Email Marketing Tips – Five Ideas for Growing Your Email Database

Before I start talking about growing your email marketing database I’ll warn you that there will be some marketing jargon. If I’ve used terms that you don’t understand, please forgive me. Please leave me a comment if there is something you want clarified.

I’m really passionate about working with businesses to grow and utilise their email database. It’s where all your low hanging fruit is and it’s a great opportunity for us to to get you some quick wins.

Social media is fantastic for creating an engaged community around your business.

Your website is the perfect place to establish your authority and build trust.

But, what would happen if one or both of these things disappeared?

We rely on social media and search traffic to get people to our website but we are not in control of who or how many people we can reach organically. There are many opportunities to get paid traffic but, for most businesses, it’s impractical to rely entirely on advertising for exposure.

Again, the success of your website is dependent on your ability to get people to visit it. When people do visit it’s important that you capture them with tracking or by capturing their email address.

Your list of contacts is the only element of your online marketing system that you truly own. The trouble is that it’s often the last thing that businesses start collecting. Ask the majority of online-only businesses and they’ll likely say they wished that they had started their email list building effort sooner.

The first thing you’ll need is a compelling reason to encourage people to join your email database.

What will you give them in return for their email address, or in some cases their phone number?

Your offer needs to be of high perceived value and shouldn’t ask for a significant commitment from the person who is subscribing. There are a wide variety of tactics that you can implement to encourage people to sign up. What’s critical is that whatever you are offering is well connected to your products and services.

This brings us to point number two

Ensure that whatever you are offering in exchange for an email address is well connected to what you sell.

Sure, you’ll grow a list quickly by offering an iPad in return for an email address but unless you have a mass market, like a supermarket chain, then a high proportion of the people in your database won’t be your ideal customer or client.

Create an opt in offer that is well connected to what you sell. This enables you to craft an interesting and compelling email marketing strategy that will turn prospects into leads and then clients.

Don’t be shy about letting people know that they can join your email database.

When we build a website for a client we’ll add email opt-ins in up to seven different places. Seven does sound like a lot but they’re not obtrusive and they make a big difference in how many casual browsers convert into email subscribers.

Website pop ups are often a contentious subject but they work and it’s not difficult to integrate so they don’t get in the way for your reader. Exit intent, bottom of page scroll and pop up on click are the only type we use. UPDATE 9/16 – It’s important that your pop ups are not obtrusive. A recent Google algorithm change penalises sites with pop ups that get in the way of good user experience.

Create content upgrades for your blog posts.

A content upgrade is an opportunity for you to provide more information in exchange for an email address. It might be a short eBook you already have, a case study or collection of resources. Rather than directing the reader to five other blog posts you’ve written on the same topic why not gather them together and create a downloadable pdf. This makes life easy for the reader.

To add content upgrades to your blog posts you’ll need a robust list building plugin for your website. Popup Ally is the plugin we use and recommend. It will do everything that you need.

The last step is to set up an auto responder email welcome sequence in your EDM. ActiveCampaign is the tool we use and recommend. It has really powerful features at a very affordable price point.

Implement a specific email database building strategy.

Getting people to join your email database the top end of every sales funnel. A simple, specific list building strategy involves sending traffic to a landing page using online advertising. On the landing page there is only one thing for people to do, supply their email address in exchange for whatever you are offering.

Depending on the rate of growth you want to achieve you don’t need to allocate an aggressive budget. What’s important is that you have one ticking away in the background constantly, supported by regular value adding emails to provide a little more to the people who join.

Once you have your list building funnel set up tweak and test your audience targeting to find pockets of people who connect with your offer.

Do you have an effective email database building and email marketing system in place?

If not then, it’s something you seriously need to consider. A quality email database is an essential component for growing and scaling most businesses.

We offer services that can help you with list building for your business. From strategy through to management and implementation.

Click here to book a FREE strategy session and learn how growing your email database will benefit your business.