How to Build an Email List from Scratch

Building an email list from scratch can be daunting, but with the right tools and strategies, it’s a fairly simple process. A strong email list helps you connect with your target audience and achieve marketing results cost-effectively. According to data, email marketing offers one of the highest ROIs in the digital marketing arena, if not the highest. In this step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to build an email list from scratch. By the end, you’ll have the confidence to start your own email list, even if you’re a complete beginner.Let’s get started.

How to Build an Email List from Scratch

Define Your Target Audience

Understanding your target audience is one of the prerequisites for building a powerful email list. Think about who they are, what they need, and how they behave online. Identifying the demographics of your audience is important, but knowing their pain points or desires can help you develop an effective email marketing plan. To do that, you can use surveys, get feedback, and monitor social media. Knowing your audience will help you develop a content strategy that gets them to sign up for your email list.

Pick a Service Provider

There’s no shortage of email service providers out there, which is why it can be tricky to pick the one with the right features. Some popular options are:

Constant Contact
AWeber
ConvertKit

Once you have a few good options, compare their features to select the right one for your email marketing needs. Some important factors to consider when picking an email marketing tool are:

Automation capabilities
Email delivery rates
Integration with other services
Ease of use

Offer Incentives for Sign-Ups

Incentives, also known as lead magnets, are a perfect way to encourage people to become a part of your email list. These are freebies that you give out in exchange for someone’s email address. Some popular lead magnets:

E-books
Discounts
Short courses
Checklists
Cheat sheets

Understanding what appeals to your target audience can help you create an irresistible lead magnet. However, it’s a good idea to test different incentives to make sure you’re using the right one.

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Email List-Building Strategies

Use Clear, Concise Forms

The design and length of your sign-up forms have a significant impact on their effectiveness. Your sign-up form should be clear, simple, and super easy to complete. Avoid making people fill out a lengthy form; it’ll repel most of them, hurting your conversion rates. Only ask for the most important information.

Collect the Right Information

Make sure the information you’re collecting will help you connect with the audience later. For instance, the “First name” form field lets you address your email subscribers by their first names in your campaigns. This helps with email personalization. Moreover, unless you want to call or message them, avoid asking for their phone numbers. In most cases, the first name and email address form fields are more than enough.

Sign-Up Form Placement

The placement of your sign-up form decides the number of email subscribers. If you have a blog, consider placing your form at the end of every blog post. Also, make sure the form is super easy to spot. There are essentially three types of forms you can use:

Pop-ups
Slide-ins
Embeds

Pop-ups can be intrusive if not used carefully. Embed forms work best as they get in with the rest of the content smoothly. A great place to add an embed form is the top-right of a web page. In addition to blog posts, you can create special landing pages to collect leads.

Promote Your Email List

Utilize Social Media

Social media is a great place to grow an email list. It takes some time to build a sizeable audience from scratch if you use organic marketing strategies. However, it can help you build your list in a more sustainable manner. You can speed up the process by investing in social media ad tools like Facebook lead ads.

Leverage Influencer Marketing

Influencers are people with a sizeable online audience in a particular niche or industry. To grow your list with influencer marketing, all you have to do is reach out to relevant influencers and ask them to promote your sign-up form. That way, you can leverage an existing audience and won’t have to build one from scratch. Just make sure the influencer you work with has an engaged audience by analyzing their posts’ engagement rate. Offer exclusive incentives such as a discount or a valuable piece of content to maximize your conversions. This strategy, however, does involve upfront investment, which can vary depending on several factors, including the size of the influencer’s following.

Analyze and Optimize Your List

Not all of your email subscribers are valuable. Some of them just won’t convert into customers, so you may want to identify and get rid of them. Clean your list every once in a while, to make sure you’re investing your resources in the right people. For instance, if someone hasn’t been opening your emails for a while, chances are they’ll keep on ignoring you in the future as well. Remove these dormant subscribers and focus on the ones who are actually interested in what you have to say or offer. Plus, at the end of each email, add an unsubscribe button. That way, you’ll be giving your audience a chance to opt-out if they want. Although list cleaning may not seem a good idea at first, it can help you connect with the right audience and boost your conversion rates.

FAQs

How do I create a free email list?

To create an email list from scratch, sign up for an email marketing tool like Systeme.io. Create an email sign-up form and share it on your website and social media to build your list.

How to get 10,000 email subscribers?

To get 10,000 email subscribers, create a valuable lead magnet. Drive traffic to your lead magnet from multiple sources and build your email list.

How do I mass email a list?

To mass email la list, you can use a tool like Gmass. All you have to do is sign up for the tool, upload your email list, and create and send your email.