15 Sure Fire Ways to Grow Your Email Marketing List in 2023

Last Updated 4 weeks by Emily Standley-Allard

“The Money is in the List”. Yes, we’ve all heard this before. But make no mistake if you’re running an online business email is still the most effective way to universally reach your target audience and anyone who has expressed interest in your site or services. For that reason alone, it really can’t be beaten. More than 2.5 billion people use email and it’s predicted to increase to 2.8 billion in the next 2 years! Do you know anyone who doesn’t have an email address? But how as a beginner do you even build your email list in the first place? Here are 15 sure fire ways to grow your email marketing list.

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Why Your Business Still Needs An Email Campaign

Email is still a hugely powerful and essential tool for everyday online business. As a beginner blogger or online business owner, you absolutely need to have an effective email campaign.

‘A 10,000 email list is worth $100,000 a year in business’. – Blog Tyrant.

Social media alone won’t cut it. In fact, Email CRUSHES social media for converting people into long term customers.

Why You Need an Email List

• Offers you direct access to your readers.
• Increases sales every time you share an amazing offer or product.
• Gives you better ideas and input from readers.
• Gives you more personal connections you can’t accomplish using social media.
• Offers help and support when you need it in the form of feedback from your readers.
• You can grow your expertise by helping your readers one on one.

Additionally, if you nurture and educate your email list well, you can predict about $1 per email subscriber per month.

It’s a rough estimate of your monthly blog income if you work hard at it.

So if you have a warm email list of 2,000 subscribers, you can expect to make about $2,000 and pay your rent or mortgage right?

GRAB THESE FREE EMAIL TEMPLATES TO HELP PUT YOUR BUSINESS ON AUTO PILOT

What is Email Marketing?

Let’s start from the beginning.

Email marketing in it’s most basic form is a form of direct marketing that uses electronic mail to promote commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. However, the scope of the term is used to refer to:

• Sending emails with the purpose of making the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.

• Sending emails with the purpose of acquiring new customers to purchase something immediately.

• Adding advertisements, offers and coupon codes to the previous customers to utilize something immediately.

As a blogger and creative entrepreneur, if you have your customer’s email address, then you can use email marketing to grow your business.

Unlike social media, once you have the potential customer’s email you own it. As a marketer, hopefully you know it’s vital to make sure the database you have is updated constantly with fresh contacts.

These days there are many automated programs to do this with such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, ConvertKit, Aweber , Mailerlite, etc.

If you are not working on building your email list already you are literally leaving a trail of money behind.

And it’s never too early to start!

Read this list of 15 crucial things you need to do to get started growing your Email list and make continual income from it!

My email journey has been quite a rollercoaster. I started off with MailChimp, and now I’m using ConvertKit which I love because of all their incredible features.

You can read my review of Convertkit and Aweber here

Here’s your email marketing strategy to skyrocket your list!

1. Create Awesome Content:

You hear all the time about content being King. Inbound Marketing is the go-to tactic that attracts, engages, compels and delights potential customers. But what if your content stinks? This is where you need to put your money where your mouth is.

Regardless of how great your marketing plan is you need to have superior content to back it up.

Make sure that it subscribes to your niche and is laser-focused on task to what your reader is looking for. How many sites ask you to subscribe to their newsletter?

The 1st thing is you need to ask yourself is why would people subscribe to your newsletter in the first place? What is it that makes YOU subscribe to someone else’s newsletter?

Nowadays people are bombarded with emails flowing to their inboxes so what you offer has to be something pretty darn new & unique that they can’t find elsewhere, or something they really NEED to have that serves them a vital purpose at that exact moment in their lives.

Sound hard? Yes, and no.

It takes awesome content to create interest, pique interest and to stay interested.

Just like any relationship in your life, your potential customer, reader, buyer needs a reason to stay connected to YOU, a purpose that YOU are giving to them that only YOU specifically, and no one else can fulfill. Your content plays a major role here.

The acronym WIIFM (What’s in it for me?) is VITAL in your customer becoming a long term subscriber!

I seriously recommend adding video into your email marketing campaigns now to keep your readers engaged as well.

Perhaps not for every single email but definitely incorporate it every now and then.

Videos Bring Your Brand To Life

There’s no better way to add strong meaning to your content and bring your brand to life than video.

It’s tailor made for brand storytelling.

And unlike just plain text, its message is much more memorable and long lasting. It’s not expensive either.

Especially now, during the Covid-19 Pandemic. It’s the best way to stay in touch with everyone!

Think about your audience, who they are, what drives them and what you can provide for them:)

Animoto is a company that makes it very simple for anyone to incorporate great videos into email, blogs or websites, or even for personal use. Vimeo or Promo are other inexpensive options but Animoto is the most professional appearing IMO.

The Simple Way to Create Marketing Videos

2. Sign Up For An Email Marketing Service 

When I first started blogging I read from other bloggers to not wait to sign up for an email marketing service but I was hesitant because I didn’t have anything to offer.

Now I’m here to reiterate their words.

Do not wait for another second to sign up for an email service.

It’s vital to the success of your online business that you do! And if you wait it will take you that much longer to build up your list.

These are the 5 main reasons for this:

• Email is Personal – Email allows you to land into a user’s inbox. There is no ranking system limiting your reach. It is very direct, personal, and casual.

• Email is Purposeful – To get your email a user needs to signup for your email list and confirm their email address. Someone doing this much work is obviously interested in hearing from you, and they are much more receptive to your message.

