Email marketing remains one of the most effective methods for keeping leads wrapped within your funnel. The only challenge is getting people to actually sign up!
Over the years, expert marketers have suggested many effective ways to get email signups. These include surefire gems like using lead capture forms on your website and gating content behind an email submission.
But what about the more unconventional methods? The ones that pick up all the leftover emails that the most common suggestions overlook?
We racked our brains for some of the most creative approaches you can use to grow your email marketing list, and here are the best six we could come up with:
Add a “Subscribe to Our Newsletter” Button to All Emails
Not everyone who receives email correspondence from you is a subscriber! This goes double for anyone that sends email receipts through systems like Square or who sends ecommerce invoices.
Capture all those unaccounted for email recipients directly by including a pitch for your subscriber list in a footer or signature line.
Even if you’re just responding to a customer inquiry or complaint, letting people know about your email subscriber program raises awareness and can convert a decent portion of people who fell through the cracks.
Offering them an incentive to subscribe like coupons or killer content makes this tactic even more effective!
Tie an Offer or Incentive to an Email Signup
Two common approaches to email signups are:
- Promises that signing up will bring value in the form of coupons, sale updates or relevant content
- Gating premium content behind email capture forms
Why not combine the two? Simply treat your offer, coupon or promotion like you would a piece of gated premium content. AKA: Don’t mention email at all at first!
Instead, dangle a juicy incentive in front of them, like a $5 coupon, a discount, a free audit, or a something similar. Then, when you bring them to the landing page to “redeem” the offer, they find out they need it emailed to them.
This approach nurtures their interest before making an ask, just like many websites do with white papers, swipe sheets and other gated content.
Send a Prepaid Postcard to Prior In-Person Contacts
This one is particularly for businesses that do a lot of face to face business, or may have contact lists from the direct mail days, leaving you with only physical addresses to work with. You can close the information gaps in your list by sending out snail mail envelopes containing postage paid postcards. Recipients can then send these back to you to submit their email. Make sure to give them the option to submit online, too!
This approach will likely have a low response rate, but it will get people’s attention. You can improve response rates by offering an incentive such as a coupon or gift they receive upon signing up.
Ask for Friends and Employees to Share Some of Their Contacts
This one’s a bit desperate, but it can actually turn into some mighty effective networking. Simply ask employees, co-workers and friends to sift through their contacts list for potentially qualified leads.
These emails can all receive a special template saying something like: “Your friends thought you would want to learn about us.” Then, give them the option to sign up on your actual subscriber list.
As a side note: don’t just make them into subscribers! This could be seen as invasive and unwanted. Give them the option to opt in; don’t force them to take the time to opt-out.
Import Your Email List From Social Media Followers
Your followers on social media all have an email address attached to their account. You can find out what these addresses are using some clever tricks.
If you have a ton of Facebook fans, you likely paid a pretty penny acquiring them through Facebook ads. The good news is, you can use a Yahoo mail workaround to get the email addresses of your Facebook followers, which can then be imported to LinkedIn or your email program.
LinkedIn can similarly provide you with email addresses for all followers and contacts. Here’s how to do so, directly from the horse’s mouth.
Again: Do not automatically put these addresses into your subscriber list! Give them the chance to opt-in so they don’t feel invaded.
Curate Amazing Content from Others
Our final tip isn’t completely original, but it still doesn’t occur to many business owners.
When most people think of email subscriber content, they think of inwardly focused sales, tips, announcements and new content.
But potential subscribers may not see the value in these assets. “What do I care about news and commentary from Company X?” they may say.
Instead, provide them a curated, aggregated rundown of already trusted and popular information sources. These will likely be from publishers they already read, but you are doing them a favor and putting it all in one place for them.
These types of news roundup posts work especially well when you close out with something fun or funny for them to look at. Soon, you could have readers opening your emails just to scroll to the bottom for a pleasant distraction to their day.
Got Any Other Ideas to Grow Your Email Marketing List?
These are the best ideas we could scrounge up, but we know we didn’t cover everything under the sun!
So tell us: what inventive and creative methods do you use to capture emails? Let us know with a reply in the comments below!
Shameless Plug: If you want help with making your email marketing campaigns succeed, don’t forget to look at Optimized Scribes’ services for great content writing and expert email marketing campaign setup using all the latest industry best practices.
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