If you are just starting to build your email database, you may have started with a couple of colleagues, a few customers, and maybe a sprinkling of family and friends in your email list. This is a great group to practice on, but how should you go about getting new subscribers?
Building an email database takes patience and time; your goal should be to find engaged prospects who are not going to unsubscribe at the first opportunity. Thinking about their journey through their touchpoints with your business is essential; you should be careful to provide lots of engagement opportunities but without bombarding them and risk them running for the hills and hitting that formidable unsubscribe button which means they are lost forever!
1.Website data capture
Make sure your website has data capture prompts throughout the site with the rewards for data capture clearly identified to your customers. You can use simple embedded forms or pop-ups, and a good tactic is to prompt to keep customers up to date alongside other content which you know your website visitors find valuable. Use google analytics, or your own website data analytics to show most visited and most dwelled on pages, and then use a bit of 'Fear of Missing Out' behavioural science to try and get a sign-up – E.g. ‘Love this content? Sign up for our newsletter to make sure you never miss a new post!’
There are a great deal of other persuasive tactics to use to encourage sign-ups – if your performance stats are good, this can be a great strategy for getting website visitors to join your mailing list. For example: "Join thousands of other business owners in getting our regular guides." "Our newsletter is so popular our average open rate is more than 90% and our unsubscribes less than 0.5%"
The other approach you can use is to demonstrate how email gives your subscribers direct access to you, the most important commodity of your business an email where subscribers can hit reply and ask a question about your content can make your email audience feel like they have personal access to you; if you and your face are all over your website, this can be very appealing to visitors who are feeling impressed by you and your offering.
However you persuade, setting expectations at the data capture stage is extremely important. Let subscribers know how often you will be communicating, what you will talk about, how useful it will be to them. Reassure them that they will not be bombarded, you won’t clutter their inbox, they can unsubscribe at any time to remove as many barriers of parting with their email address as possible.
2. Purchases & Enquiries
If you sell a product or accept enquiries about your services through your website, getting the basics right on data capture and marketing permissions is a natural way to build a prospect list. It goes without saying that you need to make sure your privacy statements comply with GDPR regulations.
3. Make it easy (or even valuable) for subscribers to share a sign up to your list
Another great method is to use a ‘member get member’ approach. You know the style – introduce a family member or friend and get XX in gratitude’ This doesn’t need to be in the form of discount though, which can be tricky for service-based businesses. You can promise access to even more valuable content as a reward. Or a free one-to-one session with yourself, the owner of this great business which provides the very insight that your subscriber has signed up for in the first place. That way you get a new sign-up, your original subscriber gets a freebie and you get a deeper engagement with one of your prospects. It’s a win-win-win situation!
4. Lead magnets
One of the classic ways businesses (particularly service-based ones) grow their marketing lists is by providing a ‘lead magnet’ on their website.
What is a lead magnet?
A lead magnet is a piece of content that is valuable enough to your audience that they are willing to provide their data for future communications from you, to receive it. It’s a tool used by many service businesses for the purposes of building an email database and can be a highly successful approach. It is extremely important that a) the topic is something very much sought after by your potential customers, solves a problem they often face, or provides a toolkit, workbook, or valuable content which they can repurpose.
Don’t worry about providing too much value with it – if it is useful, the recipient will remember you and it won’t be long before they face their next hurdle. If you have captured their contact details and keep reminding them of how much you know / how you can help them, they are more likely to use your services in the future. Some businesses provide multiple freebies of this nature – if you decide to do this I urge you to tag your downloaders by content; tracking what your subscribers are interested in on your database will provide valuable methods of segmenting your database in the future.
How do I set up a lead magnet?
To create a lead magnet, you will need to create your content in pdf format so your prospect can download it or receive it via email. You’ll then need to design the process for the data capture / lead magnet delivery; depending on your CRM system, this is likely to be a landing page whereby you embed a data capture form, which upon successful completion either triggers an email with an attachment or directs them to a landing page where they can access the document (or both).
Where should I publicise my lead magnet?
Once created, you should publicise your lead magnet content wherever you can – in all of your ‘owned’ platforms such as your website and your social media pages. You could also try investing in some paid advertising to spread awareness outside of your existing audience in order to conquest some new prospects.
How should I follow up on my lead magnet downloads?
As part of the lead magnet design, you need to plan the automated email flow which will follow, to warm up and nurture your audience so they build awareness and trust with your business.The follow-up emails should link to and expand on the topic of your lead magnet document; you know this is an area that your customer is interested in otherwise they would not have signed up for it; showing them how to use your content and what they might need to think about next will be the best way of keeping them engaged.
5. Gamification
Gamification taps into the natural human instinct to enjoy competition, so it provides a method of engaging your website or social platform audiences. If a user is engaged, they are more likely to provide their personal data to continue their relationship with you. Examples of this for getting people to sign up to your email marketing are:
• Quizzes – test your knowledge or skills on a given subject
• Surveys – find out more about yourself / what type of person (or leader, or business owner) are you?
• Competitions – this could be for a chance to win, or simply a chance to join a league table; people love seeing their name in lights!
6. Events
Another tactic to try that often generates some high-quality leads are free training sessions and/or webinars. This involves some time and energy investment from you upfront; you will again need to develop content with value for your audience and set up an event – whether that be virtual or physical. When capturing data as part of the sign-up process you will need to include marketing permissions if you wish to use the data to build an ongoing relationship, but as with the lead magnet process you can make the registration dependent on data capture and sign up (e.g. by registering for this event you consent to XX Ltd using your data for future marketing purposes, you will be able to unsubscribe at any time)
If you want to see a master at work when it comes to email list subscriptions check out Eddie Shleyner’s approach on VeryGoodCopy - Copywriting & Content Marketing
Here you will see:
• Persuasive copy about what you will gain, how many others receive his emails
• Plenty of opportunities to subscribe including embedded forms on most pages, pop-ups, and landing pages
• Incentives to subscribe, recommend a friend (unlocking valuable content)
• Also follow him on LinkedIn to see how every post he carefully crafts will link back to his website with more reasons to subscribe.
Genius!