• Email is Targeted – As we mentioned earlier the user has already shown interest in your products/content. Since you already know what they like, you can deliver them highly relevant content and offers to get better results. This is called segmentation, and we will cover that later in the article.

• You Own Your Email List – You do not own Facebook, Twitter, or Google. Your social media campaigns and SEO efforts can go to waste when these platforms change their policies. On the other hand, you own your email list, and it is not influenced by the decisions of other businesses.

• Email is One-on-One – People read email in the privacy of their inbox. The message is not on a public timeline or newsfeed. They can ask you questions directly in private with confidence. This helps build trust and connection.

This is precisely why every smart business in the world has an email list.

3. Offer a Free Giveaway:

In your email you can run an online contest and offer free giveaways, an Ebook, a digital download-able product, a free printable, a pdf, a course, a planner, another valuable resource matches up with your niche for your reader.

Adding a bonus of your own can help convert followers into purchasers. If they are getting a great deal, then it would be quite hard for them to turn down the offer. Sometimes people make a purchase either out of curiosity or just because the bonus is that great!

This is called an ‘Opt-in’ so this way, any of your readers who want to participate in the contest, or receive the product or offer, have to give you their email in exchange:)

4. How to Create an Engaging Opt-In Message:

Use these 5 proven ways to create an engaging opt-in message.

1. Use Social Proof – or a ‘Herd Mentality’ – If it’s good enough for 1,000+ people it must be good enough for me! i.e. ‘Join 8,000 followers on Twitter and subscribe to our list’
2. Humanize the Benefit – Touch on ‘pain points’ that your audience has. Answer questions that potential readers have that you can possibly answer for them.
3. Make them feel Exclusive – People like to feel like they’re on the ‘inside’ of something – offer exclusive access to privy info.
4. Offer an Incentive – If offering a product, try Free shipping or a discount.
5. Are They Worth it?– You’re the expert and they want what you have – offer access to your hacks and expertise in exchange for their email.

5. Use Your Facebook Page for Promotion:

Facebook is the major platform for online marketing, promoting your offers & making money online. It’s also a tremendous way to build your email list.

You can post your offers on your timeline of your Facebook page. It’s preferable to do this on your FB business page rather than your personal page in my opinion. But every now and then it doesn’t hurt to throw in a business post on your personal page.

Don’t forget to add a call to action button or email sign-up form FB page too, so if there are any new product launches or services, you can easily share them on your Facebook page and add your website link so people can easily check out your blog/website.

Related Articles:

11 Proven Strategies to Get Winning Testimonials for Your Website

How 37 Bloggers Earn $2K – $1Million Per Month

10 Tactics To Create Your Ultimate Lead Magnet

How to Manage Your Online Reputation

7. Add Call-to-Action Button on your Blog/Web Page:

You should also add a call-to-action button on ALL your blog site & website pages. Similar to adding an Opt-In offer so anyone can easily sign up or subscribe to your newsletter. Add an appealing incentive or freebie offer such as:

• A Private Facebook group
• Free webinar related to the topic
• Free coaching or consulting session
• A special discounted price on your product or service
• A related product that you offer for free

SEO Powerhouse Checklist

8. Promote Offers on LinkedIn & Pinterest:

Promote your subscription link on your company page and discussion groups.

Share your links on different LinkedIn groups in exchange for emails. When they like your products or services they may contact you or share their email with you and you can add them to your master email list.

Promote Offers on Pinterest.

How to Market On Pinterest – The Ultimate Guide

Unlike a lot of people realize, Pinterest is not a social media platform but a powerful visual search engine. Create a special board for your niche, offers, coupon codes, special discounts, affiliates and business offers.

You can also start your own Group board, ask people in similar niches to join and collect emails that way as well.

9. Sign Up Cards On YouTube Videos:

Another way to grow your email list is to start making videos and publish them on YouTube.  YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine. You can also add offers and email sign-up cards & annotations on your videos. You can also add offers and an email sign up the link in the description box.

10.  Choose a Pop Up Email Box For Your Website:

Automated email marketing services offer a pop up email box that will appear with whichever opt-in message you choose, and timed appropriately.

This may help an undecided guest to submit their email last minute before leaving your site. This is an excellent way to grab subscribers.

Optin Monster is one of the best on the market IMO to grab leads.

11. Add a Call-to-Action on Guest Post Content:

While writing a Guest Post you have to add a link and call-to-action in your email marketing content. Add an email sign-up link in your Author Bio so people can reach you easily.

13. Run a Promotion on a Partner Website:

You can promote your email newsletter or any offers on partner websites which is a very helpful and great way to get new customers and readers.

If you find a blog site that has the same niche as yours with a high level of readership you can ask to put your link, or banner or email subscription link on their site too.

14. Arrange an Online Webinar:

Once you get established somewhat you can advertise to host an online Webinar in your field of knowledge on your blogsite, or FB live or YouTube and request registration via email.

15. Add a QR Code:

Another unique way to get email addresses from your readers is to create your own QR code which is like a bar code, from email subscription.

Customers can directly scan the QR code from their smartphone and download eBooks or subscribe to your newsletter.

Conclusion

Having an email list is vital from the very start even when you have no subscribers! Sign up with an email provider of your choice and employ the tactics above and soon enough people will be subscribing to your site before you know it!

Sign up to drive massive traffic to your blog or online business and build a more powerful presence online!