How to Build an Email List from Scratch: 10 Incredibly Effective Strategies

Emailing your customers a newsletter, promotions, sale details, and more can be an effective way to draw customers in. But if you don’t already have a working email list, where do you start? Here are 10 strategies to help —

1. Make Signing Up Easy with Multiple Location Options

The first tactic for building your email list is straightforward: make signing up easy by putting the option to sign up on multiple pages, sites, and other locations. What’s more, do not make your customer search for the sign-up option! Signing up should be super easy. 

2. Put a Call to Action on All of Your Landing Pages

If you don’t have a clear call to action on all of your landing pages that encourages your user to sign up (or provide you with their email address in another way), you’re missing out on an opportunity. 

3. Pitch Your Newsletter on Your Socials

Have a great newsletter that you want your customers to read? You can build your email list by placing your newsletter on socials, giving brief snippets of it and nuggets of good content, and then telling customers they can get more by signing up. 

4. Make it Time-Sensitive

Customers are more inclined to sign up for something if they think that there is a limited amount of time to get a deal. For example, you might offer a limited-time giveaway for signing up in the next 24 hours, or access to a special deal. 

5. Incentive Signing Up

Like making something time-sensitive, customers love when they are getting a good deal by doing something or are getting a freebie. If customers sign up, offer to give them something in return — a free hat, a 10 percent discount code, free shipping, etc. 

6. Don’t Make Customers Give Too Much

Customers do not want to give you all of their information. Name and email address are usually plenty. You may want to ask additional questions about gender, age, etc. in order to help you identify which type of content you should be sending. But don’t make the mistake of asking your customer too many questions, as this may deter them from participating. 

7. Build Organically

A big mistake that companies make when building an email list is to try to rush the process by purchasing an email list. If you start emailing someone who didn’t give you their email address organically, you’ll automatically lose their trust. 

8. Host an Event

One way to get email addresses is to host an event — either digital or in-person — and then to require an email address as part of the registration. During social distancing times, webinars are really popular and a great way to get customers to hand over their email addresses. 

9. Use Your Blog

Use your blog! If you are offering great content on your blog, then it’s highly probable that your customer will want more of the same. Pair your great content with a great call to action to sign up for your email list and see what happens. 

10. Work with a Professional Digital Marketing Company

Finally, one step to building your email list is to hire an experienced digital marketing company to help you along the way. At NUVEW, we are talented, professional digital marketers with a reputation for excellence. Call us today to learn more about how we can help you.