6 Email List Building Tactics to Grow Your Customer Base

The following is a guest blog post by Sam O'Brien, Senior Website Optimization & User Experience Manager for EMEA at RingCentral.

In an ultra-competitive marketplace, you’ve got to work hard to make your company and its products stand out amongst the crowd. Whether you’re plugging a team collaboration tool or you’re looking to drum up interest in online telemedicine courses, you’ve got to find new and increasingly inventive ways of getting the word out there. Email marketing is tried and tested in this regard and there are all sorts of businesses that swear by it.

If you get it right, email marketing can deliver exceptional results – driving sales and revenue and helping you take your business to new heights. But this can be tricky and building an email list is always a challenge. Plenty of businesses – even those pushing cutting-edge tech like augmented reality and machine learning – have a tendency to be stuck in their ways when it comes to email marketing.

This means that they don’t always take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves. As such, they can’t leverage email marketing in the ways they might otherwise be able to, resulting in them missing out on new customers (and all the valuable revenue that comes with them). You don’t want your business to fall into the same unfortunate situation. Thankfully, there are tricks and short-cuts you can use to help expand your email list and your customer base.

We’ve given the matter some careful consideration and assembled six of our top tactics. These suggestions should help you grow your email list at a much faster rate and drive more conversions. Whatever field you’re in, the chances are you already have a good idea what your customers want. If you can apply that knowledge to your email marketing campaign, you’ll stand in very good stead.

1. Offer brilliant incentives

You don’t have to be a public relations expert to know that customers love little extras. It stands to reason, then, that if you’re going to tempt them to hand over their email address, you should give them a compelling reason to do so. The best thing you can do here is put yourself in the customer’s shoes: what would it take to get you to sign up for an email list?

Perhaps you think that your products are incentive enough by themselves. Perhaps you’re certain that you’re selling the best VoIP router in the business, for example. And you may even be right, but it doesn’t hurt to give the consumer a little something else. Offer them something they’d genuinely value and emphasize to them that it’ll be worth their while to sign up. They get asked to sign up to a lot of email lists so yours has to offer something that’s genuinely compelling – like a hefty discount.

2. Build customer trust

Consumers can be a cynical bunch. And with good reason – they’re constantly being bombarded with demands on their time, attention, and wallet. When you’re trying to encourage people to join your email list, you have to prove your credentials to them. Emphasize that you’re not just undertaking a data grab, your intentions are genuine and honorable and that you can offer outstanding customer service. It’s vital that you put a considerable amount of effort into earning the customer’s understanding. 

Keep in mind that data theft is all too common. Of course, your intentions are no doubt completely honest and above board, but it’s difficult for consumers to be sure of that, especially if they’ve never heard of you before. Emphasize your ethics. Make it clear to your customers that your list isn’t a spam list and that it offers them content that’s of genuine value.

3. Create compelling content

Speaking of content: This might seem like an obvious observation to make, but you’d be surprised how many firms don’t take it seriously. If you want people to sign up for your email list, you have to provide them with content they’re actually going to find useful, relevant, and interesting. A lot of people find that after they’ve signed up for a few email lists, their inboxes become unmanageable. Be mindful of this, as it may very well be the reason why potential customers may be hesitant to join any new email lists. 

The most effective way for you to get around this is to create great content. Think about what you specialize in – which areas do you know more about than anyone else in your field? Maybe you’re an expert in smart contracts or you have some personal advice to share about remote working. What new insights can you offer? Why would that be of interest to the people you’re targeting? Once you’ve resolved these kinds of questions, you’ll be in a much better position to target potential new signatories.

4. Harmonize your messaging

If you’re a customer and you click through from an email to a website only to find there’s no apparent consistency between the two, you’re probably going to close the tab and look elsewhere. Chatbots can help, but your messaging needs to be clear and coherent between your emails and your website. Having comprehensible and consistent messaging gives customers more faith in your business, as it looks more professional and legitimate, and also makes it easier for them to find what they’re looking for.

You should also think about how you can use your website to expand your email list. Visitors reaching your site will probably visit your homepage first. Why not include a plug for your email list here to attract new signatories?

5. Include strong calls to action

Anyone conversant in the most basic SEO principles will know the importance of strong calls to action. A compelling CTA is far more likely to encourage customers to take the next step in their user journey, from the top of the sales funnel all the way to completing a purchase. If you’re looking to attract people to sign up for your email list, then make sure you include a strong and relevant CTA. Incorporating CTAs is an undeniably effective way to attract interest to your email list

6. Include a link in your email signature

In all likelihood, you probably send out multiple emails a day when you’re working – to colleagues, clients, and various other associates. You might not have realized that you can attract new sign-ups to your email lists by including a sign-up link in the signature at the bottom of your messages. 

There’s a good chance that at least some of the people you send emails to would happily sign up to an email list. Why not include a link? You’ve nothing to lose from it and potentially quite a bit to gain.

Applying These Tactics

Hopefully, this list has given you some useful pointers to help you attract new subscribers to your email lists. Remember, these are just six quick wins – there are lots of other tricks that people use to bolster their email lists and attract additional customers.

It’s worth experimenting a little to see what works best for your business. Little changes like these are incredibly simple to implement and you can reap real rewards from them. Good luck!