In this month’s article we look at how to grow your small business email list.
But first, one thing to bear in mind is to make it quick and easy for your followers to sign up to your email list. Keep it short and simple. Don’t have ten clicks before they can subscribe or they will probably give up before they get there.
Think about the frequency of your newsletter and advise your subscribers how often you will be sending out emails. You could also give them the option of how often they would like to receive their emails, such as weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
So, now let’s get down to how to grow your email list.
Here are ten ideas for you to consider:
- On your website, you can have various places to ask for people to subscribe to your email list, including the footer, the contact us page, the services pages, etc. Test out different wording on different parts of your website, so it relates to that specific page. This could be an ongoing process – measure the number of subscribers you receive on each page, and with the different wording you are testing.
- Create a landing page to offer a freebie. This could be:
- a download
- a checklist
- an eBook
- a toolkit
- resources
Require people to enter their email address to receive the freebie via email.
3. Run webinars for people to watch. They will need to register for the webinar with their name and email address and therefore can be added to your list.
4. At the end of your newsletters, you could have a link/button to ‘refer a friend’ who may be interested in receiving the newsletter. You could offer an incentive to do this – ‘Refer a friend to subscribe and receive X.’
5. On your social media accounts, add a ‘subscribe to newsletter’ button.
6. Add the link of your recent newsletter in a social media post for your followers to view and then allow them to subscribe. ‘Like what you read? Why not subscribe?’
7. On web shop checkout pages, most businesses give the option to sign up to the newsletter, since you are inputting your email address for the order anyway.
8. In your email signature, ask people to subscribe to your email list.
9. You could also offer bonus content. For example, at the end of your blog you could say: ‘Sign up to our newsletter to receive a toolkit to XYX or an eBook on ABC.’
10. Create a Facebook group. This is usually somewhere for your target audience to ask questions and gain content and tips from you. When people request to join the group, you can ask for their email address.
Remember Data Protection
I hope you found this article useful. Do please ensure, whatever you decide to test, that you make it clear how to opt in and how to unsubscribe at any time, in order to comply with the Data Protection Principles. More details can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/data-protection
If you would like more help and guidance on how to grow your email list, please do get in touch. Take advantage of my 30minute Discovery Call at no cost to you.
