Have a Mailing List of Your Own

Have a Mailing List of Your Own - No matter what type of email you send out, you'll need a mailing list. The basic way to build a mailing list is by capturing name and email address information for everyone who buys or shows interest in your product.

An email list that YOU COLLECT YOURSELF is worth its weight in gold. This can be accomplished by using a list manager on your site. List managers also provide the HTML coding for the form on the Gateway pages. A list manager collects the email addresses that are gathered with the form.  Thus, your email list is collected. This might take some time so there are methods to use until you get your own email list built.

Have a Mailing List of Your Own

One way to build a mailing list is to do ad swaps with other list owners. The way this works is, you (as company A) have an email list that you send newsletters to and another list owner (company B) has a list they send newsletters to. Company A and Company B place ads on one another's mailing lists. Each of you is promoting the other's list. 

You can rent or buy targeted email lists. The list you develop using your own customers' names is called your "house list." Of course, when you're first starting out, your house list is likely to be skimpy. To augment it, one way to go is rent or buy a mailing list. There are two ways to buy or rent a mailing list—approaching the company you want to rent from directly or using a list broker. Any company that emails information to its customers usually has a list manager, who handles inquiries and orders for the mailing list.

Another way to build an email list is to list your newsletter in all of the ezine directories

12 Easy Ways To Build Your Free Email List Right Now

You may have just as many hours in a day as Beyoncé, but building an email list from scratch is hard work, especially when you're already busy building your online store, creating content, and providing customer support.

With everything else you have going on, you may be tempted to just buy an email list to get started, but please don't.

Building your own list is one of the best things you can do for your business. And, we don't mean that in an "it builds character, you'll thank us later" kind of way.

When you build your own list, you're going to end up with a higher quality list. Period. Plus, there's so much you can do to build an email list for free, why would you bother with buying one?

If you need more convincing, here are 8 reasons why you should never buy an email list.

In this post, we're going to cover some awesome ways you can use social media and your existing website to grow your email list for free. With these tips and your killer content, your list will be thriving in no time.

How to Generate an Email List for Free With Social Media

Social media is an excellent way to stay engaged with your customers and generate new leads. Here are some ways to leverage social media to build your email list without opening up your wallet.

1. Add a CTA to Your Bio

Instead of using your bio to talk about how much you love the beach, why not use it for a call to action that's going to build your email list?

Here are a couple of examples from Instagram, but you can do this with any social media platform. And, don't worry, people will figure out that you love the beach by how much you post about it.

instagram bio with cta

instagram bio with cta

Both accounts have a fun sprinkling of emojis that are breaking up their keywords. Also, notice that both use the word "free" in their call to action.

2. Pin a Tweet with a CTA

Twitter lets users pin an important tweet to the top of their feed which presents an excellent opportunity for a call to action. Pinned tweets are the first tweets that appear whenever someone visits your profile page, so make sure you're using the space to your advantage to build your email list.

Here's an example of what a pinned tweet could look like:

gary vee pinned tweet cta

To pin a tweet to your profile you just click the gray arrow to the right of the tweet and select Pin to your profile page:

pin tweet to profile

3. Create a CTA Post on Instagram

Yes, you can run Instagram ads the same way you can Facebook ads, but we're talking "free" here, folks. So far, the best way to create a call to action post for Instagram is to create a nice image with text on it indicating "Link in bio," or something like that.

These are a great option if you create a lot of lead magnets or content upgrades. Daniel DiPiazza was able to grow his email list with this simple post:

daniel dipiazza instagram post cta

4. Set a CTA on Your Facebook Page

You can include a call to action on your Facebook page to encourage visitors to sign up for your mailing list like Dollar Shave Club:

dollar shave club facebook page cta

You can add a signup button to your Facebook page easily:

add sign up button to facebook page

5. Create a Subscribers-Only Facebook Group

Exclusivity is a great way to grow your list. By starting a Facebook group only for verified subscribers you not only encourage signups, but you encourage signups from people who are genuinely interested in what you're offering.

optinmonster facebook group

In our Facebook group, we post tips to help people get even better results from OptinMonster and get to know other OptinMonster users. There are also fun contests and support is available to offer guidance.

Facebook groups are great at building community and giving you another way to offer additional value to your subscribers and customers.

6. Pin Your CTA to Pinterest

Pinterest is an incredibly powerful visual search engine that is great for marketing. You can use a free tool like Canva to create beautiful, pin-worthy images to go along with your calls to action and pin away.

elna cain pinterest post

If you want to know more about using Pinterest for marketing, check out our post.

7. Use Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories are great for engagement. If you have a business account with 10,000 or more followers you can include links in your stories that visitors can get to by swiping up on the image or video.

chalene johnson instagram stories

For the rest of us, we can use Instagram Stories to highlight our call to action link in our bio.

