Digital Marketing Blog

Marketing has taken another leap digitally in the form of social media.

And since there are so many marketing options available people wonder if email marketing makes the same impact in 2020 as it did a few years back.

Well, it does.

Email marketing plays a very significant role in the daily functioning of businesses.

It not only helps you build a relationship with your customers but also serves as a medium to inform your potential customers about your products and/or services.

It’s a cost-effective strategy as anyone with an email address can be contacted through email marketing.

That is the reason why email marketing is considered one of the most practical and most efficient methods for connecting with your audience.

Since a large part of the audience uses smartphones, and have their email applications on their phones; engaging them directly through emails can be really easy. It helps you keep them updated about your business and upcoming projects.

Through email marketing, firms have a chance at targeting a large audience base, irrespective of who they are. This helps them reach out to more people and convert more leads.

You can personalize your emails according to the target audience, and make the message more impactful and informative for the recipient. Your email content can also help you make email marketing more interactive, and more interaction leads to more business.

Using email lists and email addresses have a widespread reach.

They can connect with people in a way no other marketing channel can, which is very important to building relationships with people, so they spend money with you.

The best part about email marketing is that you can keep track of who opened your emails and how many people subscribed, making your efforts measurable so that you can see how you as a company are growing.

What Is An Email List?

To start with your email marketing, the very first thing that you as a marketer would be needing is a list of email addresses that you can send emails to.

This list of emails usually has people who have permitted you to send them emails.

These are the people who have subscribed and, therefore, this list can also be referred to as the subscribers' list.

What Are The Benefits Of Having An Email List

Since email marketing has been labeled as one of the most effective ways of marketing, having an email list could benefit you in a number of ways.

Some of these benefits are:

You Can Communicate Directly Like No Other Network

It is important to build an email list as it helps you communicate with your audience directly.

You can email these people because they have subscribed, making them interested in your content. So make sure that you make the most of your emailing list.

Lower Costs Per Lead

You don't have to spend much money on an investment for these mailing lists, which makes this a much cheaper method of marketing for businesses.

Email marketing is a low cost, which could be your perfect pick if you are looking for a cheaper method of marketing.

However, the content to be used for the emails needs to be impactful. And for this, you might need to increase your budget a bit and hire a professional copywriter.

You Have Access To A Larger Audience

Undoubtedly, social media marketing has shown an increasing trend in the marketing industry.

But when it comes down to reaching out to real audiences and a larger audience segment who would actually be interested in your product, emailing is perhaps the best marketing tool.

This is because it helps you access a larger audience base.

There still might be people who would not have any social media accounts, but everyone always has an email address as we all know that even your smartphone requires an email address to set it up.

You Spread Through Word Of Mouth

Businesses become more popular and known when a customer tells another one about your brand or your product. This word of mouth can help you gain more subscribers.

Your emailing list would probably have people who are interested in your work.

And therefore, if they like what you have to offer, there is a high probability that they would be informing others in their circle about it.

Should You Buy An Email List?

Of course, not!

There are many authentic ways in which you, as a business marketer can obtain an email list relevant to your brand.

But before we talk about those, we need to talk about the most commonly made mistake of marketers when creating an email list -they buy an email list.

There are business marketers who, instead of authentically acquiring a mailing list, go out purchasing the list. Hence investing a good amount of money into something that will not benefit them to the same extent as it would if they were to acquire it authentically.

Why?

Here is a list of reasons why you should NEVER buy an email list:

1. You are going against the consent rules made under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), making you a legal offender. You simply cannot send emails to people without their consent.

2. If you buy an email list and then hire an email marketing service, there are chances that these service providers will not cater to you and will not send emails to the bought-list email addresses. This will waste all the money that you have just invested.

3. If there are email addresses available for sale, it’s probably a sign that these are not ‘good’ enough for your business. Spending your investment on such lists will only waste your time and money.

