Why You Need Email Marketing and How To Grow Your List

Jan 9

Did you know that email marketing generates the highest ROI of all marketing channels? Many small business owners neglect their email list or don’t even take advantage of this channel, but email marketing combined with social media marketing can be a power duo, and you shouldn’t sleep on it.

We’re going to walk you through a quick marketing 101 lesson: The Customer Journey

The Customer Journey (Marketing Funnel) is a series of stages that encourages your customers through the entire experience of making a buying decision. The funnel helps businesses plan and measure efforts to attract, engage, and convert prospects through content and other marketing materials, like landing pages and ads.

This is what it typically looks like, from top to bottom:

Awareness - a customer is first introduced to your brand
Consideration - they’re considering your service or product against your competitors
Conversion - they’re ready to buy or take action
Loyalty - repeat customers or life-long supporters

Okay, school is out of session; let’s get to why this matters!

The importance of Email Marketing combined with Social Media:

Social media, for the majority of business owners, is an excellent tool for the awareness and consideration stage of the customer journey. Often times, you will grow your cold audience into social media FIRST, but only a small portion of those followers will continue deeper into the marketing funnel. The reason social media is so great for awareness and consideration is because it’s a no-cost option for customers. They don’t have to give you money, emails, contact information - anything. It’s a very easy decision, making it perfect for you to build that awareness.

Here’s a pro-tip for you: Your primary goal with social media should be to get users OFF of social media on onto your website or into your email list, so you can continue to facilitate the customer journey. This isn’t the case for every instance and every business, but it’s highly likely that you’ll want to set a similar goal at some point in your strategy.

That leads us to email marketing, which is commonly used to foster relationships with customers on a deeper level (consideration), as well as, encourage the conversion stage of the funnel. It’s an opportunity to provide a more personal way of communication with your customers and dive into their pain points and their lifestyles through an experience that feels more ‘one-on-one.’

How To Grow Your Email List:

Now that you know how effective email marketing is for your business, what’s next?

It’s time to grow that list! We don’t want this experience to feel daunting, so we’re handing you the best ways to grow your email list in 2023. Remember, your audience is receiving more and more invites to email lists, so you need to give your subscribers an irresistible reason to sign up.

1. Create an Incentive

Let’s be honest. The most obvious reason someone is going to subscribe to your email list is because they want something in return. Buyers are selfish, so let’s give into that and give them something in return! Here’s the kicker: It has to be amazing.

What is something you know your customers want? How does that tie into what your business is selling? For the product and ecommerce brands, it might be as simple as a 10% discount, or free shipping. Maybe it’s a value-packed template or tutorial on how to do something, or a timesaving checklist to save your audience the headache of doing it themselves. Whatever it is, make it good. Email marketing (no matter the industry) is very saturated, so you really need to offer something amazing if you want those email addresses.

Every successful list building tactic starts with creating something that helps your customer.

2. Include a CTA in Your Social Media Content

Oftentimes, brands don’t like to promote themselves on social media, which is truly a big no-no. Don’t be afraid to ask your followers to subscribe to your list every so often. Include a CTA (call-to-action) at the end of your captions, in your profile bios, or share it on your Instagram story once in awhile.

Did you know Facebook lets you embed a signup form as an additional tab on your profile? Here’s how to do it.

3. Create a Website Popup

You should take advantage of your website traffic every chance you get. We’re sure you’ve all been to a website and seen a popup once you scroll for awhile, asking you to sign up? You may have even seen our popup if you scrolled through the homepage. Click Here for our example, if you didn’t catch it. This doesn’t convert as great as an incentive, but it’s still a great way to gain more subscribers. Remember, every sign up counts!

4. Promote Your Incentive on Your Website

Once you’ve built that irresistible incentive, design a sidebar on your website that helps to promote it. If you don’t tell your audience about your incentive every chance you can, they’ll never see it. Create a branded section on your website that advertises your opt-in.

5. Add a Signup to Your Email Signature

This one doesn’t need to much of an explanation, but it’s often overlooked. You probably have emails coming in and out all day long, which means you’re probably missing an opportunity to add a few signups throughout the week. At the bottom of your email signature, include a link and CTA to sign up!

6. Create a Quiz

A quiz is such a fun and interactive way to build your list, and it’s turning into a very common approach among small business owners. Think of a catchy quiz that relates to solving a pain point your target customer has. For example, a quiz called: “What is your design style?” would be perfect for an Interior Design company. The quiz would guide them through a series of questions that targets their unique likes and dislikes of design, and then be prompted to provide their email address for the results. Your results would give them a fun and unique ‘design style,’ along with a few tips to help them implement that style (of course, one of them being to hire your brand)!

To create your own quiz, check out Interact

We hope this gave you the confidence you need to start prioritizing that email list. Remember, you do not own your social media followers - they could disappear at any moment. Your email list is here to stay! If you’re looking for an email marketing software to get started, check out Flodesk. (bonus: this affiliate link give you 50% of your subscription)! It is the most user-friendly software we’ve ever worked with, and we recommend it to just about anyone.
If email marketing is leaving you overwhelmed and you’re ready to hand it to the pros, fill out our contact form, and we’ll be in touch with you soon!