Email marketing can help you connect and build relationships with your customers. You can nurture and push them ahead in the buying journey. No matter what type of business you have, emails are an important part of marketing strategy. You can use emails to inform, educate, and engage with customers. You can provide information to prospects about your products or services and persuade them to take the final action. However, to start with your email marketing efforts you first need to build your email list. 

How can you build an email list for marketing? How can you make people subscribe to your email list? In this blog, we will provide you with proven strategies to grow your email list free.

How to create an email list? 

Building an email list from scratch is a difficult task especially if you’ve just started your business. In this section, we will discuss how to make an email list for your business.

1. Embedded signup forms 

You must have seen those static forms that appear on the website. Embedded signup forms are a traditional yet effective way of building email marketing lists. You can place static signup forms on your high-traffic pages. However, make sure that you position these sign-up forms where they are visible. 

The advantage of using embedded sign-up forms is that they are non-intrusive. They do not disturb the website visitors during their sessions. They serve as a gentle reminder for people to sign-up for receiving emails and stay updated. 

2. Opt-in for pop-up forms 

As per the statistics, on average, pop-ups have a conversion rate of 11.09%  with the top 10% converting at around 42%. However, be careful while using pop-ups and consider Google’s interstitial ad guidelines. Some of the main points given in Google’s guidelines are as follows:

Now, we will give you some tips for building the best opt-in forms for your website.

Welcome Pop-ups 

Welcome pop-ups are the pop-ups that appear on the website within the first 15 seconds of visitors coming to the website. Ensure that you use a strong call to action so that the pop-up doesn’t get dismissed within a few seconds. You can use a discount offer, coupon code, or provide some form of value to visitors in exchange for their email address. 

Most people consider welcome pops as disturbing and intrusive. Therefore, you should try to keep your pop-ups simple. Don’t add too many fields that it makes people exit the form just by looking at it. Keep your forms attractive and uncomplicated. 

The timing of your pop-up also plays a vital role in email list conversions. To find the best time for your welcome pop-up to appear, you can use Google Analytics. You can check and find the average time a visitor spends on that specific page. 

If you’re putting a Welcome pop-up on your homepage, remember people might exit that page faster as they get deeper into your website. You can set the timing of your welcome pop-up differently for your web pages. You can set your welcome pop-up to appear after 7 secs or once people have scrolled 40% of the page. 

Exit Intent Pop-ups 

As per the report by Conversion Sciences, 10-15% of potentially lost visitors can be bought back with a refined exit intent pop-up. These are pop-ups that appear exactly before when a user is about to leave your website. The exit-intent technology is used to find out with visitors’ interactions when they are about to exit your website. 

The exit intent pop-ups help to reduce the chances of visitors’ exiting by recapturing visitors’ attention and offering them a valid reason to stay or sign-up. Try providing good discounts and coupons for making people sign up for your email list. If you’re an eCommerce brand, then you can offer free shipping or a few free products to people for subscribing to your email list. 

Promotional Pop-ups 

Promotional pop-ups are discounts or offers that appear throughout the customer journey. They are different from welcome pop-ups that appear when you first open a website or the exit intent pop-up that appears when you’re about to close the website. 

To generate a good email database from promotional pop-ups you must try to keep them relevant to the customer journey. See at which buying journey stage the customer is in and try to match your promotion to influence them effectively. 

For example, a visitor has landed on your homepage and then navigated to accessories. This means they’re interested in accessories on your website. Next, you can show them a pop-up announcing 15% off on accessories for subscribers only. 

If that visitor closes the pop-up and browses through other product pages. Then, you can show that visitor a pop-up of buy one get one offer for subscribing to your email list. Most often when people get a good offer in exchange for their email address, they end up adding their name to the email list. 

Timed Pop-up Forms 

These are the pop-up forms that appear when a visitor has spent a good amount of time on your website. Usually, when a visitor closes your website within 5 seconds, it means they aren’t interested in your offerings. This also indicates that they won’t subscribe to your email list.

With Google Analytics, you can find out how much time a visitor is spending on your website. This way you can identify the more engaged users within your target audience. You can know whom to present the email list sign-up form. Remember not every visitor is interested to subscribe to your email list. Thus, you should present your pop-up forms to the most-engaged users by doing segmentation. 

3. Gamification 

Gamification is a new way used for building a mailing list by creating interactive forms. You can make people play a game displaying various offers and ask them to provide their email addresses to claim the offer. Some examples of interactive games are surveys, tests, spin wheels, scratchcards, etc. 

By introducing gamification you can make people interested to play games and win offers. You can provide different offers to customers and ask them to provide their email addresses in return. According to psychology, customers are motivated by prizes and winning emotions. You can take advantage of this and use gamification to build your email list. 

You can also run contests and giveaways for email list building. You can collaborate with other brands to create high-value prizes. As per the statistics, 33% of people participating in contests are further open to receiving marketing communication from brands. 

4. Lead-Capturing landing pages 

You can create lead-capturing landing pages that can help you get information from visitors by restricting access to their desired content or offer. These are also called squeeze pages. These pages often have high exit rates but also high conversion rates. You can ask people to subscribe to your email list for getting access to their desired information. You can also provide visitors with an option to browse to other pages or the home page. 

5. Ask people to sign-up for notifications 

To grow your email list you can ask people to sign-up for receiving notifications. For distinct types of notifications, you can add their forms on landing pages, product pages, and sliders on the page headers. 

