Email Marketing: 15 List Building Tips
Email marketing can be profitable for any business, no matter what kind of product or service you are selling. It is significantly cheaper than other advertising methods and it enables you to build credibility with your subscribers. As a result, you can generate more sales and profits.
The foundation of email marketing is a targeted, responsive and permission-based email list. If you have a list of subscribers that trust you and consider you to be an expert in the field of your interest, you are on the right track.
Below you will several list building ideas that will help you make the most out of your email marketing.
- Provide useful, relevant and unique content. Your visitors will not give you their email address just because they can subscribe to your newsletter free of charge. You have to provide unique and valuable information that will be useful for your subscribers.
- Add a subscription form to every page of your website. Make it elegant and accessible. Locate it at the top-left corner of your site, as that’s where the human eye will initially travel.
- Make the sign up process as easy as possible. You shouldn’t ask for too much information upfront, because you will lose subscribers. Collecting just the name and email address should be enough for most email marketing campaigns.
- Address your visitors’ privacy concerns. Most people are worried that they will receive spam after giving out their email address. Tell your potential subscribers that you respect their privacy and link this statement to a privacy policy page.
- Show an example issue to your visitors. This lets your potential subscribers review your newsletter before they sign up and determine if it is something they’d be interested in.
- Create a web-based newsletter repository. By putting an archive of all of your newsletter issues you can make it more appealing for your visitors to subscribe. You will also generate additional traffic from search engines.
- Contact other newsletter publishers. Let them know that you’d be interested to announce their newsletter if they’re up to do the same for you. This way, both of you can build your lists faster.
- Give away useful free stuff. Write an ebook or a PDF report. Hire a programmer to create downloadable or web-based software. Then give it away to your visitors provided that they join your list.
- Request that your subscribers pass it on. Word of mouth is a powerful viral technique that works great with email marketing. If your subscribers find the content you share with them to be useful and informative, they will pass your newsletter on to their friends. This can be a good source of new subscribers.
- Let others reprint your newsletter, as long as its content is unmodified. Many webmasters and newsletter publishers are actively looking for high quality content, and if they reprint your newsletter, you will get new subscribers, traffic and links pointing to your site.
- Include a “Sign Up” button in the newsletter. If you are using plain text instead of HTML, provide a text link to your subscription page. You may feel that this is not required, because the subscriber is already on your list, but remember that your readers will forward your newsletters to others, or reprint it online. You want to make it easy for them to subscribe.
- Add a squeeze page. A squeeze page is typically designed only to build your list. It features a powerful headline and a couple of most important benefits that should make your subscribers salivate to sign up to your list. Once created, use a service such as WordTracker to find hundreds targeted keywords, and advertise on them using pay per click advertising on Google, MSN and Yahoo.
- Include testimonials in your squeeze page. This is crucial. Put 1 or 2 strong testimonials from satisfied subscribers on your squeeze page. This can be in any format, but you may find that multimedia (audio or video social proof) is more “believable”. People like to follow footsteps of other people.
- Blog religiously. Blogging is a great way to communicate with your potential customers, and it creates a nice synergy with your email marketing. Be sure to include your newsletter sign up form on each page of your blog.
- Use co-registration service to build your list. Co-registration is a great way to build your email list. Your newsletter’s ad appears on other website’s and their visitors are able to check your subscription box and become added to your list. A good co-registration service can be found at GetSubscribers.com.
Simon Grabowski is an owner of the web-based GetResponse email marketing software that makes it easy for thousands of marketers and small businesses to send their newsletters and build their email lists. Try GetResponse free of charge at http://www.getresponse.com
Tags
email marketing, marketing, advertising, email, autoresponder, autoresponders
October 6th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
I am very new at this type of business any aspects of e-mail marketing and what should you do when you have no e-maillist or contact list at all can you purchase these list & if so from who. Thank’s for any advice or help in this matter Regard’s Leonard.
October 13th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Hi Leonard,
I am new to this myself and I have just started using the emails to market and I also do not have a list! But…I do have some suggestions, if you are interested in checking them out? I myself have been trying to build a list and have limited funds available so purchasing lists is going to have to stay limited for me so if this is your situation as well???….
1st suggestion would be to try (for free ofcourse):
http://www.desktoplightning.com/1coolchic
This is what I am trying right now and they do also give you a lot of material that you can just cut and paste into your emails and send them out, this is totally viral so it should bring in alot of people…..I hope!
2nd suggestion would be to go ahead and purchase through “Get Response” there leads becasue they deliver these leads right into your email campaign and once you recieve them the emails will automatically be sent out and you dont have to worrry about “Spam” because they already are confirmed prospects!
I did purchase a 200 lead package and so far so good! It’s only hard getting started because you have to make a campaign before they put these leads in your list for you so the first emil has to be really good! Anyway I hope this helped you at least a little…….I know I myself have been just scouring the internet to find info on the same subject, and I definitaly know how you feel, BUT…. Hang In There!
Eleni Kontos
Wealthy Connections Worldwide
http://www.wealthyconnectionsworldwide.ws
October 17th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Hello Leonard,
Thank you for your question.
What I can recommend to you is to visit the GetSubscribers site:
http://www.getsubscribers.com/
GetSubscribers is a system that adds dozens of targeted, opt-in subscribers to your list.
Please let me describe briefly how it works. We display your ad on
many websites on the Internet, along with the fields where visitors
may leave their name and e-mail address if they are interested in receiving more information about the product/service that is described
in the ad. The information they submit is instantly delivered to you.
The most important benefit of GetSubscribers program is that the
leads we generate are of the highest possible quality, unmatched
by any other lead generation service on the Internet:
a) they are completely targeted and unique (many other programs
sell “recycled” or shared leads which get resold to other clients)
b) there is no subscriber or publisher fraud, as the ads are published
on authority sites only
c) the undeliverables ratio is extremely low
d) they are not “pre-checked”
e) they are not incentivized
Purchasing a ready list of email addresses puts you in a very difficult situation, as you are not allowed to use it according to the anti spam
law. You cannot email the subscribers who have not requested the information from you expressly. The truth about purchased lists is that
the same leads are being sold to many people. As a result, those email addresses become cluttered with unwanted emails, and are no longer
used due to excessive spam.
I hope you find it helpful.
Best regards,
Agata Szulc
Marketing Department
GetResponse.com
November 25th, 2006 at 9:05 am
Leonard Taylor,
You are well on your way to building your successful list. I have contacts who have reported good success from both desktop lightning and using the getresponse.com highly targeted leads. Maximizing your list-building “squeeze page” or “lead capture” “list builder” website for the search engines in combination with the non-incentive-based getresponse.com system should produce highly favorable results for you. Good Success Always,
Doug Barger
January 8th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
I have used your listbuilding services at Getresponse.com and I have had an account with Getresponse for over a year and I find your services are great. You helped me build a list of 500 Optin Subscribers in less than 1 month and they are very responsive to my broadcasts. Thanks, and at the same time I noticed your socialbookmarking icons above. Here’s a gift to you for your excellent service. I found an Easy Social BookMarking Tool for you to use. When you use this Free service in your Website or Blog,
visitors will be able to bookmark it in 50 Popular Bookmarking
Services. This will make it easy for you and your visitors to spread
the word about your great blog and your autoresponder and email marketing services. To Your Continued Success.
January 19th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Hi everyone,
Great tips on building your list.
Having a sign-up link in your newsletter (or letting know people how to sign-up) is crucial for your success.
We have tried it with our list and it increased subscription rate quite substantially, and also gained more affiliates for our affiliate program.
And it’s very easy to add a paragraph:
“Enjoyed this tip?
Forward it to a friend!
Or, if you are not a subscriber yet, you can get your own copy at:
[your newsletter sign-up URL]”
Good luck in building your lists,
Elena Solomon
January 30th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
‘Email Marketing: 15 List Building Tips’ is a must read for anybody serious about email marketing
February 7th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
I’ve been using Getrepsonse for a few months, but only just found this blog. Thanks for the many tips and list building ideas found here, supplemented by the excellent help sections and tutorial son the getresponse control panel!
Thank you,
Paul Wheeler
March 24th, 2007 at 4:23 am
Hello,
I want to know that can i use getresponse as a database, for example, i’m doing sales… Can i save all the fields including customers neme, their address & so on….
Additionally i’m having many websites, can i collect the information from all websites……
April 7th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
I have been using getresponse for several years now. Simon and his team are top knotch. Follow the advice given on this blog and you will be one step closer to success!
James Spindlow
EmailMarketer.net
April 24th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
I just started to use Getresponse and I would like to build a list from scratch, I am planning to make use of the list building option. I am in the Forex Trading industry and we have developed a very profitable system for our clients to trade with in the currency market. Any suggestions how we can spread the word will highly be appreciated.
Regards
Dennis
April 30th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
I am very new at this type of business any aspects of e-mail marketing and what should you do when you have no e-maillist or contact list at all can you purchase these list & if so from who. Thank’s for any advice or help in this matter Regard’s Leonard.
May 16th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Hi
I just started to use Getresponse and I would like to build a list from scratch.
I don´t have experience of e-mail marketing and I have not my own Optin
list .
