Even though building a strong email list takes time, the rewards can be great. Finding and connecting with those truly interested in the goods and services you offer makes selling online much easier. This makes crafting quality content, segmenting your list and building your business by creating and managing multiple lists for one or more niches at a time much easier.
Finding Prospects
There are many ways to find potential customers. Marketing your email list online and off increases your chances of finding and connecting to customers who are probably already looking for you.
You can find quality prospects by:
- Creating and marketing a landing page
- Adding sign-up forms to your websites, blogs, social media pages
- Printing sign-up forms for your place of business
- Advertising your newsletter on business cards, fliers, brochures, and pamphlets
- Speaking at local business and networking events (mention your newsletter, provide a URL to landing pages and websites or provide sign-up forms at the event)
- Attending tradeshows and conferences
- Contacting those on other mailing lists you already have
- Creating a mobile text messaging campaign
- Partnering with other business owners to cross-sell products (never give out email addresses of those on your list, instead recommend goods and services from reputable businesses or encourage people to sign up for their newsletter and vice versa)
As you can see, there are many, many ways to connect with those most likely to be interested in your goods and services. Be creative and patient as building a strong mass email list takes time.
Gathering Email Addresses
Since some people still feel uncomfortable giving out personal information like email addresses, they will avoid signing up for newsletters and product information. Change their minds by creating a quality landing page that asks for very basic information. Your landing page should include a short list that highlight the benefits of membership and three or four fields that ask for a subscriber's first and last name and a valid email address.
Asking for much more than that will scare off many potential customers or prompt lazy people to forego signing up because it's just too much work. You can always ask for that information later on after establishing a trusting relationship.
Double-Opt In
While these is still disagreement within the email marketing community as to whether using a double-opt in page really helps weed out interested subscribers from VERY interested subscribers, testing to see if this method works is worth it. You can always remove the page later on if you see a drop in subscription rates or if you notice too many people on your list aren't active.
A double-opt in page is a confirmation page sent to a subscriber's inbox. Subscribers have to click on the confirmation link to receive your official welcome message.
A Final Word
Email prospecting by targeting specific groups online and off instead of just putting up a landing page and hoping people eventually reach it is the only way to create a strong, profitable list. Don't forget this important step when designing an email marketing campaign.