5 Marketing tactics to grow your email subscriber list

Today I want to talk about 5 marketing tactics to grow your email list.

I often talk about list building and having an email list and today I’m going to go deeper into it.

 In my opinion, and I have to add that this opinion is backed up by statistics, so in my opinion it’s crucial to have an email marketing list. Sometimes it’s called an email marketing database, or subscriber list. Whatever the term, it’s a list of people who have given you their email address and consent to receive information from you about your business and business topics.

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Transcript

Welcome back to the new school of marketing podcast. I’m so grateful to you for tuning in. Before we dive in I would love to pay respect and acknowledgement to the palawa people of lutruwita who are the traditional owners of the land on which my business operates and pay my respect to their elders, past, present and emerging.

 

Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you’re having a great start of the week.

We’ve just wrapped up book week, which is always fun. My daughter had her costume parade for book week last week and was proud as punch. She’s loving school and all of the things she gets to do. My son didn’t have a costume. He’s only 17 months old so he doesn’t know anyway and I wasn’t organised enough to come up with costumes for them both. I’ll try next year. 

 

I also hosted an in person workshop last week which was so nice. It’s always great to connect with people in person and spend focused time on a project. Now I’m trying to think of other topics for workshops to host. If you’re in Tasmania and interested in coming to a workshop in Devonport, DM me on Instagram to let me know what topics you’re interested in. 

 

Today I want to talk about 5 marketing tactics to grow your email list.

I often talk about list building and having an email list and today I’m going to go deeper into it. 

 

In my opinion, and I have to add that this opinion is backed up by statistics, so in my opinion it’s crucial to have an email marketing list. Sometimes it’s called an email marketing database, or subscriber list. Whatever the term, it’s a list of people who have given you their email address and consent to receive information from you about your business and business topics.

 

I’m going to come straight out with it. The reason it’s important for you to have an email subscriber list is that email marketing has an ROI of $40 for every $1 spent. This is data from omnisend 2022, but this data hasn’t changed much in the past 10 years. Email marketing still has one of the highest returns on investment of all marketing tactics. 

So let’s backtrack for a second. What actually is email marketing, in case you don’t know. 

 

Email marketing is the use of email to promote products and services. It’s not just that though, you can also use email marketing to develop relations with current customers and reach out to potential customers. It allows your business to keep customers and potential customers informed. It’s not the same as just sending a mass email from your regular email address, that would actually be against the law in a lot of countries. You need to use a dedicated email marketing platform such as MailerLite, ConvertKit, Drip or MailChimp – which are specifically designed to send mass emails in a legal way so people can opt-out etc. 

 

Anyway, that’s why I’m so passionate about email marketing because it has a really high return on investment. If you wanted to know about the statistics of other tactics I can tell you that SEO gives a return of $22 for every $1 spent and keyword ads return $17 for every $1. So email marketing tops it all. 

 

Another reason to use email marketing is that it continues to be the main driver of customer retention and acquisition for small and medium businesses. Statistics tell us that 81% of small businesses rely on email as their primary customer acquisition channel and 80% for retention. Those numbers are high, and as much as people talk about social media, podcasts, and whatever else, email marketing is still one of the most valuable tactics in the toolkit.

 

So how can you get people to give you their email address?

 

Firstly you need a way for people to subscribe and all of the email marketing platforms have form builders that allow you to collect people’s email addresses. 

 

Secondly you need to offer a really good reason to sign up to your mailing list. Simply saying ‘sign up to my newsletter’ isn’t going to cut it. So why should someone sign up? Most of the time in the online business space you’d offer what’s called a lead magnet. A lead magnet is something that you give away for free in return for someone signing up to your list. It’s not just anything though, and don’t treat your subscribers as a number. That email address that you see in your email marketing software belongs to an actual person, a person that you can now form a relationship with. So you want to give them something very valuable, something that they could really use and will, in return, help you position yourself as the expert in that topic. 

 

Then once they have joined your mailing list you can start building that relationship with them, but that’s an entirely new topic. 

So let’s look at 5 ways to grow your subscriber list.

