Building an Email List: 5 Simple Tips

Last updated on March 24th, 2022 at 12:25 am

So you’ve created the thing. Your website and landing pages are ready. You’ve purchased the advertising. You’ve written the copy. Everything is neat and tidy and beautiful, just like the venue right before the party starts.

Now how do you make sure everyone gets invited to the party?

Contents hide

1 Challenges of Building an Email List

2 TIP 1: Be bolder than the competition

3 TIP 2: Consider where you collect email addresses

4 TIP 3: Encourage Interaction

5 TIP 4: Become a trusted expert

6 TIP 5: Let the Word Spread

7 Bonus: 5 More Steps to Build a Profitable Email List

Challenges of Building an Email List

Creating and building an email list is something many business owners want to do now and want to do quickly. This eagerness is great, but it’s equally important to be on top of your game to quickly and accurately collect email addresses that will lead to business.

Potential customers are constantly opting in and out of email lists, so this is one detail that will need near-constant attention. Here are some ways to stay on top of the email game and keep business growing!

TIP 1: Be bolder than the competition

As a business owner, you should already have your finger on the pulse of your niche. You should know what the competitors websites and emails look like.

If your competitor has a sale, you should already know what the discount looks like. This may make you feel like the Edna Kravitz of your niche, but consider a group of gas stations, sitting on the four corners of an intersection.

The way they compete is by paying attention to each other’s prices, services, and offers. Think of ways in which you can be just a bit bolder than the competition. If their email blasts include a video explaining three ways their product can make a customer’s life easier, tell your audience about five ways your product can make their lives easier.

If they offer a 30 day guarantee, consider to offer it as well. Think of a way your product or service can be bolder than the competition, because this will gain attention. With attention comes traffic, and with traffic come more completed squeeze pages.

TIP 2: Consider where you collect email addresses

Some websites have a landing page that requests email addresses. Some have an exit page that request email addresses. Others still have gated pages that require a membership to enter.

This is a very popular tactic on magazines or news sites. You can often find phrases like this one:

“To continue reading, enter your email address for a free membership.”

As a side tip: don’t make it impossible for the general public to see your product, or they’ll never buy, but create an air of a private membership club that’s free to join and no hassle at all. Just enter your email address and click away.

TIP 3: Encourage Interaction

Coupons and giveaways. These are extremely popular across social media, and can be a great tie-in with affiliate marketing as well.

People love free stuff, and as long as there aren’t too many hoops to jump through, they’ll be willing to work a little for it. “Enter your email here for a chance to win”, or “Follow us on Instagram and tag a friend to win” are very easy tasks for interested prospective customers to complete, knowing they might get a freebie out of it.

Likewise, “enter your email, and we’ll send you a discount code towards your first purchase” is another very enticing way to get new email addresses (not to mention, a super-easily tracked method).

Quizzes are another fun, interactive method of gaining interaction and thus email addresses. Nearly everyone who has procrastinated on a task has taken a fun little quiz to determine what type of cheese they would be, or what their taste in footwear says about their personality.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that there’s a squeeze page at the end of most of those quizzes. “For more fun like this, and additional deals from our company, enter your email address!” It’s cute, it’s painless, and people enjoy the distraction.

Tools like Qzzr and Interact can help you build a quiz that is relevant to your product or service, and fun for users to play.

At this stage, you may be interested to learn more about implementing this process to achieve a higher level of engagement from your audience.

TIP 4: Become a trusted expert

Get involved in forums. Remember that part about being bolder than the competition? Get yourself out there. To the victor come the spoils, and you’ll be a sure winner by becoming a well-known expert resource in your niche.

While you’re doing this, beef up your blog, because readers who enjoy your point of view, opinion, and advice will start heading to your blog to learn more about what you have to say.

This works as a double-good-whammy, because it increases traffic, adds validity to your expertise in your niche (and thus your product), and can improve your SEO levels by making your website constantly fresh and relevant.

A word to the wise: make sure your copy is amazing. Not just good. Not just smart. AMAZING.

Key content is another method for increasing an email list. If writing is not your thing, hire a copywriter. If design is not your strong point, hire a designer.

You want the content on your website to be so fresh, so relatable, so innovative, that people can’t help but think about it later. You want the look of the site to be so simple and riveting that people want to click on everything to see where it goes.

Read also: What is Content Marketing?

These two features of any website will be what draw people to them, and what encourage them share blog posts, videos, and links. Make blog posts and videos shareable on social media.

Have a YouTube channel (read how to create one here), if it’s relevant to your product or service. People are drawn to return to what they enjoy, so reel them in with killer content and design.

TIP 5: Let the Word Spread

Once you have a key audience, you can let other people do the work for you. You work really hard, and sometimes it’s ok to let your customers do things on your behalf! Consider putting a “Sign Up” button on your business’s Facebook page.

Encourage customers to share the page, and to Sign Up for special offers. If an existing audience member sees the value in signing up for your emails, they’ll tell friends with similar interests to do the same.

Another place to do this is in the purchase process. Offer to share a small discount on the next purchase if they enter a few friends’ email addresses, and the word is spread!

These are just a few of the hundreds of potential suggestions for building an email list.

One word to the wise, though. People will not sign up if they feel like they’re just going to get spammed with useless information. Assure people that email lists are secure, and that you’re not going to spam them unnecessarily.

Set up expectations, such as:

“Your email address is 100% secure”
“Enter your email for access to our monthly newsletter and exclusive deals!”

This lets people know that you value their time and their business, thus gaining their trust.

Building an email list is a constantly moving piece of the marketing puzzle.

Like everything else in the marketing world, you will need to research the competition and keep up with consumer opinions and trends, but as the list builds, so too will your reputation, and with that will come the conversions!