5 Ways to Build an Email Subscriber List

Five effective ways to build your email list from scratch

If you want to sell online, you need to make sure to build an email subscriber list. As we mentioned in our previous blog post, social media can disappear at anytime. And you cannot rely on only social media to nurture your potential clients. In order to stay on top of your business, you shouldn’t risk losing your audience by relying on only one channel.

There are various ways to build an email list from scratch. We have listed 5 of these so that you can start building your own:

“If you are a business owner, you need to make sure that you have 100% control over everything from your digital presence to your staff.”

1. Create a Lead Magnet

Creating a lead magnet is giving away something for free in exchange for your audience’s email addresses. When creating a lead magnet, you need to make sure that your offer is valuable enough for your audience. This way, your audience is willing to give their email addresses to get that item for free.

Here are some examples:

If you are a social media manager, you may want to give away a document with tips to grow an Instagram account. If you are a graphic designer, you can give away free Canva templates. Are you a business coach? Why don’t you give away a quick guide about time management?

Let’s say that you created your lead magnet. What are the next steps?

Firstly, you need to have a landing page and a subscription to an email marketing platform. Using these software, you can set up an automation that sends emails when people sign up for your email list. Secondly, you will integrate your subscription form on your landing page. This can be either in a pop-up form or embedded in your page.

There is a lot of email marketing software such as Mailchimp, Mailerlite, Drip, Kajabi, Flodesk, Aweber, GetResponse and Active Campaign. Many of these platforms offer a free trial so you can test out and see what works the best for you.

When it comes to selecting an email software, you need to make sure that the platform allows you to segment and tag your subscribers. When you start creating more automation, this will be very useful as you can then see who signed up using which platform (if they signed up on a blog post, through Facebook etc.).

Your lead magnet can be in a pdf, video or even an audio format. Regardless of what type of format it is, you need to make sure that what you’re providing is relevant to your potential clients. Also, if you are providing a few different lead magnets, you need to promote them on relevant platforms. For example, you can promote an Instagram-related freebie at the end of a blog post about Instagram marketing. Or a design template freebie at the end of a blog post about graphics design.

2. Grow your Email List via YouTube

YouTube is big! Based on Statista, YouTube has 2 billion logged-in monthly users. It is the second most-preferred platform for watching video on TV screens among 18 to 34-year-olds, after Netflix. This is a great number, so why not use this to capture leads?

But how can we collect leads via YouTube? The easiest way to collect subscribers on YouTube is to ask your viewers to join your email list. In addition, you can make use of YouTube ads, your channel header or playlists. You can also create a welcome video and use description areas of your videos. Commenting on other people’s videos also helps a great deal in order to gain more visibility.

3. Promote your email list on social media accounts

Social media can be a great tool to grow your subscriber’s list as pop-ups on websites might take a longer time to build an email list.

When it comes to social media, there are endless possibilities. Here are what you can do to promote your subscription page on social media

• Include your e-newsletter subscription link to your bio on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook
• If you have more than 10K followers on Instagram, use the swipe-up feature linking your stories to your subscription page
• Ask your followers on your stories to check out your bio and sign up
• Add a call to action at the end of your posts. You can write “Want to learn more? I’d love to stay connected through my e-newsletter” on all social media channels.

4. build an email list with a Facebook Group

Without a doubt, Facebook is still the biggest social media platform out there. And there are Facebook groups for almost any kind of interest. Why not using a free platform to collect email addresses of people who might already be interested in your services?

The advantage of using a Facebook group as a lead generation tool is that you attract the right people to your group. But how do you collect leads with a group? Here is how:

> Create a group that might attract the right type of audience for your business, and make it private.

> Connect it to your business Facebook page.

> Set a cover photo, edit settings and add a description

> Set membership questions. Make sure to ask for your subscribers’ email addresses. You can make this mandatory or optional to avoid losing subscriptions to your group.

Then all you need to do is to promote your group and gain members while collecting leads!

5. Make use of Facebook ads

Facebook ads are not only for selling or promoting your website. They can also be used to collect emails from your target audience. With the right strategy and optimisation, your Facebook ad can grow your email subscriber list even in a few days!

In addition to creating ads that drive your audience to a sign-up landing page, you can also create lead generation forms on Facebook.

When running Facebook ads, make sure to target, run A/B tests to see what works the best and optimise on the go so that you don’t end up wasting your money.

Email marketing is a great way to speak directly to your subscribers because it requires action. With a great email marketing strategy, you can turn your audience into clients and increase their loyalty.

Are you looking to build your online presence? Get in touch.