Marketers nowadays place a lot of attention on webinars, video marketing, and other new opportunities to reach out to their clients. However, you shouldn’t let modern communication tools distract you from one of the oldest and most powerful messaging channels – email. Email marketing continues to be the most effective marketing channel, outperforming social media, search engine optimisation (SEO), and affiliate marketing.
What is the reason for this? The majority of people use email, according to statistics, and the number is growing every year. You also own the connections with email marketing, so you don’t have to worry about algorithm updates reducing your reach. That’s why it’s more crucial than ever to create effective email marketing strategies and mailing lists.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is direct marketing that involves sending customised, bulk emails to leads to educate and persuade them to do a specific action, such as purchasing something. It’s a very successful digital marketing strategy and when done effectively, prospects turn into customers, and one-time buyers turn into repeat customers. For good reason, email marketing has been around for a long time. It regularly outperforms all other marketing channels when it comes to interacting with your leads, nurturing them, and converting them into customers.
How email marketing works
Email marketing is one of the most effective tactics, thanks to its simplicity and ability to be automated. In its most basic form, an efficient email marketing campaign involves three important aspects:
- An Email List: You’ll need an active email list to run successful email campaigns. This is a list of email addresses that have expressed an interest in getting marketing emails for your business. Building an email list can be done in a variety of ways. One of the simplest is to design a lead magnet (also known as an offer) that your target audience will want to exchange for their email addresses, such as a discount code.
- An Email Service Provider: An email service provider (ESP), usually referred to as an email marketing platform, is software that aids in the management of your email list. It also helps in the creation and implementation of automated email marketing campaigns. You can use an ESP to automate actions that are triggered by the behaviours of your target audience. These allow you to customise each connection with them, resulting in higher engagement and conversion rates.
- Clearly Defined Goals: Email marketing can help you achieve a variety of business objectives. You can, for example, utilise email marketing to:
- Increase brand awareness and drive sales.
- Generate and nurture leads.
- Increase client loyalty and lifetime value by keeping customers engaged.
Your email list, ESP, and campaign goals must all be in sync to run a successful email marketing campaign. Then you can get down to business. The first step is to categorise your email list by demographics or actions taken by subscribers. Create an email, or a series of emails, to persuade customers to take action. Finally, use your email service provider (ESP) to send emails and track the campaign automatically.
The benefits of email marketing
As a marketer, you may have overheard employees discussing how email marketing is dead and many marketing departments have been concerned about it. You don’t have to worry because email marketing is still going strong. In fact, 87% of B2B marketers say email is one of their top free organic distribution channels. This statistic is far too important for us to ignore as marketers. This is why it is critical to create a solid email marketing strategy.
Let’s have a look at the top benefits of email marketing and why it is one of the most powerful marketing strategies.
Personalised content creation
You may personalise your campaigns and provide targeted content with email marketing. Personalisation can be as simple as including the name of a contact in an email. Emails with the recipient’s first name in the subject line receive a higher clickthrough rate than those without. On the other hand, segmenting your audience allows you to produce personalised content and send relevant emails to the right customers. For example, you might want to send one email marketing campaign to repeat customers and another to new customers.
One of the biggest advantages of email marketing is that you can tailor your content to your audience’s specific demands. To improve interaction, your emails may include variants such as alternative graphics or subject lines. You may also segment your lists by geography or engagement levels. You must send the correct email to the right people at the right time to have a successful email marketing campaign. Segmentation and personalisation can help with this.
Collecting feedback and surveys
If you want customers to continue to interact with, engage with, and purchase from your company, keeping an eye on the customer experience is critical. This is something that email marketing can assist you with. For example, you can use email campaigns to distribute customer satisfaction surveys and solicit feedback. In fact, this is one of the most effective methods for determining your Net Promoter Score (NPS). This score can be used to find the percentage of customers who are brand ambassadors and those who are detractors. You can develop ways to improve your consumer experience using this data.
Increased sales
While email marketing is definitely an effective marketing technique for awareness, it can also help you improve sales. 59% of marketers think email is their most important source of ROI, with segmented campaigns resulting in a 760% boost in revenue. Email marketing campaigns can highlight products or services, urge customers to buy after exiting their carts or send customers exclusive offers.
Your email marketing campaigns can simply include messages to urge a purchase from an audience that has opted-in to receive your messages and updates, making them more inclined to buy from you. You can also utilise email marketing to automate a portion of your sales process, which can help you boost sales.
Getting in touch with your target audience
As a marketer, you should always strive to improve your audience’s communication. Your audience is more likely to grow devoted to your company if they feel like they can talk to you. Consider this: People value nice emails. Think about the last time you received a marketing email from your favourite brand, was it annoying or did you appreciate reading the latest updates?