1) Create a lead magnet 

 

I’ve already mentioned this briefly but the best and easiest way to get people to join your subscriber list is by offering them something. Most of the time this would be something free, for example a checklist, a pdf guide, a free video training, a discount  (for ecomm), a webinar, a challenge or something like that. 

 

You can experiment with different lead magnets as they’re not created equal. For example, a checklist is a very quick type of download and doesn’t require much engagement from the person signing up, whereas a webinar or a challenge requires more time and input from the person signing up. Both have their place, and both can be a great introduction to you and your business.

 

So, create a lead magnet.

2) Put your sign up link everywhere

 

Ideally you create multiple forms that you can use in various places. For example, you can embed a form on your website homepage, but you can also create a standalone page on your website where you send all of your organic social media visitors to sign up. Put the link to your landing page that highlights your lead magnet in as many places as possible. You don’t want anyone to miss that link or option to get it. 

3) Guest blogging or guest podcast

 

Getting in front of other people’s audiences is often a great way to increase your own audience. Look for blogs or podcasts that serve the same people as you do but are not in direct competition with your business. Reach out to see if they accept guest blogs or try to connect with podcasters to be interviewed on their podcast.

 

Often you get to include a link to your own website as a guest blogger or podcast guest, so make sure your lead magnet and form are very visible on your website.

4) Collect emails at events

 

Events are great opportunities to connect with people in real life, but often after the show is over people forget about the business or the connections they made. 

 

Either host events, participate in events or go to tradeshows and ask people to sign up. You can offer an event special as an extra incentive for people to join. 

 

Events are often overlooked as a list building opportunity but with some preparation you can get some excellent leads from an in person event. 

5) Facebook & Instagram advertising

 

Of course I can’t leave this one out, as someone who manages Facebook ads every day, I had to add it in. But even if I wasn’t an ads manager I’d add this is, because Facebook and Instagram ads are one of the fastest ways to grow your email subscriber list. 

 

Organic marketing definitely has its place and the lead quality can be different between organic and paid marketing but organic is generally a slow growth and sometimes you just don’t have that time or maybe you’re like me and you’re impatient. 

 

Either way, Facebook and Instagram advertising can speed up your lead generation process and attract high quality leads much faster than your organic efforts. 

 

There aren’t many businesses that can’t benefit from using Facebook ads for lead generation and list growth, but, and I want to add a big BUT here, your business does need to be ready for it or otherwise you’ll be wasting your time and money. 

 

I get so sad, and also frustrated, when I hear about businesses complaining that Facebook ads don’t work for them. Don’t get me wrong, they are allowed to complain but more often than not it’s not that the ads don’t work, but rather that either their business isn’t ready or something else in their funnel isn’t working. 

 

That’s why I created my Facebook ads prep school. I was so over hearing about businesses wasting money, as well as some who wanted to dip their toes in but were worried about wasting their money. So inside of Facebook ads prep school I go through everything you need to know and do before spending money on ads. 

 

Ok, back to using ads to grow your email subscriber list. 

 

When you have a lead magnet, a landing page and thank you page set up and you’ve been getting some subscribers organically and know that your freebie is valued, you can speed up the process by driving more traffic and conversions to your landing page and grow your subscriber base. 

 

Once you have a lead magnet and a proven offer it’s actually reasonably easy to grow your subscriber list. The harder step is to turn them from subscribers into buyers, but that’s a whole different episode. 

 

So, 5 marketing tactics to grow your email subscriber list.

The first one is to create a lead magnet, the second one is to put a link to it everywhere so people can’t miss it, the third one is guest blogging or guest podcasting to get in front of other people’s audiences, the fourth one is collecting emails from people at events and the fifth one is to use Facebook and Instagram advertising to speed up your lead generation process. 

 

Outro

 

Thanks for joining me on this episode of the New School of Marketing podcast, I hope this episode was helpful and I can’t wait to share more marketing tips with you next week. 

 

If you’re ready to take your business to the next level with Facebook and Instagram advertising, make sure you visit www.newschoolofmarketing.com to download practical free resources, plus subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you. Until next time, take care and market your business every day.