Email is the post-box of the 21st century. Entrepreneurs and businessmen 30-40 years ago focused a lot on generating contacts through phone numbers and/or mailing addresses. This way, companies would send their pamphlets, newsletters, and new offers directly to their prospective customers. With the advent of the 21st century and mankind’s entry into the internet era, this changed. While telephone numbers have now been replaced by cellphone numbers, mail has shifted almost completely to the electronic format. People send emails regularly just like letters used to be mailed previously.
This has affected the way businessmen do their marketing bidding. However, sending cold emails is not the way it works, but getting solid contacts via emails of people would see your e-mail positively. You don’t have to send emails to them personally. They simply need to subscribe to your mailings or sign-up for email alerts, updates, newsletters, etc. Getting people to do that can be done in a lot of ways. Let us take a look at the top 20 ways to grow your mailing list.
- Pin Your Email
What is pinning? Simple. To ‘pin’ your email is to get your landing page added to the Pinterest database. Just create a Pinterest post and put your landing page as the ‘pin’. This way, whenever anyone clicks, the pin, they will be redirected to your landing page, where they can subscribe.
- Segment Your Existing List
Make different groups of your current subscribers according to age, gender, city, etc. and send specific types of emails to different groups. Your emails should be according to such people’s likings. When different people receive emails they would like to get, your subscribers’ list is more likely to grow.
- KISS (Keep It Simple, Smarty)
It has been proven that longer forms are a deterrent. People would rather spend less time filling a form while signing up. If you might have noticed, signing up has become shorter and shorter over the years. Nowadays, you can sign-up to many websites with your Google or even Facebook account, where you don’t even fill a form. You just give your consent to the website to take your name and email, and all set.
The simpler the sign-up process, the better it is for you.
- Get a Standard Format for All Outgoing Marketing Email
If your email has a set format, it becomes recognizable as time passes. As you keep your email segmented and in format. People tend to get familiar with you and subsequently more likely to contact you for service or purchase from you.
- Offer a Small Discount
Sometimes, a little incentive works wonders. And who doesn’t like a discount? You could offer a small discount on purchase(s) if a customer subscribes to your mailing list. You’d be surprised by the number of people who sign up.
- Create a ‘Gated Offer’
A gated offer involves having your site visitor do something for a reward once they come to your website/landing page. E.g. a photographer can send a link for a stunning photo collection in his email to the people. The link contains some of the best shots ever taken by the photographer. Once the recipient of the mail opens our photographer’s site, the website asks them to “Sign-up to view the entire collection.” Chances are, the recipient will subscribe.
- Be Active on Websites and Forums
You can be active on websites of your niche. Let us take the example of our photographer again. He can go to some top-notch photography websites, put in his comment, and add his link for people to follow.
- Social Proof Theory
People have this tendency to think that, what is good for others would be good for me too. Part of the reason why we ask for recommendations so much. Endorsements by influential people, testimonials, have a positive effect. Use this to get more people in your mail.
- Mobile-friendly is the Future
More people surf the internet through their phones today than ever before. Every major company in the world is making its own mobile version of the website or an app straightaway. Make your sign-up form mobile-friendly so that people visiting you with a smartphone can sign-up too.
- ‘Gated Offer’ V2.0
If simpler gated offers don’t work out well, you can take it up a notch by offering part of your content for free, and then ask them to sign-up if they want to continue. People would have their curiosity up by this point and they’ll sign-up anyway.
- Interactive Forms
If your form must be long at all, make it interactive. Don’t let them see the entire form in one go. You could break it down into different steps and also give them the option to omit the non-compulsory info. This way, the form doesn’t feel like a dragged out thing.
- Track Partially Filled Forms
Partially filled forms are a common occurrence. People oftentimes leave forms half-filled and then forget to sign-up altogether. You can install a tracker plugin and then send them a reminder email to complete their sign-up.
- Call-to-Action Button
Facebook allows companies to help used sign-up to their mailing lists via call-to-action buttons. Just make a button on your page and then take them to your sign-up page.
- RunContests/Giveaways
Contests and giveaways are a real thing. Keeping a contest with a free gift is a sure-shot way to spark up a huge amount of interest among people. Ask them to sign-up for your newsletters.
- Ask Them Directly
Nothing works as well as simply asking people nicely to sign-up. You can do so while directly speaking to them, make a call-to-action post, or any other way that suits you.
Summary
Having an email list is very important for marketing today. Almost every major email service is free. So, any conversions you get from email is virtually a bonus. People like to receive offers and newsletters tailor-made for them every now and then. Electronic pamphlets are a great way to make that happen. As long as your emails aren’t intrusive and are polite, they won’t get flagged as spam and you’ll soon start seeing some good conversions for a seemingly negligible price.
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Also Read: How to craft a perfect email?