Struggling to create just the right CTA? Get inspired by our massive list of more than 700 power words or, if you need more guidance, check out our post about writing the perfect call to action.

How to Build an Email List for Free Using Your Existing Site

Do you remember when everyone thought that websites were on their way out? When businesses began shuttering their sites in favor of Facebook Pages?

Do you notice how 11 years later websites are still around and still considered vital to a comprehensive online presence?

A website can be a powerful tool for growing your email list for free. Here are some ways to keep your website relevant and engaging.

8. Create Original Content

Whatever industry you're in, creating original, quality content will get people interested in your brand. Plus, content throughout your site can be search engine optimized to make sure that your site is showing up in search engine results.

Have a look at our ultimate SEO guide for actionable steps you can take to drive traffic, boost authority, and generate leads and sales using your site.

Need help getting started with content? Check out our 8-step guide to create a successful content marketing strategy. Or, take a look at these clever content marketing examples for inspiration.

9. Offer Lead Magnets and Content Upgrades

Lead magnets and content upgrades are very effective for generating leads because they offer something of value in exchange for contact information. You don't have to use popups or optins to deliver these lead magnets or upgrades; you can include a simple link or graphic and your system of delivery.

OptinMonster uses a combination of our own optins to deliver lead magnets, but finds quite a bit of success with exit-intent:

lead magnet exit intent delivery

As well as MonsterLinks™:

lead magnet monsterlinks delivery

10. Upsell Upcoming Products

Typically when you see the word "upsell" it's related to increasing sales not signups, right? That's what makes this one of the coolest lead generation techniques we've seen in a while and we think more people should use it.

How is it done?

FiftyThree would show related products that weren't yet released and use a call to action of "Notify me."

fiftythree notify me cta

Once shoppers click the "Notify me" button they're presented with an optin:

fiftythree upsell optin

11. Optimize Your About Us Page

If a visitor is looking at your About Us page, it's pretty safe to assume that they're interested in learning more about your brand. Just adding a simple blurb about the benefits of doing business with you and including an optin form is enough to generate new subscribers.

29 Simple Ways to Grow Your Email List

 

Your contacts' email addresses change as they move from one company to another, opt-out of your email communication, or abandon that old AOL address they only use to fill out forms on websites.

As a marketer, it's your job to make sure you're constantly adding fresh contacts to your email marketing campaigns so you can keep your numbers moving up and to the right. (But not by purchasing email lists -- learn why you should never buy an email list in this post.)

Click here to download our free beginner's guide to email marketing.

What is an email list?

An email list is a collection of email addresses that a business can create by engaging with potential customers through lead-generating campaigns. Email lists can shrink as members opt out of email subscriptions, and grow as the business solicits contact information from website visitors.

If you're not working on building your email list already, or you've run out of ideas to do so, here are 29 simple ways to grow that email list.

Want anothr

29 Creative List Building Techniques

Using Email

1. Create remarkable email content

Your content needs to be amazing if you want people to stay subscribed and forward your emails to their own network. If it's entertaining enough, they'll always look forward to your emails.

2. Encourage subscribers to share and forward your emails

Include social sharing buttons and an "Email to a Friend" button in your marketing emails. That way, you'll gain access to their friends, colleagues, and networks and expand your contact list. At the bottom of your emails, include a "Subscribe" CTA as a simple text-based link so that the people receiving the forwarded emails can easily opt-in, too.

3. Segment your email lists by buyer persona

Use varying types of email subscriptions to send more targeted content to specific segments of your marketing personas. Email recipients are more likely to click through emails that cater to their specific interests, so if you create multiple, targeted subscription types, you'll increase the chance that visitors will subscribe to one of them.

4. Reinvigorate a stale email list with an opt-in campaign

Do you have an older list that you suspect has mostly decayed? Create an engaging opt-in message and send it to your old list encouraging contacts who wish to re-opt-in -- promising to remove all contacts who don't respond. Though it might seem counterintuitive to remove folks from your email lists in order to grow them, emailing only engaged contacts could improve your deliverability and increase the odds of your email getting shared with those outside your current contacts database.

5. Add a link to your employees' signatures

Hyperlinked email signatures can lead people to a landing page where they can sign up for your mailing list. Plus, if you're already in a natural email conversation with them, subscribing to more emails can be a natural next step.

With New Content

6. Create a new lead-generation offer 

Develop a free ebook or whitepaper and host it on a landing page that asks visitors to provide their email address in order to download it. This is called a "gated offer." (Need ideas? This blog post lists 23 ways to create lead-generation content quickly and easily.)

7. Create a free online tool or resource

Free online tools make your users' lives easier, and all they have to do is sign up with their email address. For example, we've created quite a few free tools, like Marketing Grader, to gather email addresses.

