How to Build An Email Marketing List From Scratch

In order to keep up with consumer habits and trends, the world of marketing is forever evolving. But, just because you may be spending more time (and budget!) on contemporary communication methods, doesn’t mean you should forget about the traditional ones. In this particular case, email marketing.

Widely considered an ‘old school’ means of communication, email marketing is often overlooked when planning a marketing strategy. However, studies have shown that email generates $38 for every $1 spent, proving that it’s well worth it when done correctly.

Within this guide, we will be taking you through how to build an email marketing list from scratch. Building a reliable email marketing list will help to set the foundations for successful email marketing strategies, time and time again.

Areas To Consider Before Building An Email List

Before you even think about building an email marketing list, it’s important to ensure that you know exactly who your business wants to attract. Having hundreds of email addresses may seem great, but if you’re reaching out to people with no interest in your product or service, you won’t see a return. You need to target warm leads, prioritising quality over quantity. This means that it’s wise to:

Create a marketing persona

With 3.9 billion daily email users, finding your desired audience isn’t always easy. A marketing persona will help you to establish where your target audience can be found online, while also increasing your knowledge on how to gain their attention.

Have a website

 If your business doesn’t have a website, it will be near impossible to carry out a successful email marketing strategy. Your website is where the majority of email prospects will gather, which is super important to remember if you want a valuable list of prospects.

Use An Email Marketing Platform

You’ll need to sign up to an email marketing platform, for both legal and organisational purposes. Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp and HubSpot allow you to organise your lists and send out automated emails at just the click of a button.

Not to mention, they have processes in place that help with your email recipients’ privacy and contribute to your GDPR compliant campaigns.

How To Build An Email List From Scratch

When it comes to building an email marketing list for your business, you need to consider your content assets. What are you going to send / offer people in exchange for their email address? If you don’t have valuable content to share with your readers, they won’t feel inclined to sign up. Read on to discover how to make an email list for beginners.

1. Create Multiple Landing Pages

A recent study by Hubspot found that companies see a 55% increase in leads when they increase their number of landing pages from 10 to 15. The logic behind this is pretty simple: having more landing pages allows you to cater for more specific wants and needs. Just like a menu, the more choice there is for the customer, the more likely they are to convert.

From offering services and products to handing out helpful guides and resources, there are many paths that you can go down when creating a landing page. Just remember that the more you tailor your landing page to suit a visitor’s wants, needs & pains, the more likely you are to get their email.

2. Create Personalised & Enticing CTAs

You could have the best content in the world, but without a killer CTA (call to action), your prospects won’t convert.

Personalised CTAs perform 202% better than generic ones. A personalised CTA will really help to push the purpose of your landing pages, giving the visitor exactly what they want.

Here’s an example: If your landing page is about email marketing, inserting a CTA labelled “Download your free email marketing guide” will be both relevant and valuable to the visitor. Of course, this is only possible if you take the time to create the free guide; but if it helps you to build an email list, it’s worth every minute.

3. Experiment With Timed Pop-Ups

Pop-ups aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but they can be invaluable to your email marketing list when done correctly. The trick here is not to be intrusive.

Timed pop-ups appear to certain users, based on their behaviour when on your website. For example, a user reading a blog about link building tactics may get a pop up to a downloadable link building resource when halfway down the page. A pop up like this provides value to the reader, rather than being over-promotional.

Pop-ups require careful thought. You must provide the RIGHT message to the RIGHT person at the RIGHT time – otherwise, it’s nothing more than spam.

Nothing will increase your website’s bounce rate and reduce time on page more than a badly timed pop-up.

It’s Time To Build Your List!

While there are several – if not hundreds – of ways to collect emails, the ones mentioned in this guide are a great place to start.

Just remember to keep your ideal customers in mind when deciding what incentives you’ll be offering – whether it’s fantastic content or monthly deals.

We hope this article helps you on your way to building your email marketing list – let us know how you get on and share this post if you found it useful!

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You can check out our article on True or False – Should EVERY Business be Blogging in 2021? ⋆ Slam Marketing