You probably appreciated the experience and it kept you in contact with one of your favourite brands. You can reach a larger audience and communicate with brand ambassadors more simply with email marketing. Plus, these emails keep your audience engaged throughout the year, regardless of whether it’s a slow or busy season.
Generating traffic to your website
How do you get outstanding content to your audience once you’ve created it? You almost certainly send them an email. You’ll drive visitors to your website and enhance your SEO with email marketing campaigns. You’ll also keep your audience interested in your business and website. Keep in mind that each email containing a link to your content should include a call to action (CTA) so that readers can click through to your site.
Sending out campaigns on schedule
Traditional marketing efforts have a time and place but planning and organising them can take months. Even then, you are probably not sure if your marketing assets will be seen at the correct time. Email marketing, on the other hand, allows you to construct a full campaign with less notice because it takes less time to plan.
You can also ensure that your audience receives the email at the appropriate moment. Segmenting your audience, for example, helps ensure that you provide content at the appropriate moment.
Increasing leads
In the same way that email marketing can help you raise sales, it can also help you increase leads. In reality, email marketing is used in the inbound technique to nurture leads and improve conversions. Say you download a lead magnet from a website, then you start getting drip emails, and you decide to schedule a demo to understand more.
You’ve just upgraded from a marketing-qualified lead (MQL) to a sales-qualified lead (SQL), increasing the quantity of qualifying leads for the sales team. Email marketing efforts can help your sales team further qualify prospects, so they don’t waste time on bad leads. Plus, if your company uses lead scoring, you can keep track of whether or not those leads open or engage with your emails by clicking the links in the email.
Reaching the right people at the right time
As mentioned before, you must reach the appropriate customers at the right time to have a successful marketing campaign. This is such a critical subject. Because individuals check their email on a regular basis, email marketing makes it much easier to reach them. They may access information at any time and on many devices, which can help any marketing campaign succeed. Meaning you are in front of your audience on a frequent basis, ensuring that you’re always top-of-mind.
Creating campaigns that are cost-effective
Email marketing efforts are more cost-effective than traditional campaigns such as direct mail or print. You won’t have to pay for photoshoots, location costs, printing, mailing, or placement, for example. If you aren’t using stock photos, all you need is a copywriter and a graphic designer. This might even be a single member of your team. Additionally, email campaigns are quick to create.
You may send an email in one day, if necessary, which is more cost effective than doing a direct mail or print campaign. Because marketers are always limited by time and money, email marketing campaigns can be more efficient while simultaneously generating revenue and leads.
Providing more value to your audience
One of the most important aims of any business is to deliver value to its customers so that they will return. Because you can give value even when customers aren’t making a purchase, email marketing is a terrific way to cultivate loyal customers. You may also utilise email marketing to deliver extra resources to contacts who are interested in what you have to say since they opted-in. More people will pay attention if you consistently deliver value to your audience, and your ROI will increase.
Having a place for self-promotion
Self-promotion in places where prospects haven’t necessarily opted-in to receive information about your company might be difficult at times. Self-promotion, on the other hand, is one of the most effective techniques to attain customers. No one will buy from you if you can’t market yourself and sell your company. You’ll always have an avenue to promote yourself with email marketing campaigns, especially when customers opted-in. You can use email to inform customers about new products, features, and benefits, as well as new content. This self-promotion isn’t undesired or disruptive because customers want to hear from you.
Taking control of your media and contact lists
You don’t own your contact list or the information you share on social media platforms. Typically, the social media platform owns your content as well as your follower list. How many customers and followers would you lose if social media disappeared tomorrow? That is why it is critical for marketers to create an email list. You control the list of contacts, and you can communicate with them independently, regardless of the email provider. You’ll also have ownership of the content you create and send.
What is an email list?
An email list is a collection of addresses that a company keeps because customers have agreed to receive content and updates about your company via email. Email lists, also known as subscriber lists, can shrink as members unsubscribe and increase as you collect more and more addresses through lead generation.
If you haven’t started building your email list yet, or you have run out of ideas, here are a few easy methods to grow your mailing list. It’s important to note that with these methods, customers must be able to opt-in to receive future emails from your company.
How to grow your email list using email
Create unique email content
Want to keep your current subscribers and enlist their support in expanding your list? Make your own email content. Your recipients will always look forward to getting your emails if they are entertaining, educational, and valuable, and they will be more inclined to forward them to their networks. This will help you earn more visibility and subscribers.
Encourage your email subscribers to forward and share your emails
In your marketing emails, include social sharing buttons and an Email to a Friend button. You’ll receive access to the recipients’ friends, colleagues, and networks, which will help you build your contact list. Include a Subscribe CTA as a simple text-based link at the bottom of your emails so that recipients of forwarded emails may easily opt in as well.
Create buyer persona segments in your email lists
Email recipients are more likely to open emails that are tailored to their unique interests, so employing several types of email subscriptions to send customised content to different portions of your audience is a good idea. Visitors are more likely to subscribe to one of your targeted subscriber types if you develop multiple of them.