8. Create 'Bonus' Content

Not all gated content is worth it to a website visitor. In order to gain their interest, you need to give them free content first. Start with a blog post that offers beginner advice on a subject, then offer "bonus" content with more advanced tips that they can access by submitting their email address via a landing page.

Using Social Media

9. Promote an online contest

Use your social media accounts to host a free giveaway in exchange for contact information. Encourage entrants to click through to your website and sign up using their email address. 

10. Promote one of your lead-gen offers on Twitter

Create a Twitter campaign to promote an ebook or a free resource to your followers that requires an email address to redeem. 

11. Promote an offer through Facebook that requires an email address

Promote content on your Facebook Timeline that your followers can sign up to access. Be sure to add social sharing buttons to the landing pages and thank-you pages you send them to so you encourage your leads to share those offers with their own networks.

12. Add a call-to-action button to the top of your Facebook Business Page

We added calls-to-action (CTAs) on our Facebook page for HubSpot Academy below. The value in this list building technique is in the destination: Link your Facebook page's CTA button to a landing page that requires an email address for access to a special resource.

Facebook business page for HubSpot Academy with Sign Up button for email list building

13. Publish links to gated offers via social media

Use your Facebook Business page or LinkedIn Company Page to post links to the same gated offers you might also host on your blog posts. You can also do this in appropriate and relevant LinkedIn group discussions -- just be mindful of the topic being discussed to ensure your offer is a welcome addition to the conversation.

14. Use Pinterest to promote gated visual content

Pinterest can play host to visual content that encourages visitors to sign up to see more content. For example, HubSpot created a Pinterest board where we pin the well-designed covers of our marketing ebooks. From this board, we've been able to generate new leads and grow our email list.

hubspot-ebooks-pinterest

15. Add engagement features to your YouTube channel

Add hyperlinked "end cards" to your YouTube videos that encourage people to subscribe to your channel via their email address. You can see an example of this below, to the bottom right of the video screen. You can also include links to relevant landing pages in your videos' text captions below your published video.

End card on HubSpot YouTube video for email list building

On Your Website

16. Ask website visitors for feedback

People enjoy offering feedback on information that pertains to them. On certain pages of your website, include a form that asks visitors what questions they might have about your business. You might also create a live chat tool that invites questions and email addresses from people who have stayed on your website for a certain amount of time.

17. Shorten the length of your lead-capturing forms

It's tempting to collect as much information on a user as possible right away, but adding too many fields to your landing pages and lead-capturing forms can actually scare people off. Reduce the length of your forms to just two to three fields -- you can collect more information from them once you start a conversation.

18. Link to offers across your website that capture email signups

Don't make people dig around your site to stumble across subscription options. Keep your offers up front, and include calls-to-action on multiple pages of your website. Some key places to consider include your website's homepage, your 'About Us' page, and your 'Contact Us' page.

19. A/B test different campaign copy

You might be doing all the right things to generate leads -- landing pages, gated content, contests, and more. The problem might be that the design or copy itself isn't driving the engagement you need. A/B test (also known as "split test") different aspects of your list-building campaigns with different versions of the same content. This includes the call-to-action text, the color of the gated offer, the time of day you're posting to social media, and even where on your website these signup forms are placed. Sometimes a small change can drive hundreds more conversions.

20. Create a blog that readers can subscribe to

If you don't already blog, you should! Blog posts help you increase your ranking on search engines like Google, and allow you collect blog subscribers that you can then upgrade to more actionable email campaigns over time.

21. Guest blog for other websites with a call-to-action

There are tons of websites and publishers out there that cater to your audience -- and larger portions of it. Guest blogging for these websites helps you expand your contact list to this audience. When creating content as a guest blogger for another website, include a call-to-action, as well as a link in you author byline, for readers to subscribe to your site's blog or email newsletter.

22. Include customer reviews on your website and landing pages

Customer reviews are the "social proof" that encourages people to join in on something. It's one thing for you to tell people to sign up for a campaign, but it's another thing for your happiest customers to say it too. Publish your best reviews from communities like Yelp right to your website. This adds genuine value to your landing pages when people are on the fence about submitting their contact information. 

With a Partner

23. Run a promotion on a partner website or email newsletter

Similar to guest blogging, partner websites can allow you to target a new but appropriate audience with a campaign on your own website. Use this partner source to direct visitors back to your website -- where you're already collecting email addresses.

24. Host a co-marketing offer with a partner 

Creating an ebook or webinar with a partner can split up the work of content creation and allow you to share the audience of a similar business. After you release your content, split the leads you generate with your partner.

With Traditional Marketing

25. Collect email addresses at a trade show 

Offline events like trade shows are highly anticipated growth opportunities for professionals in your industry. Demo your latest product at an appropriate conference and collect signups in-person. Once you're back at the office, import these signups into your contact database. Be sure to send these contacts a welcome email that confirms their opt-in to your list. (See #8 in this blog post for tips on sending welcome emails.)

