21 Unique Ways to Build Your E-Mail List

For any business looking for long-term success, developing loyal customers is a crucial activity. Without a doubt, one of the best ways to do that right now is through e-mail marketing. E-mail marketing gives you the opportunity to communicate directly and regularly with the people most interested in your business.

Internet marketers can also benefit from having an established e-mail list.

Having a list of consumers to market your offers to is a much easier approach to marketing your offer to a larger number of people than grabbing potential revenue through mediums like AdWords.

Getting users to sign up for your list may sound difficult, but can actually be a simple process if handled properly. If you’re ready to grow your reach in the digital marketplace, here are 21 great tips for building your e-mail marketing list.

1) Promote Your Newsletter While Networking – Incorporate your signup site into your business card and share it whenever you are out networking for your company. Mention it briefly in conversation along with the benefits your newsletter has to its readers.

2) Invite Your Target Market To Join Your List Through Direct Mail – If you are targeting a specific niche of consumers or businesses, such as physicians or lawyers, consider sending out a direct mail campaign promoting the benefits to them of joining your e-mail list. *Affiliates can use direct mail to promote an offer, and funnel visitors through an e-mail gathering squeeze page on the way.*

3) Signup Your Customers Directly – It doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with your customers in person or through an e-commerce website – signup your customers directly when they make a purchase. These customers are going to be more likely to provide repeat revenue in the future, so focusing on capturing their information will be more advantageous to your company than blindly trying to attract consumers unfamiliar with your organization.

4) Design Your Website To Encourage Signups – Whether it is the main website for your company, a squeeze page promoting a certain offer, or any other web presence for your business, design the site to encourage signups. *This means placing signup boxes in prime locations above the fold of the page, and also making signup necessary for the most popular features of your page.*

5) Include Share-Worthy Material To Promote Social Sharing – Social media is a great way for the word to get out about your website. By providing unqiue, helpful information in your e-mails and newsletter, users will be more likely to share your e-mail marketing on social media – a process which can substantially increase the exposure of your business or offers.

6) Use QR Codes For Quick Registration – Include QR codes on all print material that your business releases. These QR codes can be linked directly to the registration page for your e-mail list, allowing consumers to quickly signup for your list with ease. *QR codes should be put on all product packaging and invoices sent to customers.*

7) Partner With Industry Bloggers For Promotions – If you want to gain massive exposure for your company and your e-mail list, partner with industry blog leaders. Many times, these companies can promote your website or the benefits of your e-mail list to their readers. By working with the right blogger, you can access a much larger field of consumers than you could on your own with minimal effort. For marketers planning to release their own product, partnering with established bloggers can be a great way to ramp up release-day sales.

8 ) Use Social Media Promotions That Require List Registration – Don’t simply run promotions for your business – incorporate them into social media and require that entrants sign up for your e-mail list. Not only does this grow your list, but also encourages users to share your promotion with their social contacts which greatly expands your business’ reach.

9) Host Conferences And Seminars – You’re an expert when it comes to your business. Host local conferences and seminars for your potential clients, and include an option to sign up for your list when potential customers are registering for your meeting.

10) Promote Your E-Mail List Through Your LinkedIn Profile – When it comes to social networking for businesses, LinkedIn is the largest arena out there. If you are dealing with other businesses or professional customers, promote your e-mail list on your LinkedIn profile. Most professionals are inundated with useless e-mail, so don’t forget to mention how signing up can benefit your profile’s visitors.

11) Entrance Or Exit Pop-Ups – Consider incorporating pop-ups onto your websites for the sole purpose of gathering e-mails for your list. Using a pop-up box on your website gives users an additional “in-your-face” option to join your marketing list on top of the other strategically placed offers. *For affiliate offers, try to capture e-mail address with an exit pop-up is a great way to salvage a portion of non-converting traffic.*

12) Use Feedback From Users Who Unsubscribe – Most e-mail list management platforms give you the option to ask for feedback from users who unsubscribe. Utilize this resource for your advantage and create an exit poll asking the reasons for them wanting to be taken off of your list. This data can be crucial in making improvements to list retention in the future.

