The Power of Email Marketing: How to Build a Successful Subscriber List and Increase Engagement

Email is a valuable communication channel that no marketing strategy should ignore. With the right approach, it can bring your business big results with good returns.

But what's right when it comes to email marketing and how do you achieve it? We'll cover two key points needed to create a successful email campaign: building an email list and increasing your subscriber engagement .

Ideas for creating an email list

📜Let's say you are starting from scratch. Try the next few ideas and you'll quickly reach your goal of building an email audience that's interested in your business and ready to open their wallet.

Create a magnet to collect leads

Relax, you don't need to understand physics to create a lead magnet or lead magnet. It's simply a resource that a user can use after providing an email address. 🧲

The leed magnet could be something of a downer:

• Free eBook;
• free course;
• Webinar access;
• Template;
• PDF with useful information.

And it could be something else like:

• discount coupon;
• access to quiz;
• participation in a game (the so-called "giveaway").

These ideas are simple but workable ways to collect email addresses of potential customers while providing something valuable and interesting to them. Prepare the content you're going to offer carefully and be sure they 'll remember you fondly.

Put pop-ups on your website

Pop-ups - no one likes them, but everyone uses them. Probably the reason is that they work.

It can be quite annoying for your website visitors to see a pop-up immediately after the page loads, which they rush to close to get to your content.

If you are of this opinion, you can try the other two options:

• Pop-up on window closing intent (exit-intent). Displayed when the user moves the cursor to the close window button. This is the time to offer something interesting and exciting in exchange for an email address - for example, a promo code or one of the free resources we listed above.
• Pop-up when scrolling down (scroll box). Once they read/view a certain piece of your content/products, it would be only natural to prompt users to sign up for your newsletter to receive more interesting and useful information from your business.

Something important to keep in mind if you're using pop-ups to collect emails is to be careful that they don 't show up to users who come from your newsletter, i.e. those who are already subscribed. Also watch that you don't interrupt and distract them with pop-ups at favourite moments, like when they're finishing their order.

The idea of this technique is to hit the perfect combination between a call to action and the right moment to make it. Then a positive result to grow your email list is much more likely.

Pay attention to the calls to action

Personalized or witty calls to action (CTAs) are your friends when it comes to collecting emails.

It's important that the message matches the page users are currently viewing. This will hit them right in the heart of their interests and problems.

For example, if a user is reading an article on "How to Build an Email List," the message to request their email might be something like, "Click here to download a template for your email marketing strategy."

And let's go back to the pop-ups again.

While there's nothing wrong with the usual "sign me up", the button next to the email form is where you can unleash your creativity.

If the message at the top is, for example, "Sign up for our newsletter to receive exclusive discounts," the button at the bottom could be "Yes, I want to save money." A common practice is to have a second button next to the first button that closes the pop-up and says, for example, "No, I don't want to save". It's counterintuitive to click the second button, isn't it?

Create a landing page optimized for conversions

Create a dedicated landing page for your email collection campaigns to lead to. This is where you communicate the special offer that users will gain access to after providing their details.

As always, pay attention to the design and advertising messages and be sure to recall our landing page optimization ideas.

Use social networks

Social networks can help a lot in building your email list. There are several options:

• Through advertising campaigns. Use traffic acquisition as the goal of the ad to drive users to the landing page through which you will collect emails. Another option, if you don't have a dedicated landing page, is to try Lead Ads campaigns where you can collect emails directly on Facebook, and have users download the content they want without logging into your site.
• Use your newsletter as the theme for the cover photo of your Facebook page.
• Encourage your followers to sign up for your newsletter in a dedicated organic campaign (well, you can try to boost it with some other bucks).
• Test the option to collect emails via Facebook and Instagram shares with a link to your sign-up form or lead collection landing page.

Create a referral program for new enrollments

Word of mouth marketing is the best option for any business. 💋 Try using your most dedicated fans and most regular customers for this purpose. Offer them a discount or special offer if a friend signs up for your newsletter through their personal link. This way you provide added value for everyone involved, and that always leads to success.

Add an enrollment link in your employee signatures

You may not collect a huge amount of emails this way, but the likelihood of them being to people who are genuinely interested in your business is high. After all, they are already in communication with you for one reason or another, so don't neglect this idea. And it won't take you long.

Okay, we collected the emails. Well, now how do we agange these people?

Your work doesn't end with building your email list. On the contrary, it only begins then. Here are a few ideas on how to engage your email list and reap the rewards of your digital labor.

Be sure you have permission

Very, very important - the email list must consist of people who have consented to receive them. This means that if they've downloaded your ebook, they must have ticked the box next to which it says they agree to receive promotional messages from you. If they don't, good health. Others will come.

Follow the principles of GDPR and everything will be fine.

Keep your email list healthy

For this purpose, please send confirmation emails upon enrolment. This will ensure that the user in question really wants to receive messages from you.

Another good practice is to regularly purge inactive users from your list. Before you do that, try waking them up with a themed campaign. If they don't activate, they're probably no longer interested in your business and you're better off removing them from your list. If you don't regularly purge your list of inactive subscribers, they will influence your audience engagement data, and that hinders good analytics.

Segment and personalize your emails

Personal communication in this marketing-saturated world is key to surfacing and capturing consumer attention. Personalization today is much more than adding the subscriber's name to your text and subheader. But it's also important, of course.

For successful personalized communication, you need to acquire enough data about your subscribers such as names, location, date of birth, profession. Consider what will benefit your business and don't overdo it because the more data a user has to enter, the more likely they are to opt out.

If your business is an online store, link it to the email sending system you use. This will give you access to information such as number of orders, favorite products, average order value, last order date, and more that can be used in your email campaigns.

Once you have all this data, segment your subscriber list by different attributes. For example:

• by demographics (location, occupation);
• according to your site behavior (number of orders, last order date, favorite products);
• according to engagement with your email campaigns (when was the last open, etc.).

These are all steps towards building an effective email marketing strategy and increasing engagement with your audience.

Experiment with different types of emails

Diverse content is important to keep your audience interested. Use a mix of carefully constructed and properly targeted email automations and other regular campaigns. Some examples are:

• welcome emails;
• emails about an abandoned cart;
• re-engagement emails;
• educational emails;
• special offers.

Pay attention to the content

When creating an email campaign, remember that all elements are important.

📧First of all is the subject line, which the user sees even before opening the email. These few words, combined with the others that are in the preview box, determine whether your email will reach the eyes of the people you are targeting at all.

Then comes the real part of the email campaign. In the text be sincere, natural, tell a story. Make the reader feel like they're talking to a friend. A friend who gives him the urge to hurry up and buy something at a lower price. After all, that's what friends are for.

Of course, don't neglect the email design . Here are a few ideas for you to draw inspiration from.

Know your audience

Last but not least. For your communication to be successful, be it via email or any other communication channel, you need to know who you are talking to. What kind of person is your ideal customer? What is he or she interested in? What problems does he have and how can your business help him solve them?

You can read how to build a buyer profile or buyer persona here.

Follow our guidelines for building and engaging an email subscriber list and the results won't be long in coming. As always, you'll need to test different techniques and analyze their results, but with a solid dose of creativity and patience, you'll nail the exact formula for email communication that will excite your audience. And in case you get stuck, we at digital agency ADvantage are here to help.