Creating and building an email list of your customers, prospects and others interested in your business is often overlooked. But it can provide some of the biggest sales and marketing wins in any business (B2B, B2C and DTC).
I can tell you that when I previously sent our newsletter to our clients, our phones would be ringing off the hook. Not necessarily for the offer we were presenting, but because we provided a timely reminder that we were open for business.
Build within your own eco-system
Many businesses focus their efforts on social channels and fail to consider email marketing. However, if you don’t own the platform (Facebook, Linkedin, Tiktok), then you are always at the mercy of any changes that are thrust upon you. Google changes its algorithm daily and all social media platforms implement significant code deployments that can negatively affect your online presence in a heartbeat.
Building out your email list should be at the core of any of your sales and marketing efforts. Owning the data is key and doing so can help you grow your business, increase profitability and retain your clients. Here’s why?
Benefits of building your email list
- You own the “platform” and maintain the list
- Sending marketing emails with ConvertKit or Mailchimp is a great value
- You are targeting an already engaged audience
- Sending tailored emails increases click-throughs, engagement and possibly sales
- 1-2-1 interaction with your list
How to grow your mailing list
Building an email list is an incredibly hard task and great care must be taken to gather and nurture your email data. We’ll cover GDPR challenges at a later date, but for now, just remember that you need to be compliant with all rules and regulations that govern your country.
However, there are some processes and steps that any business can implement to help efficiently grow your email list.
- Make email list-building core to your marketing and sales strategies: Encourage your team to think about building the email list the way your marketing team does. Incentivise this if appropriate to do so.
- Make it easy for people to sign up: Include links to your list sign-up page in your emails. Talk about it in your marketing materials and bring it front and centre on your website (where appropriate to do so). Encouraging an already engaged audience is key to success.
- Use the social channels you market on to direct people to your list: Social media can change in an instant, but it is still part of a robust marketing plan. Using these channels to build our list should be a consistent focus year-round. Remember to always direct your social channels to platforms you control.
- Incentivise the sign-up: If you visit most e-commerce stores, you will be greeted with an incentive to sign up for the website’s mailing list. This usually comes in the form of a discount on your order. For those in B2B businesses, can you offer guides or white papers that will be of interest to your prospective clients?
Example of best practice ways to build your mailing list
For the past 20 years, I’ve worked in marketing and used digital marketing each and every day to grow my own business. Email marketing has and will continue to be a huge part of my own marketing activities. Currently, I’m building my own email list for this site, https://foundered.co.uk.
In doing so, I’m offering incentives (free 10 day financial freedom mini-course). I also use sign-up forms extensively throughout the site and promote them on my social media (this post is an example). Everything noted above is part of my own strategy. I test all the “call to actions” (CTAs) and tailor them to the specific user intent of each category.
When you are hyper-specific with your intent and focus consistently on growing your list across all your marketing efforts, you will see considerable growth in your email list.
Using your mailing list to grow your business
Once you have built your mailing list, it is important to use it to provide further value to your customers or prospective clients. Building their trust in your products or service is key, but so is providing them with value beyond their expectation.
Use your newsletter to educate, inform, entertain and ultimately sell to your mailing list. Consistency is key, as is ensuring your newsletters are well-written and look great.
Always ensure to keep your database clean and make sure any unsubscribes from your mailing list are automatically removed.
Recap
Your mailing list should be a robust part of any considered sales and marketing campaign. With care and focus on building and nurturing your mailing list, it can be one of the best investments you can make in your business.
The best time to start building your list was 10 years ago. The second best time is now.
If you want to continue the conversation head over to the Foundered Money Youtube where I’ll be covering this topic and many like it very soon.