Pre-sale Notifications 

Asking people to subscribe to email list marketing for receiving pre-sale notifications is a good strategy. You can send reminders to people who want to shop during the sale before the sale begins. Most people are interested to save more and shopping during the sales. For this reason, they are willing to provide their information so that they don’t miss out on any good deals.

New Collection Notifications 

You can invite people to join your business email list to receive notifications about the arrival of new collections. Many fashion enthusiasts don’t want to miss out on updates about new collections. You can ask your visitors and customers to subscribe to the email list to get the latest fashion updates. 

Back-in-Stock Notifications 

Sometimes people visit the website to purchase an item but it’s unavailable. You can use this lost opportunity to create your email lists free. Most of the time people provide their email address to receive notification when the product is back in stock. Along with sending back-in-stock notifications, you can give them other related product recommendations. 

6. Offer Content Upgrades

Content upgrade refers to the lead magnet. It is basically a gated piece of content that businesses offer to website visitors in exchange for their email addresses. You can create gated content for your eCommerce website like ebooks, guides, catalogs, etc. For example, when a person wants to download an ebook, they need to provide their email address. 

7. Provide loyalty and referral programs 

For building your emailing lists, you can create customer loyalty and referral programs. You can ask people to subscribe to receive points via email. By offering loyalty programs you can not only drive repeat purchases but create your email list as well. Make sure that you offer your loyalty program members exclusive benefits like free gifts, coupons, content, etc. Offer additional benefits to the customers who refer your products or services to others. 

Best tips for building an email list 

Email lists can help you to engage with customers effectively. You can craft personalized messages and persuade people to purchase from you again. Here, in this section, we will give you some of the best tips on how to make an email list. 

1. Have a robust call to action 

Use a strong CTA button that makes people take your desired action. Also, make sure that you provide something of value to customers for providing their email addresses. You can use emails to send people tailored content based on their last website activity. 

With a weak CTA, you can’t encourage people to take strong steps toward your brand. Craft a CTA that provides something to the prospects like free shipping, extra discount, free gift, etc.

2. Personalize 

By providing personalized experiences, you can grasp the attention of your prospective customers faster. Along with a well-crafted CTA, try to offer pop-ups that are relevant to the customers. For example, if a customer is browsing “women’s clothing” then you can offer them a discount coupon for women’s clothing by asking them to add their email to the email list. You can also use opt-in forms at the headers or footers of the web pages that people visit mostly. 

3. Use social media platforms 

You can use social media platforms to increase your email lists free. Nowadays, most of the people are active on social media. You can identify the social media platforms where most of your target audience is available. You can create posts and include an option on your webpage for people to add their email addresses to the email list. You can also use surveys and forms to engage with people and ask them to subscribe to your email list. 

4. Don’t buy an email list 

Avoid purchasing an email list as there is no guarantee of it being accurate. It is also illegal to purchase email lists as per the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), European Data Privacy Act, and the United States 2003 CAN-SPAM Act. All these laws are against the collection of users’ personal data without their consent. 

5. Refine your email list building approach 

Once you have embedded forms and added pop-ups to your website, you must analyze how they’re performing. Check from where you are getting the maximum email list subscribers. Evaluate what sort of messaging and timing is working in favor of you. Utilize this information to constantly improve your marketing messaging and user experience. 

How to make an email list: The conclusion

If you’re wondering how to start an email then finding out the email addresses is the key to starting your email marketing strategy. You can also buy emails list but it is not recommended as most of the email addresses are inaccurate and it is against GDPR. For a successful email marketing strategy, it’s important that you build your email list.

There are several ways through which you can create your email list such as embedded sign-up forms, pop-ups, notifications, etc. Webmaxy eGrowth is an email marketing platform that can help you schedule and run email campaigns. Apart from that, it comes with many features such as a KPI dashboard, marketing insights, audience segmentation, social campaigns, marketing automation, Whatsapp marketing, customer loyalty, help desk, and retargeting. 

Schedule a call with our experts to learn more about Webmaxy eGrowth, or email us at info@webmaxy.co. 

How to build email list: FAQs

What is an email list?

An email list is a list of emails that businesses have collected from their visitors or customers who would want to receive information, updates, and details from businesses in their email boxes. By sending emails to your prospects or existing customers you can strengthen your customer relationship and make them stay with you for longer.

How to build an email list?

An email list can help you carry out your email marketing strategy effectively. There are several ways through which you can build a list of emails that we have given below.

– Embed a sign-up form on your homepage 

– Add pop-ups on your website

– Create personalized landing pages 

– Add a sign-up button to your social media pages

How do I create an email list for email marketing?

An email list can help you personalize your marketing messages and improve customer relationships. You can create an email list for marketing by following the tips given below. 

– Add a pop-up form to your homepage.

– Put a sign-up button on your social media pages. 

– Include a newsletter sign-up option at checkout. 

– Collect emails at your physical store.

How do small businesses grow email lists?

Building an email list is important for both small and large businesses. Small businesses can grow their email subscription list by following the tips given below. 

– Create compelling content. 

– Use pop-up forms. 

– Utilize social media channels. 

– Create Facebook lead ads.

How to build an email list from scratch?

An email list can help you reach out to your customers and provide them with relevant information. You can build an email list from scratch by following the steps given below. 

– Use embedded signup forms 

– Create gated content 

– Offer loyalty and referral programs

– Invite to sign-up for notifications