Every few years the chorus of “email is dead” pops up as new social media platforms emerge, and other marketing tactics take center stage. And yet here we are, year after year, still utilizing email marketing as one of the best marketing tactics to connect with customers. The value of a solid and well-engaged email list shouldn’t be overlooked as part of your integrated marketing strategy.
Successful email marketing campaigns often come down to:
- An awesome subject line that entices your subscribers to open your email rather than trash it
- Understanding your audience and what kind of content they’re looking for from you
- A balance between text and imagery, making it easy to skim
- Clear calls to action to get subscribers to click through and do something
- An attention to detail, making sure you don’t have typos or broken links
- Continually growing your email list to be able to reach more people
All of these things are super important to get a great return on your emails, but today we’re going to talk about growing your email list. Getting new business from your email campaigns is only as good as the list of people you’re sending to.
Here are five tips to grow your email list with quality subscribers.
- Ask people in your network to join. Seriously, it can be that simple. If your network doesn’t know you have an email list, then they won’t join. Post a link on your social media platforms, put up a sign in your office / storefront with a QR code, and make sure you have a newsletter signup on your website. Make it easy for people to learn about your newsletter and sign up.
- Run paid ads on social media. We’ve had great success running ads specifically to help our clients grow their email lists. Pair the paid ads with a relevant giveaway, and you’ll get people to sign up who are really interested in your products or services.
- Use gated content. Create a lead generation campaign with a great piece of content and ask for people to give you their email address in order to receive the content. This can be an e-book, whitepaper, infographic; really anything that someone would be willing to trade their email address for.
- Host an event or webinar. A great way to grow your email list (and your potential customers) is to share information with them through an event or webinar. Get them in the door (virtually or in person) and collect their email addresses along the way to be able to follow up with them.
- Ask current subscribers to forward or share your emails. If you’re sharing great content, your subscribers will be more likely to share it with others. Don’t be afraid to ask them directly to forward your email to their friends!
If you’re wondering the monetary value of your email list, you can look at how much direct revenue you receive from email (make sure your links are trackable and you have Google Analytics set up on your website to track behavior) divided by your active subscribers. For companies who don’t have a direct purchase option on your website, like retailers do, this may be a little harder for you to track. Same goes for companies who have a longer sales cycle.
While tracking the success of your marketing tactics is incredibly important, keep in mind that email marketing should just be one component of your integrated marketing strategy. You’ll have customers who receive your email, see your Google ads, get a postcard from you in the mail and end up picking up the phone to call you. So which tactic brought that customer in? It’s a combination of all of them, which is why integrated marketing is so effective.
If you don’t feel like you’re seeing results from your email campaigns, let us know. We’d love to help!
