How To Build Your Email Subscriber List

 “If you’re not building an email list, you’re an idiot.”  - Derek Halpern, Founder of Social Triggers

The benefits of Email Marketing almost sound too good to be true. According to the Direct Marketing Association it produces a 4,300 percent return on your marketing investment which means it outperforms SEO, pay-per-click advertising and content marketing. Given it’s free to implement, it’s hard to ignore.

So why are business owners generally more comfortable promoting their business on social media rather than email? The answer is simple, they lack a current, up to date list of subscribers.

It’s easy for us accountants, we’ve been saving clients into our databases for decades but restaurants, retail outlets, tradies and many other businesses don’t have a list of their customer’s email addresses readily available.

With the highest Return on Investment of any marketing channel, it makes sense to utilise email marketing. While social media can be very effective, there are three times more email accounts than Facebook and Twitter accounts combined. Statistically speaking, you are six times more likely to get a click-through to your website from email as opposed to Twitter.

As a savvy business owner, it’s important to use email marketing and this article will guide you through the first step – how to build your email marketing subscriber list.

1. Call To Action on your Website

A strong call to action form on every page of your website, coupled with an offer of a free consultation, sample or free trial is the perfect way to gather contact information for your email subscriber list.

2. Social Media

The content that you share in your email marketing will probably be shared on social media too – and that’s great! However, as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn make it harder for us to get into our followers newsfeeds without paying more money to promote our posts, it’s definitely a good idea to be communicating with your audience outside social media. After all, you can send an email campaign for free.

Keep sharing your content to social media, but ensure that your followers are told the benefit of signing up to your email list to receive all your best content directly to their inbox.

3. Face to Face

Online marketing has certainly made a lot of things easier but you can’t ignore the effective offline marketing tactics. In a lot of instances the best approach is to just go out there and mingle with industry groups and potential customers and clients.  Your personal touch will make people much more likely to sign-up. And if you’re in the right place, you’re more likely to be speaking to real prospects who would be interested in your email content, and are more likely to convert to customers.

Examples of this might include:

• Bricks and mortar businesses such as restaurants and retail outlets can collect contact information at the cash register, possibly in exchange for discounts or exclusive offers.
• Business to business service providers can collect contact information at networking events and conferences – next time you’re handed a business card, ask if it is OK to add them to your email list.
• Other businesses may find it beneficial to attend community events or trade shows.

Basically, find your ideal customer, work out where they hang out and go and talk to them.

Quality or Quantity?

There are plenty of business owners who never start to build a subscriber list because they think they need to have thousands of subscribers to make it a worthwhile exercise. However, you just need the right subscribers. Be proactive, attend relevant events, keep asking your customers and clients for their details and keep promoting the calls to action on your website and social media channels.
It takes time and effort but the rewards can be gold.