How to Build an Email Marketing List Quickly

We have created this list of some strategies we have personally used or been on the receiving end of in Email Marketing. They all can increase your email subscription growth quickly.

What’s the difference between your blog post-converting at 6% and converting at 60%?

We have 9 reasons why that might be!

They are…

1. Content Upgrades.

Here’s how it works.

The Strategies are:

Write a blog post.
Create a piece of content that goes more in-depth on the post’s topic.
Offer readers of your blog post the option to receive the upgraded content in exchange for their email.

This strategy is brilliant in its simplicity. Your readers have already expressed interest in a topic by clicking through to the blog post. Why not take advantage of their interest by offering them more?

This strategy gets unrivaled results, but it can also be one of the most time-consuming strategies.

2. In-Email Social Sharing Options

Typically, your goal for sending out blog posts to your email subscribers is to obtain click-throughs to your website and generate site traffic.

Considering we want website traffic and, of course, for users to actually read our content, the concept of adding social sharing buttons in the email itself seems a bit counterproductive.

Why would someone share my post without reading it? And how does that benefit me?

Email provider GetResponse noticed a trend in the addition of social sharing buttons within emails and did a study on the results.

The average CTR for emails with social sharing options is 6.2% versus 2.4% without.

That’s a 158% advantage for emails with social sharing!

Even if your subscribers don’t read the article themselves, each share is likely to be generating traffic from multiple visitors, which means more bang for your marketing buck.

3. Host A Giveaway

What does it take to run a successful giveaway?

A compelling prize your audience actually wants
Bonus entries for referrals
Guaranteed bonus incentives for all non-winners (something you can give for free)
Promotion to relevant audiences

An example, a Yearly Subscription to AWeber or Leadpages. For anyone else – anyone not interested in marketing or e-commerce – it’s worthless.

Problem solved.

4. Opt-In Featured Incentives

These days, it’s rare to find a high-traffic website that doesn’t have some type of featured opt-in incentive. This could be an Ebook, swipe file, white paper, resource list, free software tool, or any number of content types, but all of them serve as opt-in incentives for acquiring email subscriptions.

The difference between this and the previously mentioned Content Upgrade is that Featured Incentives aren’t linked to a specific blog post.

Most websites create one high-value opt-in incentive and then advertise this same incentive via their:

sidebar
lead capture top-bar
opt-in popups
blog post footer
author bio

The advantage of this strategy is that it’s effective. You only have to create a single piece of content, and you can then utilize this content at every turn.

5. Pop-ups

Social Media Examiner.com attributes 70% of its 190,000 subscriptions to the site’s pop-up form.

The best part about pop-ups is they are easy. You can’t argue with 9 times more subscribers for a few minutes worth of work. The steps for installing a successful popup are easy.

Install a pop-up script or plugin
Write a few lines of copy
Watch your subscription rates jump

Pop-ups are insanely easy to implement and they work for any business.

The point is, love ‘em or hate ‘em, pop-ups are extremely successful… like the Kardashians.

6. Leverage the Social Proof

Social Proof is powerful. 63% of consumers say they are more likely to purchase from a site that has product ratings or reviews.

One of the keys to leveraging social proof is volume. The bigger numbers you have, the better.

So if you have 2,000 email subscribers, 10,000 Facebook fans, 15,000 Twitter followers, and 5,000 LinkedIn accounts, you’re doing better than most, but none of those numbers are particularly impressive.

Do you want the potential subscriber to look at your “proof” and think, “Wow”?

Why not just add all those numbers together? “32,000 followers/readers/subscribers” is a lot more impressive of a number.

The great news is that this strategy works for anyone. Anyone can add a lot of numbers together to make a bigger number.

7. The Name Drop

There are two types of people:

People who care about what people think
People who care about what THOSE people think

Your social proof won’t be nearly as effective as a well-placed name drop.

Name dropping links your brand with another brand. It’s a way to borrow and leverage someone else’s authority and influence, while simultaneously establishing your own.

The beauty of the Name Drop is that you only need one.

All it takes is one credible name to get your foot in the door. If you provide quality content to your audience, that one credible name will often be enough to get that email subscription. From there, it’s up to you what you do with it.

8. Customer Referrals Via Bonus

People want to be happy and make their friends happy. If you are making your email subscribers happy, they will naturally want to share the love.

Your first option is to simply ask subscribers to refer your content to their friends and coworkers. As I previously mentioned, email subscribers are far more likely to engage with your content than any other group.

But you can do a lot better than simply asking. Make them an offer they can’t refuse – a bonus so good that they cant say no.

Setting up a referral system is a fantastic way to quickly hack your email subscriptions. And best of all, you can do it yourself at low cost.

9. Webinars

Webinars are one of the most efficient, versatile forms of content you will ever create, and they work like a charm for hacking your email growth.

A solid webinar can be recorded in 15 minutes and serve as a standalone product, a product launch piece, or a cog in your direct-sales funnel. webinar

Webinars are more compelling than regular videos because they have a limited run time. You have to show up at the right moment, which creates a micro-commitment and generates urgency.

Viewers are often coaxed with a claim of “limited spots available,” creating a false sense of scarcity. Since attendance requires uses to enter their email address, the right webinar or, better yet, the right series of webinars, can generate a massive influx of subscribers.