4. You buy a mailing list, email all of them to market you, but what is the point of doing this when they will not recognize your name? And as a result, will be marking your email as spam or put it in the trash? Mailing lists that are bought often have people who are not aware of your brand, and therefore do not pay attention to the emails you send.

5. There is a high chance of you losing your IP reputation. When you purchase an emailing list, you have no idea about how many times you have emailed the same email address. And since there are bodies taking care of spam-like activities, you might just cause your business a whole lot of trouble if you fall under their radar.

6. You, as a business, will be perceived as annoying or intruding on the personal space of a person. The recipient doesn’t know you, and receiving an email from someone you don’t know might seem very suspicious. Therefore, you are putting your business’ reputation at stake.

7. Your email service provider can penalize you. For instance, if you are using Gmail or Yahoo to send emails to the mailing list that you just bought, and if people are labeling your email account as spam, these service providers have the authority to penalize you. They refuse to offer any services to you, as this would directly impact their credibility as an email service provider.

While you might think buying an email list is easy and not very expensive, you are putting a lot at stake here.

The bottom line is: Never BUY an email list.

15 Ways To Build An Email List

A business needs to use an authentically acquired mailing list for their email marketing.

Here are a few ways in which you can build an email list organically:

1. Use Forms

Giving your customers forms to fill out the required information, including their email addresses, could be a great way to collect email addresses.

This will not only give you access to their email IDs but will also show how many people would be interested in receiving emails from your business.

2. Use Lead Generation Offers

Using a lead magnet to attract customers to make them give you their email addresses can be a great strategy.

You can add a call-to-action on your website or your social media page like ‘subscribe now’ or 'subscribe to explore more.' This is your way of engaging them.

Here is an example of a lead magnet below that is fully up and running.  You can click on it below to see how it works.

3. Simply Ask People For Their Email Address

You can directly ask people on the various social media forums as well as your website to 'sign up,' where they will be asked to give their email addresses, adding themselves to your mailing list.

4. Offer Freebies

One of the best ways to attract consumers is to offer free gifts and vouchers.

For instance, offering a customer/visitor to sign up and win a gift will have a better response than just telling them simply to sign up.

5. Use Social Media 

Social media is popularly being used for social networking and business marketing.

You can use this trend for your benefit and create contests where people can be asked to send their details to you and be a part of the competition.

6. Create Free Bonus Content That Is Worth Paying For

Creative and engaging content like videos and blogs catches the attention of a viewer, which can lead them to sign up or to follow your content.

Here are a few examples of how we give our audience free bonus content:

• Host live social media trainings

• Publish free blog content

• Give out social media packs that offer value

• Send out a newsletter every Tuesday.

• Comment and serve people on the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. 

• Offer free eBooks and trainings

• Offer free infographics

7. Add A Signup Button To Your Facebook Business Page

If you are using social media to market your business and to create a mailing list, you can always add a button to your Facebook page, asking them to 'click here to sign up.'

This will attract all your followers, including the ones who are not already on your mailing list, to subscribe so that they could continue to get emails from you.

8. Create A Blog & Offer A Subscription

Blogging is yet another very effective way of engaging profile visits and views.

All the visitors who visit your blog can be asked to subscribe as soon as they open your blog.

This could be a pop-up window that would ask them for their information, or it could be at the end of the blog for them to fill once they are done reading your blog.

9. Ask For Feedback On Products And Services

Customers love being asked how the services were and whether they were up to their expectations or not. This makes them feel important and gives a very good impression of the business.

In order to attract customers to sign up and be a part of your mailing list, you can ask your customers to send you their feedback, which will give you access to their email address with their consent.

10. Ask For Customer Testimonials And Reviews

Engage your customers effectively by asking them for their testimonials on the products that they have used.

A good testimonial will not only benefit your brand impression but will also make your customers trust you with their email ID’s

11. Run Or Host A Webinar

A webinar is another marketing trend that is still practiced by a number of businesses.