13) Leverage Your Phone System – Does your company use an automatic telephone system? Replace your “on hold” music with information and promotions about your company, including your e-mail list. Include a solid call-to-action for those users who are stuck sitting on hold to encourage them to sign up for your list while they’re waiting to talk with someone. *If you have a customer support department, encourage customer inquiries through your website. Require an e-mail address in order for a response, and offer an option checkbox to join your e-mail list.*

14) Optimize Your Mailings For Mobile Devices – More and more consumers are accessing the web through mobile devices than ever. As the digital world turns even further towards mobile phones and tablets, ensuring that your e-mails are set up to be read properly on these devices is crucial to effectively reaching your target consumers. Most major affiliate offers are now formatted for mobile devices, so make sure that your squeeze pages are also conducive to mobile phones and tablets.

15) Include Registration Option In Your Blog Comments Section – Do you have a blog for your website? If not, you should, and you should be giving visitors the change to register for your e-mail list anytime that they post a comment. A simple check-box next to your comment registration form can greatly increase the number of e-mail signups that you receive.

16) Only Ask For Crucial Information – If you’re trying to convince someone to sign up for your e-mail list, don’t ask for their entire life story. Yes, the more information you have about the users on your list, the more you can target your marketing directly to them. The problem is, however, that asking for too much information is likely to scare off the majority of customers who may be interested in joining your list, but do not want to invest the time that pages of forms will take, or may not feel comfortable telling you that much about themselves right off the bat. *Ask for only the user’s e-mail address up front. After they are on the list, gather information in bits by including short surveys into e-mails. Users who respond are not only providing more information about themselves, but are also the most likely to interact with future promotional e-mails.*

17) Create Instructional Videos For Your Target Audience – By utilizing video marketing, you can take advantage of one of the newest trends in the digital arena. Between incorporating videos into your website and through sharing sites such as YouTube, exerting your expertise while encouraging list signup will have significantly better results than just writing text will.

18) Archive Your Past Mailings – Create a section on your blog or website that archives your past mailings (or the best / most relevant ones). This gives visitors a preview of what they can expect from joining your e-mail list, and will show the valuable material that e-mail registrants have access to.

19) Utilize An SMS Campaign – Thanks to the high usage of smartphones and other intelligence mobile devices, SMS is expected to be a $150 billion industry this year. Setting up an SMS campaign can promote easy signup for your list through consumer’s mobile devices. *Reach customers via SMS and have them simply text back their e-mail address to be added to your list. The easier you can make signing up, the more likely you are to grab customers.*

20) Provide Valuable Content – Just because you have users on your list, does not mean the work is over. You have to provide valuable content to your subscribers, or else you will see your unsubscribe rate go through the roof. It is a lot easier to keep users on your list than it is to attract new ones, so providing valuable content is crucial to the long-term success of your e-mail marketing. For affiliates, this means not spamming your list with products un-related to the users’ interests, and not sending over an excessive number of offers.

21) Track Your Success – Most e-mail marketing and content management platforms offer extensive analytical software for you to judge just how effective your e-mail marketing is. You can keep track of your list’s users, those who unsubscribe, which e-mail links are seeing the most usage and how visitors are responding to your website after clicking on the links. By analyzing this data, you can make changes to improve your e-mail marketing success in the future. *Pay close attention to which in-mail links are having the most success and replicate the style and placement in future e-mails*

There is no doubt that e-mail marketing is a profitable way to turn the average consumer into a loyal follower of your brand. For internet marketers, having a solid e-mail list means having an established group of consumers that are highly targeted to the offers you’re promoting. Getting users to sign up for your e-mail list is likely easier than you may have thought, but it is only the first step. Providing creative, useful content is a must if you want to retain real, active users on your list. Savvy companies don’t stop their either – for the best long-term success, you need to be constantly analyzing the success of your e-mail list and make changes based on this data to focus on what you’re doing right, and eliminate any strategies that aren’t working as well as you had hoped.