I am planing to buy leads to my autoresponder. PleaseI need some advices from you.
Thank you in advance
Reggards
Octavia
June 9th, 2007 at 4:43 am
I used GetResponse a few years ago with great results. I just now came back and WOW has the service exploded and improved! I am so totally impressed that I will always use this service for my newsletter, advertising, and leads purchases. Simon, I joined you when you first started and now I’m back…..for good.
July 27th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
I’ve been a GetResponse paid member for almost a year, yet I’m always reluctant to check out this blog in the past. But upon coming here and saw how great your tips are, I really regret not doing doing so earlier. You have given me some great ideas where I can implement on my blog to capture subscriber, especially on the part to show an example of my newsletter. Now I realize I should put a link to show them a better description of what they’ll get when they sign up for my newsletter, I should have thought of this earlier…
Thanks
Eric Tan
August 29th, 2007 at 4:24 am
Internet Marketing and Advertising…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…
October 24th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
No complaints about this service. I’ve tried many others and none of them even touch on Get Respones’ service. Well done, keep up the great work.
Thanks
Ben
December 25th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
am very new at this type of business any aspects of e-mail marketing and what should you do when you have no e-maillist or contact list at all can you purchase these list & if so from who. Thank’s for any advice or help in this matter Regard’s Leonard.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:29 am
For the most part, I agree with this article and you’ve done such a good job in summarising and listing down all your ideas. I like your suggestion of a squeeze page. I never would have thought of that myself.
I’ve read another post like this in the past, this email marketing-intensive post http://e-marketing-web-traffic.com.au/OMSblog/?p=19 is somewhat similar to what you’re trying to say - only shorter and I’m sure it’ll give you something to add on your email marketing strategies. Anyway, keep up the good work.
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Hi JDR,
Thanks for your comments and the additional resource!
Debbi
January 25th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Even though I have been studying, working and building email campaigns for years now the information in this article has been a great inspiration. I do believe that their are some significant differences between the art of email campaigning and autoresponders. Sometimes when you look at something long enough you forget to see the little things that matter the the most. Thanks for the refresher and the new ideas!
Grace, Peace and Blessings,
Wendy Merritt
http://www.imagine-believe-achieve.com
January 28th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Hi Wendy,
Thanks so much for your comments.
Yes there is a distince difference between an email campaign and autoresponders. Both have a place in business and, used properly, can significantly impact your bottom line!
Debbi
February 8th, 2008 at 12:02 am
Thank You for another very interesting article. So please try to keep up the great work all the time.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:55 am
No complaints about this service. I’ve tried many others and none of them even touch on Get Respones’ service. Well done, keep up the great work.
Thanks
ßy Mehmet
February 15th, 2008 at 1:25 am
Nick,
Thanks for the kind words!
Our goal is to remain your long-term marketing partner and we appreciate your business.
Debbi
February 17th, 2008 at 4:13 am
nice post thank you
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:20 pm
“I couldn’t understand some parts….”
That’s what we are here for! If anything is unclear or you’d like more info
just post a comment here and we’ll address it in more detail for you.
Debbi
February 27th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
thanks admin
March 12th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
I think that email marketing isnt so powerfull nowadays.
March 19th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Very informative tips that i think this will help a lot of aspiring web marketers
thank you.
March 20th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your comments!
The best part of this list is that every single suggestion (except the last) is absolutely FREE to implement! So, those aspiring web marketers can not only easily implement them, but can afford them on any budget!
Debbi
March 20th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
“I think that email marketing isnt so powerfull nowadays.”
Thanks for commenting.
The “old” ways of email marketing are definitely not powerful anymore. See my post entitled “Is Email Marketing Dead?” for my take on the current state of affairs!
Debbi Bressler
March 23rd, 2008 at 12:54 am
You are well on your way to building your successful list. I have contacts who have reported good success from both desktop lightning and using the getresponse.com highly targeted leads. Maximizing your list-building “squeeze page” or “lead capture” “list builder” website for the search engines in combination with the non-incentive-based getresponse.com system should produce highly favorable results for you. Good Success Always,
Kiz Oyunlari
March 27th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
admin, thank you very much. very useful…
March 27th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Thanks admin. It’s very interesting.
April 12th, 2008 at 7:39 am
I am a happy cuetomer of GetResponse.com
My optin-list is growing. Thanks to “Power leads campaign” offered here.
I agree with Agata that list-owners must provided valuable free content on a regular basis to keep the list responsive.
April 14th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
[…] with the relationship that you hold with those individuals on a personal level. Many people with a very large list are able to make their subscribers feel as if they are the only one that they are e-mailing on a […]
April 15th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Great tips, i found all information i was looking for, i will use some of them.