7 Email List Building Strategies To Follow in 2024

Email lists are one of the foundational grounds that support your sales funnel. As 60% of marketers use conversion rates to evaluate email campaigns’ effectiveness, having genuine email subscribers or leads is essential.

Many times, marketers wonder about their dropping open rates and click-throughs. It’s not because of your content or the quality of your emails but because of the quality of your email subscribers. This brings in an important lesson: never buy an email list. 

There are ample ways and strategies to build your loyal email list. Let’s explore three different scenarios to build your authentic and responsive email list.

If You are Starting From Scratch

If your business is comparatively new or you are thinking of exploring the field of email marketing, consider going in for the following.

1. Creating Relevant Pop-ups or Embedded Forms

You might think that this is very basic and what’s new in it? To tell you the truth, the art of creating email subscription forms has evolved a lot over the decades.

There is a lot of work involved in creating relevant forms for your web pages. It doesn’t suffice to just put in a form where users will fill in their email addresses. Your forms should reflect the value that you are going to provide them once they join your list.

Businesses do have a regular pop-up or embedded form on the homepage. However, they don’t work on incorporating different and relevant forms on all of their important web pages. For instance, if you have a dedicated page for your resources, including blogs, case studies, templates, white papers, etc, you should have a different pop-up or embedded form as compared to your pricing page.

Each website visitor has an underlying intent to consume your content. If they are visiting your resource section, they might be interested in knowing you. But if you have a pricing page visitor, they might have an intention to buy from you.

Therefore, it becomes essential to have relevant forms according to the intent of your visitors. Online retargeting is what you should focus on. You may set different pop-up forms depending on your strategy. For example, you can set scroll pop-ups, timed pop-up forms, exit-intent pop-ups, etc. Or simply put it in an embedded form where it grabs the maximum attention of your visitors.

The second touchpoint is to never return them empty-handed. Try to pull in the website visitors with a lead magnet or free ebook once they subscribe to your email list.

You may employ email marketing automation to welcome your subscribers or to provide them with the promised lead magnet or ebook. 

2. Incorporating Appropriate CTAs

Having the right CTA on your web pages is different from creating a pop-up form. The CTA should be highly targeted to the needs of your website visitors. For instance, if someone is reading your blog ‘How to craft best newsletters’, you can give a relevant CTA as ‘Click here to get the most responsive newsletter templates’.

The thing that you should work on is having ample resources to help your visitors. If you provide them with high-quality resources and the exact thing they are looking for, they will never hesitate to become a loyal subscriber.

An appropriate CTA could also be your weekly newsletter pitch, wherein you can send personalized and curated resources so that the visitor finds value in them. You can pitch your newsletter by letting the visitors know that you are the one who will be doing all the groundwork, thereby delivering the curated content according to the needs of the visitor.

Let’s talk about a different example. Suppose you have a SaaS product. And if a visitor visits your pricing page, they might be searching for specific software. Chances are, the visitor might be comparing the features or prices with other software in the market.

Here, you may include a curated ebook of comparison between the value you will be providing to them as compared to other SaaS products. With this, you are not only making the research of your visitor easier but also grabbing the attention of the visitor.

3. Building More Landing Pages

What’s stopping you from having more landing pages? According to research, “When you increase your landing pages from 1-5 to 6-10, companies get a whopping 55% increase in their leads when they increase their landing pages from 10 to 15.”

Having different landing pages helps you get more leads and even drive conversions. Furthermore, it’s a great practice to segment your email base once you have enough leads. And if you are thinking who will design your landing pages? The answer is you.

Thanks to the evolving email marketing tools, you can use one to create your landing pages easily. You don’t have to put in too much effort in designing but in selecting the audience you want to target. Moreover, having more landing pages is directly linked to having more opportunities for SEO.

Let’s take an example. Suppose a business has a simple landing page where it has listed its product’s features and provided a sign-up form. Now you have created 6 different landing pages according to the industries and listed out the benefits they’ll derive if they choose your product. Which one is the better approach?

If someone signs up from your industry-specific landing page, you would already have a slight idea about their interests.

If You Want to Expand

Chances are, you may have a decent number of email subscribers, but you want to grow more. At times, businesses have to put in some extra effort in directing the interests of the visitors. Here are some of the best ways to expand your email list.

4. Leveraging Social Share and Social Media

If you are thinking about the results that this simple option can yield, research indicates that “emails that include social sharing buttons have a click-through rate 115% higher than those that do not (5.6% vs. 2.6%)”.

Each email counts, right? So even if you are getting 5% of the email subscribers with the help of social share buttons, it’s a good thing. Moreover, you can use your social media channels to share your newsletter or resource subscription links to drive in more subscribers. And once they join your list, you may send them emails to receive opt-in promotional offers.

5. Conducting Virtual Events

The year 2020 is evidence of the fact that the world can run online. Therefore, conducting virtual events is the new strategy to expand and build your email lists. You don’t need to go all big and flashy about it. A simple webinar will suffice.

One thing that you should do is create a separate landing page for webinar or event registrations. You can ask for two to three necessary information about the subscribers that help you understand their interests.

You may address the webinar yourself or call expert speakers from relevant industries to drive more registrations. As webinar registrations usually happen through emails, it can prove to be a wonderful opportunity to interact, network, and expand.

Moreover, you can send bulk email invitations to your existing email lists to drive maximum engagement and increase the chances of expanding your email lists.

BONUS [Best Email List Practices]

Many businesses put in the least effort in maintaining their email lists. Re-arranging and cleaning your email lists are equally essential.

6. Keep only Loyal Subscribers

Many times, even after having a good number of email subscribers, you experience low open rates and click-throughs. This can happen because of three reasons:

• You have a purchased list
• You have low-quality leads
• Your content is not engaging enough, which made your leads go cold

Although many reasons can be attributed to your email’s performance, these are specifically related to your email lists. There are two ways through which you can maintain a loyal list of subscribers.

• Run an opt-out email campaign specifically for non-responsive email subscribers
• Send a re-engagement campaign or bulk emails (without spamming) with a feedback survey to discover the problems of your subscribers.

7. Clean up Your Email Base

A list of fake or non-responsive email addresses will not yield any results. Therefore, you need to clean up your email lists that are dropping or hindering your email’s performance. 

Moreover, if you keep sending emails to incorrect or fake email addresses, you’ll get more bounce rates and the chances of your email to land up in spam folders will increase. So, let go of the email addresses that are of no use to your business. What would you prefer: a long list of unresponsive email addresses or a decent list of high-quality email addresses?

A Wrap-up

Your entire business operations depend on your email lists. Therefore, it is one of the most essential parts of email marketing. Building high-quality email lists takes time. And your website visitors will definitely sign up if you provide them with the right and valuable resources.

Which strategy do you employ for your email list building? Let us know in the comments below.

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