already interested in what you’re offering, but if you don’t do anything to get their e-mail address, you may have just missed out on a future sale. The best way to capture e-mail addresses from visitors to your website is to create something your visitors would want. It should be something valuable enough that they would want to give their e-mail address in exchange for. It can be anything such as a case study, a helpful eBook, a coupon or discount, or anything else they would consider valuable. Once they input their e-mail, you should send them an e-mail right away giving them what you promised, but also providing more detail about your business and what you do.
Community Workshops
Position yourself as a resource in your community. Partner with related businesses and organizations who also service your target market and offer to do workshops. You can give advice, offer free consulting, do a ‘How To’ workshop, or offer a sample of your product or service. This is a great way to meet new people and build your e-mail list at the same time. Be sure to have a signup sheet or host a drawing in order to collect e-mails from attendees.
Giveaway/Sweepstakes
Another thing you can do is host a giveaway. Choosing what to giveaway can be tricky because while you don’t want to offer something that will attract people who aren’t going to become customers, you do want to make the giveaway alluring enough to attract as many new people in your target market as possible. A good giveaway is one that your current customers would want such as a gift card, a free service/product of yours, or something they would use in conjunction with your product or service. Promote the giveaway as much as you can so that you can get the word out.
Webinars
Share your knowledge. Host a webinar and give tips to your target market that would bring value to their lives. You can also partner with an expert in your industry to bring even more appeal to the webinar. It would also help broaden your reach since he/she will attract their audience to listen in as well. Don’t forget to promote the webinar! The more people who sign up, the more e-mails you get.
Ask
This is a very simple step, but sometimes it gets lost in the shuffle. Ask for e-mails. Add a line in the signature of your e-mail message where you talk about your latest news or promotion and plug your mailing list. You’d be surprised how many e-mails you can get by doing this one step alone. Another way to ask for e-mail addresses is through contact forms on your website. If someone fills out a contact form on your website it doesn’t hurt anything to include a checkbox asking if the person wants to be added to your mailing list. If you have a brick and mortar business, collect e-mail addresses during check-out.
The key to great digital marketing is building organic relationships with your audience online. Whether you’re collecting e-mails on your website, through interactions on social media, with webinars, or by being actively involved in your community, it’s important to maintain a consistent strategy to build your email list. These are just a few of our favorite ways to collect e-mail addresses for e-mail marketing. If you’d like more tips or a free consultation on how we can help build your list, contact us. Either way, it’s vital that you invest in e-mail marketing to grow your business.