Utilise an opt-in campaign to revitalise a dated email list
Do you have an old list that you think is mostly rotten? Create an interesting opt-in message and send it to your old list, encouraging contacts to re-opt in if they wish, but vowing to remove any contacts who do not react. Though it may seem contradictory to remove people from your email list in order to build it, emailing contacts you know are engaged can boost deliverability and enhance the chances of your email being shared with people outside your current database.
Include an opt-in sign-up link to your employees’ signatures
People can sign up for your mailing list through hyperlinked email signatures which then take them to a landing page where they can sign up. Subscribing to more emails can also be a natural next step if you are already in an email conversation with them.
Make a new offer to generate leads
Create a new gated lead-generation offer, such as a free e-book, and place it on a landing page that requires visitors to enter their email addresses in order to download it. Again, be sure to include an opt-in tick box on the form.
Create a sign-up-required free online tool or resource
Your users’ lives will be made easier by free online resources, especially if all they have to do is sign up with their email address. For example, LOCALiQ has created a few free tools like, Website Grader, to collect email addresses.
Create more bonus stuff
For a website visitor, not all gated content is worthwhile. To pique their attention, you may need to first provide them with free content. You can start with a blog post that provides basic guidance on a topic, then offer additional bonus content with more advanced recommendations that people can access by entering their email addresses on a landing page.
How to grow your email list using social media
Promote a webinar
Use your social media platforms to host a free webinar that asks participants to provide contact information. You can urge your followers to visit your website and sign up for your newsletter using their email addresses.
Promote gated visual content on Pinterest
Pinterest features visually appealing content that entices users to sign up for more. Use this to your advantage and advertise your gated visual content on the platform so that users are eager to learn more from you and give you their email addresses to receive more high-quality information.
How to Grow Your Email List Using Facebook
Make your email newsletter the theme of your profile cover photo
Your Facebook profile cover photos are a great opportunity to draw attention to something specific, particularly your email newsletter. You can attract readers to submit their emails to obtain further benefit from the content you offer by creating a high-quality graphic that showcases and calls attention to its importance.
Add a call-to-action button to the top of your Facebook Business page
The value of this list-building strategy lies in the destination. Add a CTA button to your Facebook page that directs readers to your sign-up landing page or a gated featured resource that requires email access. Furthermore, including a sign-up CTA button in your profile makes it easy for customers because they won’t have to leave Facebook to visit your website – they can simply click the link and be taken there.
Share newsletter previews on your profile
Making a Facebook post that features a snippet of your email newsletter is a great method to attract new subscribers to your email list. They’ll receive a taste of what you have to offer, become eager in learning more, and join up to keep getting value from your company. You can include a link to your sign-up page, within this post, for easy and rapid sign-up.
Use Facebook to promote gated content
Encourage people to click through to resources or articles that require an email address to gain access. To encourage your leads to share within their networks, including social-sharing icons on your landing and thank you pages.
How to grow your email list using Instagram
Include a call to action in your Instagram bio
Your Instagram bio is a wonderful opportunity to provide information to your followers, such as a call to action for your email list or a sign-up form link. The value of signing up should be explained in your CTA languages, such as bonus information, access to unique discounts, or a general company newsletter. Customers will save time and effort by clicking the link in your bio and signing up in a pop-up window within the app.
Share posts that encourage users to click your bio’s call-to-action email link
While you may not want to share posts that explicitly say, “Give us your email”, you can see success by sharing posts that encourage users to share their contact information. You could, for example, promote a giveaway and inform users that they may participate by clicking the link in your bio or entering their email addresses. Additionally, if you upload an informative video on how to use your products, you can persuade customers to sign up because your emails will have more informational content.
Use the swipe-up feature to share your landing page
If you have more than 10,000 followers on Instagram, you can add a clickable link to your Stories, which users can access simply by swiping up on the story. This feature is an excellent place to link to your sign-up page or another offer on your website that collects email addresses in exchange for something valuable, like a free trial. This feature may also be used to link to something like an insightful blog post with a lead generation offer that your audience will be eager to sign up for.
Learn more about Instagram Marketing Features here.
How to grow your email list using LinkedIn
Send readers to a landing page for email sign-ups
You can distribute links to your sign-up pages after having conversations on LinkedIn. You are letting users continue the conversation you’ve just started by sending them an email with more high-quality information and content about your company. These links can be sent via InMail, comment threads, and personal 1:1 direct messages.
Make a post about your email newsletter
If you have an email newsletter, you may share snippets of it on LinkedIn and tell readers that if they sign up, they’ll have access to the complete piece as well as any future newsletters.
