There’s a good reason why email marketing is one of the most valuable tools available to digital marketers. Put simply, it works.
Last year, there were 4 billion people using email worldwide. Web analysts predict this number will rise to 4.5 billion in 2024, roughly half of the global population. That kind of reach at the ready is tough to beat.
Your company’s email audience is also more engaged than they are on other digital platforms. The average email open rate is just shy of 22%, and the average open rate for a welcome or thank you email that includes a link to download something has a whopping 98% open rate and a 37% click-through rate. And lastly, there’s the return on investment (ROI.) For every dollar your company spends on email marketing, you can expect to receive $42 back, on average.
In other words, if your company isn’t leveraging email within your digital marketing strategy, you might be missing out on a major growth opportunity for your business.
In this article, the growth marketing experts at Galactic Fed share our top hacks that will help your company boost its email list immediately. From taking advantage of automation, and making it super simple to opt-in to supercharging your email preview, scroll down and check out our tried and tested ways to grow your email list to impressive numbers fast.
The mighty power of email marketing
Before we dive into our top hacks for growing your email list, let’s go over some of the basics of email marketing first.
An email list comprises a group of subscribers, either your website visitors or customers you engaged with elsewhere online. This list allows your company to share content with people who have opted-in to receive information, announcements, updates, and other details about your business sent directly in their inbox.
In the absence of an email list, your firm risks missing out on reaching potential customers. It’s one of the most powerful ways to connect with leads, as you are 40 times more likely to gain new customers through email than through Facebook. In addition, you are in the driver’s seat when it comes to your email list. You control how and when you engage your target audience; there are no algorithms to compete with.
And lastly, sending emails is an optimal way to build trust between your company and your customers.
Now, let’s move on to Galactic Fed’s seven email marketing hacks!
Automate, automate, automate!
Email marketing has made leaps and bounds from the early days of the simple e-newsletter. Today, your company can use several different integrations and extensions to engage your subscribers and grow your lists. If you’ve got limited time, budget, resources, or all of the above, it can be a challenge to ensure you are ticking all of the boxes when it comes to your email marketing.
There are tools and software that can automate some of those more time-consuming daily tasks. Connect your email marketing software to the other plug-ins that your company uses, such as online forms, eCommerce platforms, and even CRM apps—to save time and start rapidly growing your firm’s email list.
Source: Mailchimp
One of the most popular and well-known email marketing apps due to its intuitive functionality and cheeky branding, Mailchimp is a great starting point as you embark on your email marketing strategy if you want to scale it quickly. The app includes marketing automation plus an easy-to-use landing page builder, customer journey mapping, retargeting ads, list segmentation, and even A/B testing—all included in its free plan.
Cover all bases
Hopefully, you have a prominent subscribe button somewhere on your company’s blog that collects email addresses quickly and easily. When it comes to growing your company’s email list, make sure you offer people the chance to opt-in across all of your web pages and the various other online platforms you engage them on, aside from your website.
Pop-up forms and interstitial ads can ask site visitors to sign up to your mailing list, wherever page they land on first on your website.
Beyond that, make sure you are promoting your newsletter and asking people if they’d like to sign up through:
- LinkedIn,
- Twitter,
- Facebook,
- Instagram, and
- others.
This will help you improve your mailing list numbers fast. In particular, we have a step-by-step guide to finding email addresses for lead generation on LinkedIn.
Make it easy to opt-in
The jury is still out on if asking for a person’s first name on an email form is necessary or if just asking for the email address makes it easier for people to subscribe to your mailing list.
The case for asking for people’s first names is that it can help with personalization, later on boosting click-through and conversion rates.
On the other hand, asking people for just their email address ensures a more straightforward opt-in form and can make it more likely for someone to subscribe.
Source: Never Bounce
By removing the name field, your company may be able to grow your email list faster. If time is of the essence for growing your mailing list, consider removing everything bar the email address field.
User research shows that every step you can take to simplify your forms will help you build a happy following. The fewer steps and clicks between sparking someone’s interest in your product or service and that same someone subscribing will help your company grow.
Incentivize people
One of the best ways to get website visitors to subscribe to your company’s mailing list is to offer them something of value in exchange for their email address.
Incentives provide a gentle nudge that can help persuade visitors who would otherwise exit your site to take action and sign up to your email list.
Typical incentives include free shipping, limited-time offers, and access to gated or exclusive content. A welcome discount, in particular, can encourage people to make a purchase they didn’t intend to make initially.
Spruce up your email receipts
With a bit of tender loving care, you can turn your company’s email receipts into a powerful marketing tool that secures impressive results.
Spend some time on developing a great design and ensure your branding shines too. Try including your incentives within your email receipt, like a referral code that encourages people to forward to their friends and family. You can also highlight related products or services within your email receipts that are relevant to the subscriber.
Include an enticing button
Source: Campaign Monitor
Buttons aren’t just for your landing pages. They are mega effective when deployed within an email marketing campaign. Ensure your button includes a call-to-action, it’s got good color contrast, and it changes color if someone hovers over it.
Use email targeting and retargeting
Take the guesswork out of trying to figure out what your customers want and use the insightful data that are already at your fingertips. Retargeting is commonly used by digital marketers who are looking to improve the effectiveness of their paid ads, and it works just as well for boosting your email marketing campaigns.
Your first step should be to take a look at what your email subscribers click on then send them personalized emails based on the data. You can also track visitor behavior on your site and trigger an email based on their website activity.
Data-driven email marketing that gets results
Automation is your best friend when it comes to growing your email list. Some other close companions to email list growth are other digital platforms, beyond your website, that provide perfect opportunities to ask people if they’d like to hear from you. LinkedIn, in particular, is great for tracking down relevant email addresses to start growing your list today.
Ensure you make it as easy as possible for people to opt-in to receiving your newsletter and think up an enticing incentive that will make it impossible for them not to sign up.
A bit of attention given to your email receipts would make all the difference when it comes to reaching new customers and getting them to subscribe. And make sure to include a stand-out button that consists of a clear call-to-action.
Finally, play around with email targeting and retargeting to take your email marketing campaign to the next level.
If you’ve taken a stab at all seven of our top email marketing hacks and are thirsty for more, have a read of our comprehensive guide to email marketing that converts. We also provide the key marketing metrics your company should be measuring now to ensure your email marketing campaigns are as optimized and robust as possible.
Do you fancy a helping hand with your next email marketing campaign? Galactic Fed is here to help! Recently, we helped the work and travel abroad program, Remote Year, increase their leads by 426% and improve the open rate of one of their crucial email marketing campaigns by 23% with a customized marketing hack. Let us do the same for your business. Reach out to us today.
