5 Simple Steps to Grow your Email List from Scratch

The ability to grow your email list is vital for any modern business. Email marketing by far offers the best return on investment (ROI) you can get. Research show ROI of 40 times compared to Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising at 17 times and traditional print advertising right down at 7 times.

The first step to reaping that huge ROI is to grow your email list. You will note I said grow your email list not buy it. Buying an email list is a quick fix to obtain lots of email addresses quickly but will never be as good as your own list. I explain why is this post, “Email Marketing Lists – should you build it or buy it?“.

In Part 1 (what you are reading now) I will explain the 5 simple steps I use. In Part 2 I will show you how to take them to the next level.

Before I show you how to build your list from scratch I am assuming you can answer yes to the following questions.

• Have you already identified your target market?
• Do have a functioning website?

If the answer is no you need to deal with these two steps first.

So here we go

Step 1 Start with what you know.

Let us start to grow your email list with the contacts you have. You will already have the email addresses of your contact stored in the program you use to send emails such as Gmail, outlook, Yahoo, icloud etc. These are people who you already know and trust you. However just because you have their email address that does not mean you can start to send them marketing emails. What you need to do is to get them to opt-in to your email list. You can do this by sending each of them a personal email and asking them if they would like to receive marketing emails from you. Obviously you would make your email more interesting than that but basically, that is what you are doing.

Step 2 Add a sign-up form to your website.

Your next step needed to grow your email list is to capture an email address from visitors to your website. The easiest way to do this is to add an email capture form to your website. The visitors to your website are already interested in what you have to say or offer. Therefore it follows they are already part of your target market. It is plain to see then that they are just the type of people you want t to sign up ton your email list. Make it as easy as possible for them to sign up. Keep your form short and only collect the very minimum of information, their email address. Other details you can get from them later when you have built their confidence.

Step 3 Harness Social media.

Use your social media pages, both private and business, to advertise your sign up form. The easiest way to do this is to write a short interesting post, tweet or whatever it is and then add a link to your web page that has your always visible sign-up form on it. Again you will be collecting emails from people who either already trust you or have an interest in your product or service, your target market.

Step 4 Offer them something FREE.

Everybody like the idea of something for nothing and web users are no different. Offer them something of value for free in exchange for their email address. This can be a physical thing but more often than not it is an electronic download. For example, if you are a mechanic you could write a 10 point checklist of things to look at when buying a secondhand car. Add another sign-up form to your website which a good headline and offer this as a free download as in the example below.

Step 5 Run a competition.

A bit like the something for nothing idea above running a competition on your website is a great way to grow your email list. Think about what your target market might like to receive and how you will get it to the winner. I always find vouchers with a cash value work well but you can go for whatever you decide. Keep the competition to a set closing date i.e. the end of the month. Then post to your social media accounts about the winner. The joy of running a monthly competition is that you can run it month after month and use the last month’s competition to drive even more sign up the following month. Again I would run the competition via a separate signup form. Do not be tempted to run it on your social media page. You might get a lot of emails but experience shows me more often than not they are not from your target market so are of little value.

So there you have it Part 1 of my 5 simple steps to help you start to grow your email list.

What’s in Part 2 of 5 simple steps to grow your email list from scratch?

In part 2 I will show you some neat tips and tricks to help you grow your list even faster.

One final note as email marketing is of interest to you why not sign up to our list and get information like this delivered straight to your inbox?

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