5 Email List Building Strategies for New Businesses

Ash Salleh is the Director of SEO at Campaign Monitor, where he works closely with content, copy, and analytics teams to improve site-wide optimisation. Prior to his time at Campaign Monitor, he also provided SEO and digital marketing expertise at Zappos and Axiata Digital.

Gone are the days of solely relying on traditional marketing. Digital is the ruler of the current marketing landscape, with one of the most prevalent digital channels being email marketing. Most B2B businesses today embrace the power of email marketing. In fact, research reveals that 82% of B2B companies take advantage of email marketing.

There’s no question that email marketing plays a crucial role in helping your new business to succeed. That being said, it’s not as simple as writing emails and sending them to people. In order for you to send, you have to have a list of recipients. This is where building an email list comes in.

Email list building is the first step in planning an email marketing campaign. Read on to learn the five most effective ways you can build an email list for your business.

1. Decide on the best email marketing service for your business

When building your email list, the first thing you need to remember is that subscribing to your list should be easy for people. Using the ideal email service provider (ESP) can help you achieve this.

In addition to features such as email automation, personalisation, list segmentation and analytics, your ESP should have tools that enable you to grow a healthy and engaged subscriber list.

With these tools, you can create a variety of ways for people to subscribe, whether it’s through your website, your social media channels, or the third-party software you use for your business operations.

2. Make subscribing easy

If you want to build a strong list of subscribers, you need to provide people with a variety of options, making the barrier to entry as low as possible. Design a variety of signup forms to bring in new subscribers. Here are a few examples:

• Subscribe buttons - Place simple signup buttons on specific pages of your website (ex. blog posts, checkout page, etc.) to turn visitors into subscribers.
• Landing pages - Use an ESP with design tools that allow you to create landing pages that can not only capture information from your website, and as a result, turn them into valuable leads that you can provide personalised marketing to later.
• Signup forms - Make it clear where people can sign up to your email list, via strategically located sign up forms with enticing messaging. For example, your blog posts, about page etc.
• Social media - With certain ESPs, you can add a subscription form to your Facebook page that appears as a tab at the top of the page.
• Third-party applications - Use an ESP with a wide variety of third-party integrations that can help you build your list.

3. Ask for the right information

Signup forms are essential to email list building, so you need to make the most of them. When creating a signup form, make it a point to ask for information that you can use later on for things such as segmentation and sending relevant content to your subscribers.

Since you operate a B2B business, you may need to ask for more specific information that includes:

• Position or seniority level - Your subscribers come from a diverse array of business backgrounds. They could be fellow business owners, executives, and even entry-level marketers.
• Organisation type or size - A certain subscriber might be the Vice President of Marketing for a Fortune 500 company while another could be the owner of a small family business.
• Industry - Your prospective subscribers belong to different industries, and asking for this information will aid you in your segmentation efforts.
• Pain points - A significant portion of your audience are likely going to be business leaders who have specific pain points that they need to resolve. Asking for this information will give you an idea regarding the best and most helpful content to send to your subscribers.

Keep in mind that the information you can ask for isn’t limited to just these examples. Depending on the type of service you offer, you can ask for other types of information that might be unique to your business.

4. Use the confirmed opt-in method.

Email database decay is an unavoidable reality that all business owners must face. You can’t completely prevent it; you can only manage it. The best way to mitigate database decay is by using the confirmed opt-in (also called double opt-in) method when adding subscribers to your list.

Using the confirmed opt-in method means each new subscriber gets an automated message before they’re officially added to your list, asking them to confirm their subscription. It’s a quick and easy process that new subscribers can complete by simply clicking on a link included in your email.

It will take them just a moment to do so, but it does wonders for your email list hygiene in the long run, as the confirmed opt-in method stops invalid email addresses from being added to your list.

5. Incentivise people to subscribe.

It’s not enough that you give people plenty of chances to subscribe to your list. If you want to truly encourage them to join your list, you have to offer them an incentive to do so.

You can give people exclusive access to downloadable resources that they can use for their business. You can offer them a free consultation in exchange for subscribing. You can also offer a discounted rate on your services. If your service involves business tools or software, you can offer prospective subscribers with a free 30-day trial.

There are countless ways you can incentivise your audience. It’s up to you to be creative and think of the offer that will most attract your web visitors and convince them to sign up to your email list.

Wrap up

Having a clean and healthy email list is crucial for maximising your email marketing strategies. By maintaining good email list hygiene from the very beginning, you prevent your email deliverability from suffering down the line. You’ll also avoid hard bounces and spam complaints that negatively impact your sender reputation.

Make sure you follow these tips when building the email list for your new business. You’ll save yourself the hassle of cleaning up an email list filled with invalid contacts, which means you’ll have more time to focus on enhancing your email marketing campaigns.