A good email list can generate a huge return on investment for your business. Research shows that an email address can be worth up to $70, but collecting those email addresses can be a challenge. There are plenty of email list building tools out there to help marketers win new subscribers, and we’ve shared some tips on how to market a newsletter. But in this article, we’re going to focus on three of the most innovative ways to acquire new emails.
The Most Critical Factor of Email List Building Success
Before we get into the recommended ways to grow your email list, we want to drive home an essential requirement for any company looking to grow its email list.
That requirement is value.
If you want your list to grow, you need to focus on acquiring new subscribers and retaining existing subscribers. You might develop a great growth engine for your email list, but if your emails don’t provide value, you’ll never have enough new subscribers to offset the people who unsubscribe.
If you provide true value to your subscribers, they’ll spread the word and help your email list grow.
Three Effective Email List Building Methods
Providing value is critical, but if you don’t have a list, you don’t have anyone you can provide value. That’s where the following affordable list building methods come in. You can use these ideas separately or in combination to get more email subscribers.
Website Visitor Identification
Website visitor identification is a game changer for email marketers. If you use visitor identification software, it will collect visitor information such as their name, email address, and mailing address, when they visit your website.
That means that even if a visitor doesn’t fill out a form on your website, you can send them an email to see if they want to receive your newsletter. It’s important to incentivize them to want to stay subscribed, so be sure to make clear the value they’ll receive from your emails.
Form Enrichment
One of the first decisions you have to make when you’re building a form is how many fields you’ll include. The more information you have, the better you can segment your audience and personalize your email campaigns.
But more questions mean more friction for your potential subscribers. Each field makes it less likely that a visitor will complete the form.
Those fields aren’t necessary with a form enrichment tool. These tools give you more information about your subscribers without decreasing your conversion rate by including too many fields.
Form enrichment uses website visitor identification to match your visitors to other data, which is then sent to your CRM along with the form submission. So you can restrict your form to the most crucial fields, and a form enrichment tool will collect other information, such as the subscriber’s name, where they work, and other details.
Milestone Referral Program
As your email list begins to grow, a milestone referral program can increase that growth exponentially. Popularized by newsletters like The Hustle, a milestone referral program gives subscribers points when they refer new subscribers. Incentives are offered in tiers, and as a subscriber reaches each milestone they are awarded swag and other prizes.
There are software options available to make it easy to set up a milestone referral program. That way you don’t have to worry much about logistics. All you have to take care of is the incentives.
Think about the kinds of things that your subscribers would like. What incentives align with their interests and your brand? For example, if you’re an eCommerce company selling skincare products, you might send them a free product.
Build Your List
These new tactics will help you grow your email list in any industry. Setting up a milestone referral program might be more of a long-term play, but website visitor identification and form enrichment are simple steps you can take today to gain more subscribers. And don’t let the setup discourage you from implementing a referral program! It takes some time, but it’s highly effective.
What’s Next?
Once you’ve got some people to email, check out the following LeadPost guides: