How To Exponentially Grow Your Email List

Create Content Worth Sharing

If your newsletter has high-quality content, which is unique and easily shareable, encourage your subscribers to forward them to their friends who are not on your mailing list.

Include an “email-to-a-friend” button functionality in your marketing emails, as well as other social sharing buttons.

Don’t forget to make your email newsletter consistent with your brand identity, as you will make it easy for your subscribers to easily share your business and your brand. By having consistent imagery in tandem with your sharing options, you will gain access to new networks who are likely to recognize your business from advertisements and sign up for your newsletter.

Make sure to include a “subscribe now” call to action (CTA) in your emails. Even a simple text-based link at the bottom of your message can make it easy for individuals receiving the forwarded emails to opt-in to your mailing list as well. In addition to emails, include CTAs on your website.

Site-Wide Call-to-Actions

Strategically place CTAs, paired with links, across your website’s pages and sections. Increasing the visibility of your opt-in links makes it more likely you’ll receive increased sign-ups.

Most websites only try to capture emails in one place on their websites. By, let’s say, including email sign-up links on three separate pages, you’ll increase the chances of your conversions.

Check your analytics to review which pages on your website are most visited and include your CTAs and links together on these pages. If you’re unsure where to start, you can always include them on your home, contact, and about pages.

Add an Email Signature Link

Including a link at the end of your email, in your e-signature, is a viable strategy to entice people to click-through to your website. Links in signatures don’t just have to be anchored to the name of your website; instead, they can be anchored to their own unique call-to-action like, “see why everyone’s talking about Bookmark,” which brings them to an email opt-in landing page.

Use Social Media to Grow Your Email List

Social media is an excellent way to get more subscribers to your mailing list. For instance, you can promote some of your lead-gen offers on Facebook or Twitter. Simply create a social networking campaign to promote a free resource or eBook to your followers, and require them to submit a valid email address in order to redeem their free products.

You can also use your Facebook account to promote an offer, which would require submission of an email address to redeem. Try to promote all offers on your timeline and always be sure to include some visible social sharing buttons in the thank-you and landing pages to encourage your followers to share your offers.

At the top of your Facebook business page, add a CTA button and link it to your landing page. Using Pinterest to promote your offers, especially ones that require an email signup. CTAs, here, can also help you obtain more email subscribers.

Gated Offers

Similar to free resources, gated offers tease content before a user and tempt themto provide something like an email in order to access the full document. There are paid and unpaid versions to this tactic. Paid versions of gated content can be exemplified by publications websites such as The Toronto Star, where they offer only 5 free articles a month.

You can employ this method, however, on social media. It’s possible to use the same gated content on multiple site, so publish these forms of content on Facebook business pages, or on your LinkedIn feed and group discussions to attract email signups from your demographics. One side note to posting content is it must be helpful; otherwise, you won’t see much results.

Lastly, try using Pinterest to garner the same effect, except with visual content. You can do this by creating a board where you pin well crafted visuals linking to useful resources and content in exchange for emails. Just as long-from content is desirable to users, so are well-designed infographics. Consider this an alternative to your gated content strategy.

Trade Free Content for Emails

Exchanging free content for the subscribers’ name and email address is one of the best and most popular ways to increase your mailing list.

In fact, most people, especially those with an online business, use this technique often because it works.

When you offer valuable and amazing content in exchange for an email address, you will grow your subscribers’ list faster.

This is more effective than inbound marketing, and it is how many companies have built massive and successful brands in just a few years. You just need to pump out unique, valuable content and market it on your website in exchange for contact details (email address) to download it.

Free PDF

Another popular option exercised by larger companies are access to PDF downloadable resources for email sign-ups.

These are effective methods for securing new subscribers because it presents users with immense value for, what they perceive to be, a small trade-off. If you have the resources or are adept at pooling together secondary research sources or best curated practices into a large guide or study, you’ll see this method working overtime to secure you new users.

In addition to studies and guides, case studies are also valuable content to users. If you can compose a unique case study, which are easier said than done, promote it! Look for opportunities where you can create case studies in your day-to-day and take mental notes for future use.

Use Free Incentives

Although creating unique and high-quality content is one of the best ways to get more subscribers to your email list, it can be effective as well to offer a free incentive. The right incentive can greatly convert for you if you do it correctly.

The free offers can be anything – a free trial of a product, free access to your exclusive video, or even a free eBook with handy information. Make sure the incentive has value and try to get your relationship off to a good start, as it will increase the chances of finding a receptive audience for your next newsletter.

Use Competitions

Creating a viral competition can help to dramatically increase your email lists. Start by creating a contest landing page where you can collect email sign-ups. Once participants are qualified, you can give them a referral code to use for promoting entries. All that’s left is to promote it.

In regards to successful contest campaigns, follow these rules:

• select a prize that is relevant to your target niche.
• the prize needs to be worthwhile in order to encourage participants to share as much as possible.
• have a plan in place for following up with the losers to turn them from participants and entries into customers.

Content Upgrades

You may already have valuable content that is working to convert sign-ups; however, you’re looking for more. If that’s the case, you can upgrade your content by providing something a little extra in exchange for an email.

For example, you published a post on how to write better call-to-actions. You could, then, offer a package of the best performing call-to-actions in a bundle for clients as downloadable content. It’s also common practice to re-purpose best performing content into guides.

Use QR Codes

Think about putting QR codes into your print marketing strategy. Even if it’s handing out flyers on the streets, insert scan-able QR codes at the top or bottom of flyer margins. Provide potential customers with incentives like email discounts to your products or services after sign-up to your mailing list. Try using a free QR code maker to start.

Ask for Feedback

You can elicit feedback from the users on your website. Make a feedback opt-in widget or button visible on your homepage in exchange for an incentive. The incentive can be anything from a free trial of your service to discount coded. Just make sure in order to users to complete your feedback form, they need to enter their email address.

There’s also the possibility to leverage a live chat tool to ask users, who have remained on your site for an extended period of time to complete the feedback form.

Cross-Promotion is Key

Many online marketers are working tirelessly to cultivate their targeted audiences across several different channels, but a huge proportion of them are speaking in silos.

You should know that your Facebook fans aren’t your Twitter followers, who, in turn, aren’t your email subscribers.

Therefore, cross-promotion can help to drive your engaged audience to integrate with your mailing list. It is through your newsletters you can forge a strong relationship with your subscribers.

There are many other ways to grow your email list. Here are some of them:

• Running an AdWords campaign
• Fan-gating 
• Guest posting
• Running a contest, and
• Subscribing through the checkout process, among others.

Increasing the number of your subscribers, aside from making sure that you have a professional and responsive website — is very important when it comes to marketing your business online.

By following the ideas that we have shared with you in this article, you will soon see that indeed, it is possible for you to grow your email list exponentially with just a few strategic techniques.

Email Opt-in Landing Pages

Instead of using annoying pop-ups, think about promoting landing pages or buttons on home pages dedicated to email sign-ups. Most referral dependent companies aren’t afraid to immediately go after emails or referrals, so why should you?. Uber is famous for its referral program: both users who referred friends and friends who became referees received free or discounted rides. Today, on Uber’s website, they immediately ask for sign-ups. See for yourself.

New Email Opt-in Campaigns

If you already contain an old list of email subscribers that isn’t cutting it, create a new engaging opt-in message asking for emails, with a possible reward for its completion.

This seems to be counter-intuitive but really isn’t.  The logic behind creating a new campaign is to attract all of your engaged users to a new list where you’re likely to increase the deliver-ability of your messages, increasing the likelihood your emails will get shared with others outside your current client list.

Shorten Lead Capture Forms

Rather than trying to collect as much information from your users as you can, only ask for pertinent information from them to turn them into a subscriber. You stand the lose a conversion if your forms are too long-winded. You can always follow-up with more questions and surveys.

Reduce your form collection questions to about 2 or 3 fields centered primarily around capturing names and general contact information.

Host a Webinar

Promote a free webinar around a topic central to your industry that is alluring to your user demographics.

Try promoting your webinar on popular social media sites and through media buys as well. Once you have it in the eyes of the public, require any interested party to give their email in exchange for registration. You can then follow-up in a strategic window after the webinar is completed. Try to follow-up with a promotion within a week after the webinar takes place, striking while the iron is still hot.

Export LinkedIn Emails

We all know LinkedIn as a job recruiting and social proof boosting platform, but did you know you could export your contacts’ emails?

It’s one extra, unconventional, way to increase email list candidates over night. You can do this by selecting your network and heading over to connections. There, you will find your “managed synced an imported contacts.” Select the advanced options and click “export contacts.” Last but not least, request a “fast file.” And voila, your new email list will be sent to you in the proceeding minutes.

It’s recommended to separate your contacts based by groups. Determine which of these individuals fit into your respective user demographic groups and email them, suggesting you have valuable information they can opt-in to receive.

Try an Email Preference Centre

Email fatigue is a real condition where your subscribers get tired of the emails your business is sending. This can be due to either the high-frequency or timing of your emails.

With the help of an email preference centre, the power to schedule emails transfers to the individual. They don’t have complete control; however, they can set email frequency rates and determine which days of the week are best for them to receive emails.

The benefit of using an email preference centre is users dictate their terms. This allows them to build trust with your company and can improve your brand’s overall receptivity.

Pitch Industry Publications or Newsletters

Getting featured in an industry publication or newsletter in your niche can make all the difference between having an email list in the four and five digit category.

Start by searching through newsletter directories. Searching by incorporating “keyword” + “newsletter” should help you find something related to your nice, if the directories don’t produce results.

The next step is to determine who curates the newsletter you want to be featured in by reading it, as they typically provide that information inside of it. Lastly, send your email pitch to them asking to be featured. Consider including content the likes of ultimate lists, studies, and guides that are too good to be offered up as a free resource.

Take Away

If you share something of undeniable quality, you will get email sign-ups. Determine which of the above methods best suit your marketing strategy and begin boosting your email lead generation.