It is a great way to attract your customers to take part in different activities and can be used to access their contact information, especially their email addresses.

12. Host Offline Or Online Events

You cannot imagine a life without the internet. And since everything is digitally connected, you can always host online and even offline events for your customers.

Invite their friends and families, which will increase your mailing list authentically. When they signup for the event, they can also mention their email addresses on the signup form.

Here is one example of how we serve our TEC Facebook group and you could do the same for your audience on whatever topic you want.  You just have to find the right people who are interested in what you have to offer. 

We over monthly trainings to help teach and serve our audience on social media to stay engaged and create new marketing opportunities. 

13. Collect Contact Info On Your Website

A customer visiting your website can be asked for their information to sign up to continue browsing your site.

This is a great way to get access to email addresses from anyone who visits your website.

These are all the people who are interested in your product or service and, therefore, that is why they are visiting your site.

14. Create A Newsletter

Here's a partial example of our email newsletter that we send out every Tuesday at 10 A.M. Eastern. 

Design a creative newsletter for your brand and spread it rapidly on all your social media accounts, as well as your website. This newsletter could also have an option to sign up or subscribe to all the people who read it.

As a result, it will add to your mailing list. 

Creating a email newsletter is a great way to also keep your audience engaged with your business.

You can also create interactive ways for your email list to engage in your emails that help boost email benchmarks and rates.

15. Create A Funnel

By creating an email funnel, you would be getting a better insight into all the potential customers and all the possible conversions.

Once you have access to this information, it will be easier to pitch strategies to these potential customers so that they become loyal buyers.

And resultantly, spread a good word of mouth for your brand and your product, increasing your mailing list.

Ways To Use Your Email List To Make Money

The very first thing in the morning that most of us do is check our emails, right?

Email plays a significant role in your life, whether you are an entrepreneur or a digital marketer.

And since email is so important, you should know that with an email list, you as a business have many opportunities to make tons of money.

Here are some strategies to help you make money with your email list: 

Sell Your Products or Services

Sell your products or services to all the visitors of your website.

Make your product appear appealing enough to attract visitors to become customers.

Re-run Old Campaigns And Strategies 

You can use the mailing lists to run campaigns for your products.

If there was a specific campaign in the past that turned out to be great for your brand, then run it once again and gain profits.

You can also break down your sales funnel or sales process to get ideas for marketing and opportunities to sell new products or services to your audience. 

Create Creative And Engaging Content That's Worth Paying For

Interesting products/services can be marketed in very creative ways. Content is one of the most important factors of any business or brand and if your content is crappy then that directly reflects on every other part of your business. 

You have to set your audience and clients up for success by always providing value to them in some way. 

You need to make sure that your content is attractive to the eye and engaging for the customers who are receiving these emails, as they are your target audience.

Segment, Segment, Segment  

The last and the most important way in which you can make larger profits using your mailing list is by segmenting your audience.

You can segment your audience according to their interests and needs and offer them products or services, respectively. This will give a much better response to your marketing strategies.

As a result of your segmentation, you will make more money.

For instance, if you are a business coach and have a number of entrepreneurs on your mailing list, you could pitch them your products that are most relevant for these entrepreneurs, resulting in instant sales.

You want to have a marketing strategy for each specific list to get the best results. You could end up having 100's of different lists that you can market to in different ways.

This also opens up the door for endless opportunities to make money. 

Conclusion

Mailing lists can be a source of large profits if these are used effectively. Email marketing can help you reach a larger market at a lower cost, and help you maintain a more direct and engaging relationship with your customers.

It is important that you create a strong and authentic emailing list of customers/visitors who show interest in your brand and product.

Once this has been achieved, the next step is to be consistent in connecting with your potential buyers through lead generation methods or offering them free content.

This way, they will trust your brand name and enjoy using your products, eventually becoming a regular customer.

If you would like to have more conversations like these make sure to check out the TEC (The Entrepreneur Cooperative)!