An email marketing list is a great way to keep in contact with our leads. However, growing that list is not always the easiest of tasks. There are many reasons not to buy an email marketing list, and the Fat Guy team has come up with some tips for expanding email marketing lists without doing so.
Tips for Expanding Email Marketing Lists
Be Easy
If you’re interested in expanding email marketing lists, your first step should be making it easy to sign up. If your leads have to jump through hoops to obtain whatever it is you’re providing in exchange for the email, they’ll likely be turned off. As our friends over at HubSpot put it so nicely, “always match the amount of information you ask for with the value of what you’re providing in return.” In other words, don’t ask for a laundry list of personal information from someone looking to sign up for just your newsletter. Their name and email will suffice for that. Making subscription buttons readily available is also vital to expanding email marketing lists. You don’t want people to have to dig through your site to subscribe to your email. Include calls-to-action on most of your website’s pages to capture more emails.
Incentives
By offering a reward for signing up for your email list, newer readers may be enticed to do so. Of course, it’s unreasonable to offer a $1,000 cash reward or a laptop in exchange for an email address. Instead, offer something like a free webinar you’ve hosted in the past. Besides the fact that you just paid $1,000 for an email address, the problem with offering something like a cash reward or a laptop is that people will unsubscribe from your emails as soon as they collect their reward. There’s no long-term value in offering rewards that don’t go hand-in-hand with what you’re providing. 
Streamline for Social Media
Promoting your content and making it easily shareable for others to promote it is the perfect way to gain new readers. If people see your content promoted on a social network and click it, and you’ve already followed the above two tips (making it easy to sign up and offering incentives to do so), you’re much more likely to gain their email address.
Create Excellent Email Content
Creativity goes a long way when it comes to expanding email marketing lists. Don’t blast readers with the same email, at the same time, on the same day of the week. By making your emails interesting and keeping them fresh, your readers will be more engaged. Add surveys, ask questions and keep your readers interested! If your email content is remarkable, your contacts will be more likely to forward your emails to their contacts. Including social sharing buttons and a “Share with a Friend” button will make them more likely to spread the word, too. Though it’s not the simplest task, expanding email marketing lists will provide great value in your inbound marketing campaign. If you need assistance in boosting the strength of your email marketing game, feel free to call us at 516-535-5353 or email us at sales@fatguymedia.com.
