Creating and building an email list with loyal, engaged subscribers is an essential investment for your business. That’s because email marketing remains a proven and effective tactic; the average ROI for email marketing is $42 for every dollar spent (DMA), and 73% of marketers rated their email ROI as “excellent” (SaleCycle).

Before we explore how to build an email list, it’s important to review the characteristics of good business email lists.

How to Build an Email Marketing List That Gets Results

High-Quality and Permission-Based

While it may seem like a quick fix to buy business email lists, this practice can negatively skew the truly engaged audience of your list (no matter how small it might be!). Often, purchased emails can include bots, spam accounts, or abandoned emails. Also, the people on that purchased list didn’t technically sign up, so they’re probably not going to be as engaged with your brand as you’d like. No one appreciates “spam,” and you should always follow marketing compliance guidelines for email.

Accurate and Updated

A good email list should be regularly maintained to ensure deliverability and engagement rates. This also means periodically curating your list to remove invalid or bounced emails!

Easily Segmented

Segmentation allows you to send targeted, personalized emails to specific groups that may have an affinity for a certain product, offer, or service. Segments can be based on demographics, psychographics, past purchases, engagement level, fundamental interests, and more. In fact, email segmentation can lead to a 760% increase in business revenue, according to Campaign Monitor.

Quantity

While quality is more important than quantity in email marketing, a more extensive list of permission-based, engaged, and accurate emails is always going to be better. That’s why it’s vital to consistently look for ways to build your list.

7 Easy Ways to Effectively Build an Email List

If you’re wondering how to create an email list for marketing, check out these seven tactics that can drive impressive results.

1. Offer Incentives for Signing Up

First and foremost, think of ways to encourage people to want to give you their email addresses. One of the most popular (and effective!) ways to get email addresses is through a lead magnet.

A lead magnet is usually a downloadable asset or a free virtual event that is relevant and actionable to your target audience.

Some ideas for a lead magnet include:

• White papers
• Case studies
• Free webinar registrations
• Free e-course
• Worksheets or templates
• Ebooks

The best lead magnet for your business will depend on your target consumers and marketing goals, but it can also be valuable to test a few different ideas to see what provides the best results.

2. Create a Customized Landing Page

A customized landing page can be helpful for your email incentivization and lead magnet efforts because it provides a central and dedicated hub where you can drive consumers to sign up. If you are utilizing a landing page, the experience should be easy and frictionless, with a clear and valuable offer message and call-to-action (CTA). The focus is on conversion — and you don’t want people to click away from the page until they provide their email.

Consider including an attention-grabbing headline emphasizing the benefits, short but effective copy amplifying the message, and a strong CTA.

3. Add Pop-Ups to Your Website

While website pop-ups may get a bad rap for being disruptive and irritating, they can be thoughtfully designed with a clear purpose. Therefore, they can work beautifully to build your list.

Pop-ups also provide an opportunity to promote a relevant lead magnet or another promotional offer or coupon savings offer in exchange for providing an email address. It’s an easy and effective tool to build an email list with an engaged audience already interacting with your website.

Don’t forget to make the CTA on the pop-up as friendly, clear, and aligned with your brand voice as possible. It should be attention-grabbing but easy to understand immediately.

4. Build an Opt-In Form Into Your Website

Another way to easily grow your email list is by adding an email sign-up form on your website pages, menu bar, and navigation.

This type of opt-in form can be a simple module that reminds site visitors to join your email list.

Again, you’ll want to use a strong, brand-aligned CTA about the value they’ll receive in exchange for providing their email address, such as a savings code, a lead magnet, or exclusive content and updates.

5. Run a Giveaway or Contest

A fun way to grow your email list — and generate a positive halo effect for your brand — is to activate a giveaway or contest that requires users to enter their email addresses. There are giveaway tools and website plugins, like Rafflecopter, that can help create this type of promotion.

You can also set up a landing page with a form fill to accept entries. Just ensure you provide an adequate opt-in marketing disclaimer so you can use those emails in the future!

6. Put Your Social Media to Work

You likely have at least a few social media accounts, so make sure you’re getting the most out of them when it comes to building your email list.

You can add an email sign-up button or opt-in form directly on your Facebook page and a link in your profile to platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

Social media accounts are also a great way to promote your lead magnet, giveaway, or contest to amplify awareness. To further increase reach, consider running a social media advertising campaign.

7. Consider an Email Marketing List Builder

Remember that many email marketing list builder services — like Hubspot, Optimonk, and Klayvio — might also be worth considering. These services require an additional financial investment. However, they can be helpful because many provide pre-built sign-up forms, pop-up capabilities, landing page creation, lead tracking and management, A/B testing, and more.

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“Slow and steady wins the race,” is a good mantra for building an email list that will pay dividends in the future. While it won’t happen overnight, putting tactics like these into place to garner an engaged, relevant audience for your brand will help expand your list in all the right ways.

If you don’t know where to start, Denver Post Media has a team of local, trusted experts in content marketing, email, and social media to help you effectively build your email list and more. Check out our full suite of marketing solutions here.