Email Marketing: 7 Ways To Build Your Email List 

 Last Updated May 14, 2023

By Zaid Ammari

According to an April 2022 statistic, 20.4% of businesses closed after their first year in operation. One of the top reasons that lead to it? Subpar marketing. 

Many companies are guilty of limiting their marketing efforts to advertisement only. But did you know email marketing is equally important, with a return on investment (ROI) of $36 for every dollar spent?

Email marketing campaigns are a low-cost and reliable marketing technique that can reach an already engaged audience to deliver targeted messages. It allows you to stay in touch with your customers and create an instant impact to increase both retention rates and revenue.

To get these benefits, however, you need a top-notch email list. Incorporate these techniques below to build your email list and increase your rate of subscribers to make the most of your marketing. 

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a type of direct marketing that not only helps you to build trust and relationship with your customers but is also a way to nurture leads and convert them—all by sending out a message through email.

Regardless of your business type, an email list is a successful digital marketing strategy.

7 Ways To Increase Email Sign Up

Offer Incentives

Incentives are a great way to persuade people to subscribe to your email list. Clear, compelling, and inviting incentives sweeten the deal to get people to subscribe and tempt people to take action "now" rather than later. 

Here are a few lead magnets you can use to build your email list quickly and encourage brand-building behaviors: 

  • Welcome or regular discounts on products and/or services. 

  • Free trials to reel them in with a good customer experience. 

  • Access to a range of content only available to paid subscribers.

  • Early access to newly released products.

  • Reward points.

  • Exclusive sales.

Add Content Upgrades to Your Offerings

Content upgrades are a great way to offer exclusive content in exchange for signing up for your email list. 

There are multiple options you can explore in this category — ebooks, downloadable whitepapers, printables, and guides seem to have the most impact. 

Remember, content upgrades will only entice the prospects when they're relevant to your brand and offer an important and useful resource. 

Stick to offering catchy and irresistible content in your genre, and make sure to keep some of your content gated to grow your email list. Pair it with other strategies like opt-in forms and freebies to give people more opportunities to sign up.

Create Enticing Content

"Content is king." — Bill Gates.

Create helpful and actionable content that offers value to your readers, and you won't have to do much to encourage them to opt-in for your email newsletters. 

Create Enticing Content

If you consistently push attractive, engaging content, it will get your target audience talking. It will not only delight your prospects and customers, but there's also a good chance that they'll recommend your helpful content to people they know. It will give you an extra boost in subscribers and will also help lower the churn rate, which is a plus. 

Offer Varying Forms of Email Subscriptions

Allowing your subscribers to sign up for different types of email communications shows them that they have control over what type of email they receive. 

For example, they can choose between content alerts, product announcements, tips and tricks newsletters, discounts, sales, and brand news. So, to increase the chances of your campaign's success, you will need to create and push content your subscribers will love. All can be done through built-in email marketing tools.

This strategy will give you a click rate of 100.95% higher than non-segmented campaigns and a bounce rate of 4.65% lower than non-segmented campaigns. As you can see, segmenting your email list through buyer persona is an excellent strategy. 

Implement A Referral Program

In a referral program, your customers become your unpaid marketers. 

Referral programs allow you to bank on the power of social proof to grab interest quickly and increase brand awareness. With 90% of people more likely to trust recommendations, a referral program can do wonders for your marketing efforts.

The basis of this strategy is affiliate marketing. 

To execute this efficiently, you can ask your customers to send emails to their friends, family members, even acquaintances, and colleagues through your system to grow your potential customer base. Follow it up with incentives, discounts, and freebies to convert them into subscribers. 

Run Social Media Contests

Running social media contests can increase customer engagement and brand awareness by getting people excited about your brand. Term the conditions right, and you get amazing user-generated content that can be used to build social proof. 

Run Social Media Contests

Stick to the normal giveaway rules of like, follow, and share your giveaway post with the tag, but with a tiny add-on — ask participants to drop their email for an extra entry. 

You may also want to have various social media accounts that have the best match of users you want to target a shout-out of the contest to help boost participants.

It will give an edge to your current subscribers and persuade others to leave their email information for a better chance at winning. 

It's a great way to incentivize prospects to sign up for your email. It has the potential to boost your email list in a short time, but only if the prize is something your target audience wants. 

Ask your readers what they'd like and offer them that. You can also partner with other brands to offer a substantial prize.

Write a Guest Blog Post

Blogging allows you to rank higher on Google SERP, but it's not the only thing that can give you an edge over your competitors. 

Guest blogging, it would appear, is the real icing on the cake. 

Write a guest blog post for a popular blog within your target market and industry. It will not only boost your domain authority but also attract traffic to your website, particularly from an audience that will be a good match for your email list to generate exposure. 

Make sure to include a call to action (CTA) so readers can easily seek you out and subscribe to your website.

Conclusion

Email marketing is an incredible tool for businesses, particularly ones that have their success embedded in subscriptions. It attracts users to the site and alerts them to new content to keep them engaged. 

Incorporating the seven techniques listed here will help you do that and so much more. Just make sure to keep things relevant and interesting, and you'll have a growing email list in no time!

Zaid Ammari Headshot

About the author 

Zaid is a leading expert on data driven digital marketing; focusing on analytics and actionable insights from data. Founder of PPC Masterminds - he helps businesses build & run profitable data driven digital campaigns.

Get High Quality PPC Campaigns
That Actually Work!