26. Host your own offline, in-person events

Meetups, seminars, hackathons, educational panels, and even your own conferences put you front and center of a networking event, and those who attend are often more qualified to be contacted because they came to your event. Take the opportunity to collect email addresses in exchange for the info and demos you provide at the event.

27. Host an online webinar

Webinars are the perfect opportunity to talk about your industry and access the audience of thought leaders whom you might want to present with. The best part? Webinars are normally registered for via email, making your listeners more willing to be contacted afterward. Collect email addresses at registration.

28. Add QR codes to your display ads

Incorporate a QR code into your print marketing collateral that people can scan for more information on the printed content. Create the QR code such that it requires an email address to access the additional content. (There are many free QR code makers online that make this process easy.)

29. Collect emails in your store

If you have a brick-and-mortar presence where you interact with customers face-to-face, create an email campaign just for those walk-ins. Launch a store membership they can sign up for via email at the register. This is a smart way to keep in touch with repeat customers and reward their loyalty to your product.

These are all examples of things you can start doing today to increase your business' email database. Many of them are not complicated or difficult to implement. The key is to attack email list-building from as many angles as possible.

WHY YOU SHOULD START BUILDING AN EMAIL LIST

In the words of Drake, "email lists are goin' from 0 to 100, blogga, real quick." Actually Drake, email lists and newsletters have been around for years, but now that they're gaining even more popularity, it seems like everyone wants to start one, but no one knows why they should start one. Today, we're uncovering why exactly you should start building an email list, which program we use to send ours, and the one type of person who probably doesn't need an email list at all.

Why You Should Start Building an Email List. | Keep hearing that you should build an email list/start a newsletter, but don't know why? We're giving you the lowdown about why email lists are the BEST.

While email lists may be common, it's not always clear why tons of bloggers and businesses have adopted this additional task. Feeling clueless? Not sure whether you should start one of your own? Here are a few reasons why you should totally start building an email list, and one reason why you shouldn't.

1. ASIDE FROM YOUR WEBSITE, IT'S THE ONLY THING YOU HAVE CONTROL OVER.

In my opinion, social media is absolutely essential to growing a profitable and engaged blog or business. It connects you to your audience, allows you to share relatable pieces of your life, and drives traffic back to your site. But it does have one big flaw:

You can't control it. 

You don't own Instagram or Pinterest or any of the other social media sites that you've spent so much time growing. They could easily flip a switch and change everything. In fact, not too long ago, the algorithm for Facebook pages changed, forcing you to pay to promote your posts if you want more than a handful of your community to see your updates. Ouch. But hey, you don't own Facebook. Facebook does.

Luckily, you do control your email newsletter. It's all yours, baby. So, even if tomorrow, Pinterest changes their site so that only three people ever see your pins again, you'll still have an email list full of dedicated followers who are there to open your emails and read your most important updates.

Related: 4 Key Systems to Help You Streamline Your Blog

2. EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE PRODUCT BUYERS.

Do you ever intend to sell products or services on your website? Then you need an email list. Think of it this way: a person's email inbox is sacred. If they allow you to send them emails, then they're essentially inviting you into their virtual home. People hate getting useless spam in their inbox, but they're willing to scroll through an Instagram feed full of photos from acquaintances they've talked to twice in their life. Bottom line? Most people are less picky about who they "follow" on social media vs. who they subscribe to via email.

So, if someone subscribed to your email list? They dig you and they mean business. They're not just a casual "follow4follow" account on Twitter. They're real. They're engaged. And they might just want whatever it is that you're selling. In fact, last month, I mentioned my blog coaching services in an email to my subscribers. I rarely try to sell anything to my subscribers and the mention of my services was at the bottom of the email. But that minor mention of my offerings resulted in several new clients and $2,500 in income.

For those reasons, it's incredibly important to take care of your email subscribers. Not only are they going to be your most engaged blog readers, but they'll also be your most loyal customers. This is your tribe. And your email list is their headquarters.

Related: Why You Should Give Away Free Content If You Want to Sell Digital Products

3. IT'S THE EASIEST WAY TO KEEP IN TOUCH.

Lastly, an email is the easiest way to share big announcements and keep in touch. Not everyone will check your Instagram or blog everyday unless they are absolutely crazy about your site. But what will they do? Well, they'll probably check their email everyday. So, if you have something important to share, and want to be sure that your audience receives it, then an email list is an excellent medium to keep in touch.

SO, WHO SHOULDN'T CREATE AN EMAIL LIST?

Personally, I think most bloggers and business owners should be trying to grow their email list, but there is one exception. If you don't ever intend to sell products or services of any kind, then you probably don't need an email list.

We use Mailchimp for our email newsletters. How about you?

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