Why Build An Email List And How To Do It Right

One of the many secret to making a successful sale is by making sure that the “recall” factor of your business is high. This means that your products and services should be always on the “top of minds” of your targeted audience.  And this is why building an email list is very important.

Reasons why you should have your own email list

Email marketing is a great way to keep in touch with your target audience, build a relationship and, ultimately, establish trust. Prospects are likely to buy products from someone they know and trust.

Also, one of the biggest advantages of having an email list for your business is that you can send regular updates about your products and services, keeping your business on “top of mind” of your target audience for just when they are ready to make a purchase.

Here are some other things you can do with your email list:

• Promote your products and services to both existing and new prospects
  
• Send out an alert when you update a product or add content to your site
  
• Send out surveys to get valuable, current marketing data
  
• Establish personal connections
  
• Create confidence in the products and services that your business offers

Following are some of the best practices that you should observe when building an email list:

1.   Build an opt-in form with a catchy design and compelling offer. Your design will draw the attention of your visitors while your offer will be the deciding factor whether they’ll part with their name and email.

2.   Place the form on the hotspot of your web page. The hotspots are those areas of web pages where the eyes of readers usually land and where mouse cursors are usually positioned by default. Elements on these areas get the highest click-through rates.  The higher the click-through rate, the more chances you have of getting a signup.

The upper-right portion of a page (where the sidebar is located) is a hotspot, that’s why most opt-in forms you see are placed on this area.

3.  Follow through. Use an auto-responder to send updates that are spread out over several weeks. These are regular email updates that will be sent at a fixed interval after someone subscribe to your opt-in form.  

You can’t really tell where your subscribers are in the buying cycle so you need to be in constant communication with them.

4.  Don’t spam.  Avoid sending too many emails to your email list as this may annoyingly fill their inbox. An email once every two weeks would do.

5.  Always share valuable content.  Make it a point to only send out valuable and informative contents to your list. The reputation of your business is on the line so always make sure that you provide nothing but the best content.


6.  Never sell or share.  When it comes to email list, selling and sharing is just bad practice. 
 
7.  Avoid getting blacklisted. Don’t use email clients like Outlook or Thunderbird to send out email newsletters. Email clients have sending limits and your email account is likely to get blacklisted if you send email to too many recipients.

Final Thoughts
Your email list will start small but will grow over time. Come up with several offers for website visitors to sign-up to your newsletter. Discount coupons, free video tutorials, free tips and e-books are just some of them. Try out different offers to see which one gets you the most sign-ups.