There are many ways to reach consumers today, but none beats email.
Email has been around for decades. Its adoption won’t slow down anytime soon.
Lots of online platforms and various sizes of businesses communicate with their customers through email.
Most web users have email accounts they check every day.
Digital marketers say, “The money is in the list.” It’s because it is.
In this article, I’ll explain to you how to get email subscribers that’ll turn into lifelong customers.
Why Email Will Always Beat Other Marketing Channels
There’ll always be a new channel where you can reach potential clients. Don’t focus too much energy on those new channels.
Instead, commit most of your time to email marketing.
Digital marketers who are good at email marketing will always beat their competitors.
That’s because it’s easy to develop a deeper connection with someone on email than anywhere else.
Email is more personalized
Email feels more personalized to subscribers than any other marketing medium when you do it right.
You can address a subscriber by his/her name in an email message. No other marketing channel lets you do that. Not Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
You can send messages to subscribers based on their activities on your site. Some email marketing tools make that possible.
For example, if a group of subscribers visited a specific page on your site, you can send them an email message based on the content they viewed.
Personalization is impossible on social media. When you Tweet something out, almost all your followers and their followers can see it.
A Facebook post is meant for all fans to see. Little personalization.
Because of this, it’s easier to convert someone on email than social media.
Email users are not likely to miss your message
Some people check their emails several times a day.
Most email users make sure they see the subject line of each new message they receive. Even if they don’t click the new email, they ensure that they saw it and are aware of the time it came in.
A study conducted by Statista found that 44% of email users in North American check it 1-3 times a day.
Email is like a mailbox. It’s your prospects’ digital homes. It’s where they live online.
Email marketing is cheap
Email marketing is cheaper than social media, Google Ads, influencer marketing and the rest.
When potential clients give you their email addresses, you can always reach them whenever you want. There’s no need to pay for ads.
Yes, you do have to pay for the service that allows you to send messages. The amount you pay is low when you compare it to other marketing mediums.
Someone who has given you their email address is yours for life. Unless they unsubscribe, or you remove them from your email list because they haven’t opened your message for a long time, that person will continue to be in your list.
These are the reasons email will always beat other marketing channels.
It’s easier to compete with anyone and anywhere when you have a solid list of subscribers.
Your subscribers will be happy to follow you on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. They can share your updates on these platforms.
So, it’s easy to compete on these platforms when you have a list of subscribers that engage with your messages.
What You Need to Make Email Marketing Work for Your Business
To be a successful email marketer, you need a great email list.
A great email list means that your subscribers care about your product and brand. They were delighted to give you their email addresses.
Successful email campaigns have one thing in common: They had subscribers who looked forward to their messages.
It’s difficult to convert subscribers who can’t remember your brand. And it’s also hard to convert subscribers who don’t look forward to your messages.
Harry’s is a company that sells shaving products. They used a landing page to gather 100,000 emails in the week leading up to their launch.
They worked hard to drive lots of traffic to the landing page. They asked visitors to sign up on the landing page.
After a visitor had signed up, then Harry’s offer the new subscriber a reward if he/she shares the product with some friends.
Those who referred their friends got free products. Harry’s got new subscribers.
This tactic made Harry’s launch a successful one. Harry’s subscribers looked forward to their launch day.
Your email list needs real people who care about your brand and look forward to your messages.
Quantity is also important in email marketing. You will achieve more with 10,000 subscribers than you can with 1,000 subscribers.
The bigger the list, the better the outcome.
Don’t Buy an Email List
Buying an email list is a blackhat marketing tactic. It’s bad. It’ll hurt your reputation for a long time.
In the marketing world, when they say something is blackhat, it means it’s unacceptable or illegal.
There are a few services online that offer to sell you email lists. Some say they can sell 400 million valid emails for a mere $499.50.
Most of those emails are old and fake.
Old means their owners had abandoned them.
Fake means that they are all made up.
When you buy these services and send messages, zero or few people will see them.
These email lists have been sold over and over again.
The Right Way to Build Your Email List
The best way to build a solid list is to collect emails organically. That means people give you their emails because they are interested in your offer.
I don’t give my email to every site that asks for it. Sometimes, I leave a site because it asks for my email.
Build your list before launch
In the above Harry’s example, you’ll notice that they built their email list before their product went live. It’s an email marketing tactic that helps you to start seeing some sales on the first day of business.
However, if your business is B2B or a B2C that’s been running before now, then you can ignore the advice. It doesn’t matter because you’ve started already and maybe have some customers.
But if you’re a startup that’s looking to launch, then this makes sense. You start making some cash on day one. Or, at least, get a good number of people using your service.
Today, HubSpot is a successful B2B marketing software company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
If you’re in the digital marketing space, you’ve come across one of HubSpot’s blog posts or pages in Google’s search results.
The HubSpot site rank for most top digital marketing keywords. Their services are successful. Lots of small business owners use them.
What you may not know is that HubSpot built a big email list before they created a single product.
That tells you that the best time to start building an email list for your business is now. Right now.
