Despite the common belief, email marketing is still a powerful method for finding new customers, making more sales or creating a tribe of loyal followers. Most Nigerians regard email marketing as useless, but fail to ask why Jumia, Jiji and Konga (giants of the ecommerce industry in Nigeria), rely extensively on email marketing.
Despite the many benefits of email marketing, small businesses often ignore it, losing out on potential revenue.
In addition to the ability to retain your existing customers, email is one of the most effective ways to convert new visitors into customers, whether you run an online store, a blog, or a small business website.
Email still remains an important digital marketing tool despite the growing popularity of social media, despite the misconception that social media changed the role of email.
This article will teach you what you need to know about building an email list to convert visitors into subscribers. You will learn how to build an email list that can convert visitors into newsletter subscribers.
Tips For Email Marketing: 13 Methods To Build Email List
- Give them different options – Make it easy to register
Making it easy for people to register is perhaps the most important step. You need to make it easy for them to subscribe to your list.
Registration forms shouldn’t require too much information (name and email are sufficient) or be long and cluttered.
If you want people to register with a single click, simply ask them to enter their name and email in the registration box, and then click ‘Register’ after they confirm their email. Once they verify their email, they are automatically added to the list.
- Provide incentives – Why should people join your list?
What are the benefits that the person will receive if they give you their email address?
Please ensure that the benefit of membership is clearly displayed on the registration form/box. Do you plan on providing them with something, such as free ebooks, discounts on their next purchase, coupons, etc.?
- Get more subscribers to your email list by using social media
If you want more email subscribers, there are other options besides your website. Among the many social networks you can use are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and any other you may be using.
It is perfectly acceptable to encourage your followers to join your email list, but you should also provide them with information about the benefits of signing up.
- The email should include all the information they need to read
If you want to increase sales with an email marketing campaign, rather than concentrating on getting more visitors to your website, you should emphasize generating more conversions and not more visits.
Let’s say, for example, you are selling online SEO courses and you are running an email marketing campaign using your blog’s targeted list.
To complete the purchase, the recipient should only need to visit your website. Include as much information as possible about the course in the email.
- Be on the lookout for your competitors
Look at your competition’s email list and see how they are sending out promotional emails, how frequently, and what they are promoting.
This is a strategy aimed at making sure you are ahead of your competitors instead of copying or mimicking them.
- Provide easy unsubscription options
Avoid hiding the unsubscribe button thinking that maintaining their subscription will keep you on their list. It’s better for them to unsubscribe than to have you on their spam list.
- Send emails with links to your social media profiles
Adding social media buttons to your email newsletter is the easiest and most efficient way to enable your subscribers to share the content as well as connect with you in social media.
Using this method will not only help you to increase your subscriber count but you can learn from the mistakes of others and achieve better results by avoiding these common mistakes.
- A lack of a mailing list in the first place
Even when it comes to email marketing, the first mistake is not establishing a list in the first place! Not having an email list for your website or online business is an absolute no-no.
- Not offering signup incentives
If you have a content-based website, then you may be able to generate interest simply by the content itself, but if you are selling goods or services, the incentive may need to be provided (e.g. discounts, special offers) to entice people to sign up.
- Purchasing emails from other sources
It is true that shortcuts do not make you successful – this is true for almost all online activities. If you think that buying emails from an online vendor will lead to success then you are wrong.
- Send bulk emails using an email marketing service
Many people think they can send bulk emails using Outlook or Gmail, but this is not recommended. It is best to work with a vendor.
Cost isn’t an issue for small businesses because most email marketing companies offer free packages.
- Writing a Good Email Content
Based on your websites’ compelling content, this method assumes you have some website subscribers.
Creating and sending excellent email contents to earlier subscribers to your Newsletter is a great way to build an email list for marketing in Nigeria, so ask them to forward it to three friends who share your passion.
- Not asking users to add you to their contact list
Finally, it’s not a bad idea to ask them to add you to their contact list so that they won’t consider your emails spam and you can reach more people.
