How to Build an email list from scratch
If you haven’t read our article on why it is important to your business to have an email list. Better get to it.
Now that you understand the importance of having an email list for your business it is time to start building your list. Whether your mum is your only subscriber (Hi, mum!) or you haven’t even signed-up to an email platform you can start building a list immediately.
The easiest way to build your email list is to provide an incentive.
PROVIDE A FREE OPT-IN
The easiest way to build your email list is to provide a free incentive. We all enjoy a freebie! But what you get when you offer something for free when people subscribe to your email list is payment in the form of an email address.
Your free opt-in can be anything – e-book, fact or tip sheets, your list of 10 must have’s for small business or a 15 minute free skype session with you on your area of expertise.
Whatever the free opt-in is you need to have a landing page set-up on your website or pop-up box so people can fill in their information and then they will automatically be sent the free opt-in. It is important that the process is automated, so their email address automatically adds to your subscriber list who in turn automatically sends out the free opt-in.
PROMOTE YOUR FREE OPT-IN
Once you have created your free opt-in and you have tested the automatic set-up to ensure that it works you need to start promoting it.
You can share the opt-in in the following ways:
- Share it across all social media platforms that your business is on. It is important to do this strategically and include as part of your social media plan in regular posts.
- Add an email subscribe page to your business Facebook page.
- Add a button with a link to the opt-in on yours and your team members email signature.
- Add a pop-up or landing page to promote the opt-in to your website.
These are all easy, simple and effective ways to promote the opt-in and get people subscribing to your email list.
BE CONSISTENT
Once you have captured the lead via your free opt-in you then need to get to work on ensuring that you be consistent with your email marketing going forward.
How can you be more consistent with your email marketing?
- Schedule to send out a newsletter once a month.
- Share blog posts from your website in the newsletter.
- Include any upcoming events, webinars etc.
- Include links to any relevant articles, blog posts from other experts.
TIP: In each of your newsletters encourage the subscribers to share and forward the email to others who may benefit from what you are sharing in the newsletter.
OVERALL
The most important thing is that you just get started! Even if you don’t create a free opt-in you still need to promote on your social media platforms that you have a newsletter and let them know the type of content you will be sharing.
You can’t just expect people to sign-up for the sake of it though, you need to give them something. That might be you sharing your Top 10 business must have’s or the most important Apps they should be using, or you can provide answers to the most frequently asked questions you get.
Whatever approach you take you just need to get started and be consistent!
