Email marketing is a great way for companies to stay connected with their customers and to encourage more sales. There is a problem for small businesses, however, that because of their size, they often have limited resources for growing their subscriber lists.
So to help small business owners expand their email audience (even on a budget), the members of Young Entrepreneur Council weighed in on the following question:
Small businesses often have limited resources, so what's one creative strategy they can use to grow their email list?
1. Develop content that speaks to your audience’s interests
Make your website work for you. Develop and share content that speaks to your ideal audience’s interests and answers their questions. Doing so will foster engagement and make readers more likely to opt in to hear more from you. Provide premium content like white papers or guides, and make it available to readers by having them fill out a form which adds them to your email list. —Traci Beach, Craft Impact
2. Host partnered giveaways
Host partnered giveaways via like-minded collaborations. If you're a chef or you have a cookbook, partner with a cookware company and have their audience enter to win something with you. Always use Instagram to get emails, otherwise you're just renting their audience. —Danielle Gronich, CLEARSTEM Skincare
3. Include an opt-in popup on your website
At the very least, every website needs to have an opt-in popup that asks users to sign up for the brand’s newsletters. Many businesses don't have this and, as a result, lose a large chunk of potential leads. Today you have access to affordable plugins and tools to build an opt-in popup. You can even use a free one with limited features or code one yourself. —Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
4. Make it easy for subscribers to share content
One of the easiest ways to grow your email list is to make it as easy as possible for your subscribers to share your emails with others. You can add “email a friend” links in each of your emails, for example, to make sharing content super simple and straightforward. The easier they are to share, the more likely that your customers will pass your valuable content on to others. —Blair Thomas, eMerchantBroker
5. Provide a coupon code in exchange
The most effective way of growing your email list is to offer coupon codes and discounts to your users. People don’t mind giving away their email addresses if they can get discounts in exchange for them. They will submit them without a second thought. —Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster
More articles from AllBusiness.com:
- 7 Tips for Starting a Loyalty Program That Will Actually Work
- Can a ‘Subscribe and Save’ Model Increase Your Small Business Revenue?
- Email Marketing: Still the Most Powerful Tool to Take Your Business to the Next Level
6. Give people a reason to subscribe
Give people a reason to want to subscribe: share a customer’s story or share an influencer’s post. Make the reason you ask for their email address worth their while. Make it be about them and not about you. In this way, the desire is there and they will definitely stay with you. —Daisy Jing, Banish
7. Take advantage of walk-in business
If you have a physical location, then you can make use of it by leading customers who walk in to become email subscribers. Create an offer where they get a discount if they sign up for your newsletter on the spot, and can use the discount right then at your store or at a later date. It's a good idea to use multiple methods to drive people into becoming part of your email list. —Blair Williams, MemberPress
8. Develop a loyalty program
I think incentivizing users with a loyalty program is an excellent way to grow your email list. People are often willing to subscribe to businesses with reward points for purchases, especially if they plan on becoming a frequent customer. When someone visits your website for the first time, encourage them to subscribe to get store credit for eligible orders. —John Turner, SeedProd LLC
9. Test new campaigns and copy
One of the most effective ways to grow your email list is to constantly test new campaigns and copy. It doesn’t matter whether you offer sign-up incentives like coupons and giveaways or additional content. You can always run A/B tests to see what works. Change your offering, copy, and opt-in location regularly. A simple tweak to any of these can boost your conversions and grow your list much faster. —Shaun Conrad, Guitar Repair Bench
10. Connect on social media
Small businesses can use social media to grow their email lists. They don't only have to rely on their websites to generate leads and drive traffic. A creative way to get more attention on your email list is to host livestreams on your social accounts. Platforms like Instagram and Twitter make it possible for users to go live instantly and connect with their followers. —Jared Atchison, WPForms
11. Add content upgrades
Adding content upgrades to existing blog posts is an effective way to build an email list for free. A content upgrade is essentially a one-page checklist or a cheat sheet which enhances a blog post that a person can download after entering their email address. —Kristin Kimberly Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC
