Whether your business is online, offline or both is a lot of work. Connecting with your clients is a lot harder if you do not have a proper action plan. While most of your customers today might have an email account, not all of them appreciate your sending them emails on a daily basis.
Email is still relevant
While there has been a lot of criticisms about email marketing claiming that they are intrusive or outright annoying, email is still very much relevant today. No doubt you might get a very small percentage of click-throughs but using an effective email strategy, you might just get some very notable responses.
Sure-win, you’d ask?
Having said the above, building your email list is necessary. The following tips will give your business a boost and help you get the best out of your email list.
- Storefront window – If you don’t know this yet, you are in trouble! Your homepage is the main storefront window of your business that is where you want to get your customers who are interested or curious about what you offer. From the get-go or from the landing page, ask for their email addresses.
- Pop-up – No! We are not asking you to launch pop-ups all the way but only at the exit point. Your users are already leaving, why not launch a last-ditch effort to try and get the key in their email addresses to you? We know how much users dislike pop-ups but as a last-ditch effort, it can work wonders.
- Use a Welcome Mat – This is an add-on that will help you design your homepage into one which gets you to build an email list almost instantly.
- Smart Bar – this add-on is one which is enacted at the top side of your browser and is totally non-intrusive. Put a sign-up now function there and it will direct the user to key in their email address.
- Landing page – This is possibly the most important one because your landing page should do what you seek it out to do. Always give something in return to those who give you their email address like an e-book or a promotional voucher or anything else. No one will key in their email for you for nothing.
- Free trials – Like users downloading software, you should provide free trial periods. It will be necessary if your business is service-based. 30 or 14-day trial periods are very much favored. Hence, you can ask for users to key in their email addresses and register an account with you. That way, you capture them get to create a list too.
- Catch them during checkout – While most of your customers would have given you their email addresses during registration, put an email field at the Checkout. This is extremely important if you allow people to purchase as guests from you.
- Discounts and promos – Basically, you are intending to give incentives to your customers in exchange for their email address. You can give them a discount or an additional free gift, or additional promotions for future purchases. As long as they give you their email address (legitimate or otherwise), you won’t mind giving them a bit more. Besides that, you can use free gifts too.
- Static forms – This is another annoying tactic but it works. With a sign-up box following the user all the way down the page, the constant reminder is there. In fact, it might just ‘force’ the user to sign-up eventually.
- Exclusivity – Use ‘subscribers only’ gate for privileged content. Users tend to give you their email address if they want to be part of the exclusive list. This is like a guest list of getting into a club. If they want to know what you offer, they will freely give you their email address.
- Event – You can now host a podcast, a webinar or an offline event. The idea is to collect as many email addresses as possible. Honestly, you will not be the only one doing this.
- Make cold calls – There is no need to try and sell over the phone. Just make cold calls requesting email addresses. Most people are fine with giving you their email address because it is fast, and they want to end the call quickly. Whether they respond or not, that’s another game plan altogether.
- Surveys – You can always carry out a survey. Start by asking for demographical and psychographic questions. You can collect data and email addresses along the way too.
- Call-to-action – Wherever you are, whichever social network you are using, always have a CTA or call-to-action button. This will surely get your users to engage with you better and faster.
