According to a Litmus survey on 372 marketers worldwide, email marketing delivers a whopping 38:1 ROI. If you’re not investing it in, you’re missing out on a significant growth opportunity. However, we understand email marketing is hard to get started with. You need to build a subscriber list that is ENGAGED and INTERESTED in hearing from you and your brand.

COVID-19 has already caused a major impact on the economy and businesses around the world. Events have been cancelled, CPA for paid ads has increased, and organic search traffic is down. There’s never a better time to have your own email list full of loyal subscribers devoted to your brand, just see brands like Apple, Nike, Uniqlo etc. 

Buying an email list is never a good idea, so you’ll need to grow your list organically.

This article will walk you through three proven strategies you can use to grow your email list from scratch to ensure you can grow in a sustainable way, even during these trying times for individuals and businesses.

Ready?

Let’s jump in.

Why is an Email List Necessary?

73% of marketers using email marketing rate the channel as “excellent”.

Source: https://econsultancy.com/reports/email-census

SEO, paid advertising, and social media are all great marketing channels, but you never truly own them.

Your SEO efforts rely on the goodwill of Google. Paid ads are turned off the moment you stop spending. Social media algorithms change too often to build a reliable marketing machine on any platform.

Your email list is one of the only marketing assets that you can be sure isn’t going anywhere. As long as you keep your subscribers interested, you’ll see long-term benefits.

3 Strategies To Grow Your Email List Fast

1. Offer Gated Content Upgrades

If you have a blog (or a regular stream of visitors to your landing pages), then you need to be offering visitors something they may care about in exchange for their email address.

For example, if you have a blog post on creating a content marketing strategy, consider offering a template you used in your article in exchange for their subscription. It will be a great barter as readers who are truly engaged will be happy to gain a useful tool to help them do their job.

Source: https://robwalling.com/2019/09/30/the-3-aspects-of-a-great-conference-talk/

You can implement this by using a popup system or having a sticky sidebar where your readers can sign up.

2. Run a Giveaway

If your business is relatively new and you want to quickly build an email list, consider running a giveaway or discounted pricing campaign.

If you’re B2C, you can do a giveaway on social media. Encourage people to sign up on your website, then share something on their social channels to be eligible to win. It’s a tried and tested method to build a list!

If you’re a B2B company, you’ll need to approach this differently. Consider running a limited-time promotion where people can access your product or service for a discounted price, or if your company is a SaaS business, you could offer a discounted lifetime plan and post your offer on a site like AppSumo.

Source: https://appsumo.com/browse/

While offers like this won’t be the best fit for every company, they can be extremely effective if you have a compelling offer and actively promote it.

3. Co-Market With a Complementary Business

There are inevitably many companies in the market as options that your ideal customers can buy from.

Partnering up with other businesses in the same industry is a great way to build your email list. Ideally, they should sell to the same customers as you, and not be direct competitors. If you can form a solid cooperation, you can leverage their audience to generate new email subscribers and new leads. Co-marketing is a tried and tested strategy.

But what does an effective co-marketing strategy look like?

For starters, you’ll need to reach out to other businesses with your proposition. Then, you’ll need to work with them on something valuable for their audience (remember: they sell to the same customers as you, so this shouldn’t be too tricky).

Popular tactics include:

• Co-host a webinar
• Collaborate on an industry report
• Offer a discount to customers who arrive from your partner site

The right co-marketing plan will look different in every business. The key is to provide value and work closely with your partner.

In the end, both businesses will benefit, and you’ll be able to quickly build up your email list with new, highly qualified subscribers.

Wrapping Up

Building an email list is hard, and there’s no way around that. However, because countless marketers have already invested their time and energy into building email lists, there are proven tactics that work.

The email list building strategies in this article are a great first step, but remember, depending on your unique business and audience, you may need to make adjustments, experiment, and iterate.

Building your email list is key if you want to generate ROI without relying on third-party channels, and it’s never too early to start.

Found8 and Metigy have entered a partnership to offer Metigy’s marketing solution 

Metigy is the ultimate multi-channel marketing tool for startups to accelerate their growth. We understand that digital marketing is complex and challenging, and a barrier to being more successful, and we want to change that. Our intelligent AI provides insights and recommendations to grow your audience quickly.

To access your Metigy 3 month free trial, simply visit Found8.metigy.com and use the code ‘Found8-90’.