Utilise employees to spread the word
Encourage your employees to post and share your newsletter on their own LinkedIn accounts. Provide your audience with high-quality content that they may benefit from. If what you’ve said has resonated with them, they’ll understand that receiving emails from you means they will have more access to the high-quality stuff you provide.
How to grow your email list on your website
Request feedback from website visitors
People appreciate providing input on topics that interest them. Include a form on your website pages that asks visitors what questions they might have about your company and include a “Sign Up to Our Newsletter” tick box to collect email addresses so you can follow up with them.
Reduce the length of your lead-generation forms
It’s tempting to get as much information as possible about a user immediately, but too many fields on your landing pages and lead-capturing forms can turn consumers away. Reduce the number of fields on your forms to two or three; once you’ve started a conversation, you may collect extra information from them.
This is why getting a website visitor to sign up for your newsletter is such a valuable action. It provides your business with a way to nurture a relationship with them and turn them into possible leads by including resources in your newsletter that requires the user to provide extra information in order to gain access.
Link to offers across your website that capture email sign-ups
Create CTAs on your website that links to your offers and capture email sign-ups. The homepage of your website, the “About Us” page, and the “Contact Us” page are all important locations to examine. Again, be sure to ask sign-ups to opt into your newsletter.
A/B test different campaign copy
You might be doing everything properly in terms of lead generation. Landing pages, gated content, contests, and so on, but you’re still not seeing the results you want. It’s possible that the issue is that the design or copy isn’t producing the engagement you require. Different versions of the same content can be used to A/B test different components of your list-building efforts.
This includes the text of the call-to-action, the colour of the gated offer, and even the location of the sign-up forms on your website. A small adjustment can sometimes result in hundreds of additional conversions.
Create a blog that people can subscribe to
You should start blogging if you haven’t already. Blog posts help you improve your search engine ranking and earn blog subscribers, which you may use to upgrade to more actionable email campaigns in the future.
Guest blogging and share a call-to-action
There are a lot of websites and publishers that cater to your audience — or at least a sizable fraction of them. By guest posting for these websites, you can broaden your contact list by exposing yourself to a new audience. Include a CTA for users to subscribe to your site’s blog or email newsletter when creating guest blogging content.
On your sign-up landing pages include customer reviews
It’s one thing for you to tell people to sign up for a campaign; it’s quite another for your most satisfied customers to do so as well. Customer reviews provide social evidence that encourages people to participate in something, and you should display them on your website, particularly on landing pages with sign-up forms. When customers are on the fence about sharing contact information, including reviews will add true value to your content.
How to grow your email list with traditional marketing
Collect email addresses at a trade show
For specialists in your industry, offline events such as trade shows are eagerly anticipated growth prospects. Demonstrate your newest product at a relevant conference and collect signups there. When you get back to the office, import these signups into your contact database and send them a welcome email confirming their subscription to your list.
Organise your own offline, in-person events
Meetups, seminars, educational panels, and conferences put you in the thick of things when it comes to networking. Because they attended your event, those that attend are frequently more qualified to be contacted. Make use of the chance to collect guests’ email information and send a welcome email to encourage opt-in.
Host an online webinar
Webinars are an excellent way to communicate about your industry while also gaining access to the audience of thought leaders with whom you may wish to present. What’s the best part? Because most webinars are registered by email, you’ll have audience emails to add to your list for additional nurturing. Save your seat for this webinar with LOCALiQ.
Include QR codes in your display ads
Include a QR code on your print marketing collateral that customers may scan to learn more about the printer content. You may require your codes to need email addresses in order to access further information, which will help you develop your list.
General email marketing statistics
- There are 4 billion daily email users. This number is expected to climb to 4.6 billion by 2025. (Statista, 2021).
- More than 306 billion emails are sent and received each day. (Statista, 2021).
- 64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers. (Campaign Monitor, 2021).
- 31% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are the best way to nurture leads. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020).
- Globally, Fridays see the highest email open rates (nearly 19%), compared to the lowest open rates (17%) on Saturdays. (Campaign Monitor, 2021).
B2B email marketing statistics
- 81% of B2B marketers say their most used form of content marketing is email newsletters. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020).
- On average, B2B companies send one email marketing campaign every 25 days. (SuperOffice, 2020).
- 31% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are the best way to nurture leads. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020).
- 90% of content marketers say email engagement is the top metric they track to measure content performance. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020).
- 87% of B2B marketers say email is one of their top free organic distribution channels. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020).
All of the suggestions above can help you grow your company’s email list. The ideal method to accomplish so is to use numerous strategies on this list, which will help you approach your audiences from a variety of perspectives and enhance your list’s possibilities for growth. You’ll be able to nurture your email list with middle-of-the-funnel offers as you add new, opt-in contacts, allowing you to convert early-stage leads into sales-ready leads.
Remember: Many of the statistic points above will aid in convincing you to invest more time and money in your email marketing strategy. Start using them in your next campaign, right away!