Start with Your Current Network
You know some very good people right now who could buy your product or service.
Or, they know someone who could buy your product. They could ask these potential clients to join your email list.
That was how Bryan Harris of VideoFruit started.
Today, he has thousands of email subscribers. But, Bryan started small with family and acquaintances.
He started with his network on Facebook.
With a tiny list of 49 people, Bryan generated $551 from 19 customers.
Don’t wait to collect emails. The best time to start is now.
Build an Amazing Blog
You won’t get paid because you have an amazing blog. But the truth is that an amazing blog will attract lots of potential customers to your brand.
When someone knows and likes your blog and the content you have on it, they’ll trust you. They’ll like you.
Your blog has to be unbeatable in your space, niche or market.
The content you publish on your blog should be so awesome that competitors admire it and want to create something similar.
Of course, some blog posts are expensive to create. For example, blog posts in the form of case studies aren’t easy to put together.
But that’s not an excuse. You can create something awesome without much budget.
You can make something you’re proud of, and people like and share on social media.
When you visit blogs like HelpScout.net in marketing, Smashing Magazine in web development and I Will Teach You To Be Rich in personal finance, these blogs are doing nothing new or extraordinary.
They do it better than their competitors.
Below is a screenshot of an article on Smashing Magazine.
Smashing Magazine has a terrific website design.
You can build a blog with a design that makes people feel comfortable and want to read. When you back that up with amazing content, you’re surely going to win readers’ hearts.
Blogging brings people to your site. You need that attention to build your email list. For example, Circle Surrogacy, a top surrogacy agency in the world maintains one of the best blogs on surrogacy. Prospects return to their blog to learn more.
Add multiple opt-in forms across different parts of your site to collect visitors’ email addresses.
As people browse through the pages of your blog, the opt-in forms are there to collect their emails.
GrowthFunnel lets you collect emails on your blog. You can collect emails using our FullScreen Welcome Gate, Popup Optin Box, Slider Optin Box, Inline Optin Box, and Floating Bar features.
These features let you collect emails with ease.
Build an amazing blog and let GrowthFunnel takes charge of building your email list.
Create a Lead Magnet
People won’t give you their emails because you asked for it. You need to do more.
Visitors to your blog shouldn’t feel you need their emails. They should feel they need to give you their emails.
And how do you achieve that?
Lead Magnet.
A good lead magnet collects leads. When visitors to your blog see your lead magnet, they should drop their emails.
A great lead magnet is the one that’s attractive to visitors of your site.
How do you create a great lead magnet?
Think about an offer you can create that visitors won’t resist.
For example, Bidsketch’s opt-in offer is too attractive to resist. They put together a marketing template proposal kit from analyzing 25,000 proposals that generated $270 million.
If you send lots of proposals, this is the kit you want to download.
Every blog post on Bidsketch has this offer on its footer. You can see it after reading a blog post on the Bidsketch’s blog.
You can offer a free ebook, tool or template. You can also offer a free trial of your product or service to visitors.
For example, Karen Brody is a highly sought-after relationship coach to men. She uses a high-quality free ebook to collect prospects’ emails on her blog.
Change your opt-in offer once you see that visitors aren’t responding to it like before. For example, if you’re getting fewer subscribers than before you launch the offer, it means it’s time to replace the offer with another interesting one.
Cute Smiles 4 Kids and Orthodontics is a San Antonio dentist and orthodontist. I like how they collect leads on their site. At the very top right side of the site, you see a link that asks to schedule an appointment.
Make it easy to spread the word about your brand on social media
It’s difficult to succeed online if people aren’t talking about you on social media.
Prospects should mention you or your post in conversation with their friends on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.
You need that traditional, free reach to gain higher visibility on the web. You can’t do it alone. You need your loyal fans.
If social media users are talking about you, it’s easier to collect emails. Visitors have read or heard their friends praising you.
They trust you even before they land on your site.
It’s hard for most first-time visitors to give you their emails even if they think your offer is attractive. They don’t know you before.
But when they’ve read from their friends how nice subscribing to your list is? That’s an easy decision. They know they can trust you.
They like you because of the good things they’ve heard about you.
Social media is important to becoming a successful email marketer.
It spreads your name all over the web.
A mention by a follower or friend on social media is like an approval. Their followers will pay attention to that.
The more mentions you get on social media, the more your name and company spread around the web. And the more these things happen, the more subscribers you’ll get.
To get people talking about you on social media, make it easy for them to do so.
How do you do that?
Display the buttons of the top social media platforms your subscribers hang out online. Two to three social media buttons are cool.
I prefer Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
The more social buttons you have, the more difficult it becomes for people to share your posts on social media.
If you’re a marketing agency, LinkedIn and Twitter should be your social buttons.
Conclusion
It’s time to grow your email subscribers. This article tells you simple steps to follow to achieve that.
You now know how to get email subscribers that convert into customers. It’s time to start.
And don’t forget that GrowthFunnel is a powerful tool that can help you grow your email list faster.
It’s free to sign up for GrowthFunnel.
