Growing your email list is a constant challenge for most email marketers. The average email list has a churn rate of around 30% every 12 months so to achieve list growth requires a concerted effort. Drop the ball and your list can very quickly be in decline.
Here are some surefire ways to maximize your email list growth potential:
Popups, sign-up boxes & hello bars
Capturing your website visitors is the number one source for online list growth. Don’t simply create a sign-up form and expect your visitors to go searching for it – there are many tools and plugins available to assist with developing sophisticated pop-ups or sign up boxes that can display at different points of your website visitors journey. You can even customize the call-to-action based on how they arrived at your site and what keywords they were searching for to find you.
Optimise your website experience
Create compelling calls-to-action throughout your site to ensure you can capture that elusive email address at every opportunity. Also make sure that your sign up form is compelling, engaging and friendly.
Host a webinar
A great way to capture a truly engaged audience is to run an online webinar with registrations ensuring an email address and opt-in is mandatory.
Offer an incentive
Industry-specific whitepapers or reports can be a great tool to collect email subscribers. You may want to create a specific landing page or run some online advertising to promote the reports and generate traffic and then ensure that an email address is required in order to receive it. Email automation tools will help make this process a seamless experience for your new subscribers.
Shopping cart checkout
It seems obvious but this opportunity should not be overlooked. Every purchase made on your website should ensure that person is also opting into your email list. Australian spam regulations dictate that you must have express consent to send any marketing emails so simply including a tick box as part of your checkout process will ensure you don’t miss out on this prime opportunity.
Add a call-to-action on your corporate email signature
Maximise the potential reach of your day-to-day emails by including a call-to-action to join your email newsletter list as part of your corporate email signature.
Get your team involved
Be pro-active and get your colleagues involved in capturing email subscribers at every opportunity. Your sales team, support center, social media team, and online chat services can all play a role in growing your email list, so educate them on why email list growth is key to business growth. (And make sure they understand how to get correct consent! You must be able to provide proof of every email opt-in if requested.)
Take it offline
Don’t forget your offline communications can also be used to drive list growth. Trade events, in-store signage, print advertising, and sales counters can all be used to encourage email signups using iPad kiosks, QR Codes or even just good old-fashioned pen and paper.
