Great, you’ve completed reading our Email 101 blog post and now you want to build an email list. That’s good news because building an email list is one of the cheapest, most cost-effective ways to start communicating with potential customers.
If you’ve been doing online marketing for any length of time chances are you’ve heard the saying “The money is in the list.” And that’s because the saying speaks the truth. It’s a huge source of potential buyers and sales. Another great thing about list building is that you always have it, even after it may have served its purpose for one website you might be able to use it again for another site.
Try these ideas to build your email list
Social Media – Make use of your fans and followers on all of your social media platforms. Social media can send you a ton of traffic which can then be converted into an email list. Not only have you spent time building and growing this big source of potential leads, but it doesn’t cost anything except time. How can you do this? (1) Set a website URL for your page under Settings -> Page Info on Facebook, and under Account -> Profile on Twitter. (2) Set up custom tabs in Facebook to add an email signup form. (3) Ask people to sign up for your email list through posts and tweets. (4) Try using online advertising on Facebook and Twitter.
Sign up Forms – Are you taking full advantage of turning viewers into subscribers through email sign up forms, or are you letting them read and leave without giving you their email addresses? Make sure you add email sign-up forms to build your list on these strategic and high conversion spots on your website, About Page, bottom of articles, TOP of sidebar, the footer of your site.
Guest Blogging – Look what this smart online marketer did to get 50,000 new subscribers through guest blogging. He needed a way to get additional subscribers by writing guest posts because he was finding that the blogs took a long time to write and the payoff wasn’t big. Each time he only got a handful of email subscribers with each blog post. In addition to writing relevant material with a byline at the bottom to link back to his “About Me” website, he began to offer free content next to his byline and created a dedicated landing page on his website with a dedicated link. Then, he personalized the content so (1) it mentions the audience (where they came from), (2) provides beneficial content specific to the audience (spreadsheets with built in formulas, a cheat sheet or a checklist related to his blog post.) Below the free giveaway content, he included a blurb about his email list, the benefits, and a sign up field. What he found was that he got lots more email subscribers and was able to easily track the success or failure for each blog post with a dedicated landing page.
Trade Services for Plugs – And this person? He bartered by writing a half dozen press releases to an online marketer with a big email list in exchange for plugging his site a set number of times to his list over the course of a month. What he discovered was the press releases only took him a couple of hours to write and each time his site was plugged he received a new batch of leads. His cost? A few hours doing something he enjoyed. What is your skill that you can barter? Everyone has something they can trade, whether it be content writing, SEO, video creation, web design, writing testimonials, writing a white paper or testing. Who do you ask? Leaders in the industry, colleagues, social media, and forums.
These are just a few ideas to get you started building your list and building your revenue.