How to Get Email Addresses for Email Marketing
How to get email addresses is a critical question for successful email marketing. If you’re only relying on your website to collect addresses, you’re not leveraging the full power of email marketing. For the purpose of growing your list, we have some helpful tips.
Connection Is Key to Get Email Addresses
First thing to remember, email marketing is about connection. Consequently, it’s critical to treat every interaction you have as an opportunity to get email addresses. Naturally, a website is a great starting point, but you can do way better at growing your audience.
Think about the tapestry of your life. Obviously, it includes threads from your professional, social, and communal lives. Adding email addresses from these threads not only increases your profile, it gives people insight to what you’re doing, thinking, and contributing to the world. Without question, business partners, friends, relatives, vendors, neighbors, fellow volunteers–all these people belong on your email list.
Snag Their Info through Your Website
Undoubtedly, if people are visiting your website, there’s a good chance they want what you offer. Therefore, it’s a smart idea to put a form that collects the visitor’s email address and first name on your landing page. Don’t make the reader dig for your lead collector–it should be the second or third thing they notice when they land on your website. Naturally, this form should be clear, attractive, and easy to use, setting the tone for your future communications.
Giving Is a Great Way to Get Email Addresses
Another surefire way to get email addresses is by giving away something valuable in exchange for their contact information. Of course, your giveaway should be related to your service, business, or mission.
As email marketing professionals, we use our SuperCollector™ to devise giveaways that visitors really want. Secondly, with the help of an attention-getting signup form, readers provide not just their email addresses, but other helpful information that turns them into customers. It’s a win-win for everybody.
Use Personal Interactions to Collect Email Addresses
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to get email addresses through devices alone. Any time you use an interpersonal connection to get email addresses, you get a chance to grow your list. Best of all, when your readers can connect a face with an email message, they’re more likely to open it.
Put Out a Guest Book
If you have a brick-and-mortar store, gallery, or salon, you need to have a guest book to collect email addresses. Choose something attractive with tactile paper, and include a pen that feels good to use. It’s also smart to create a field for visitors’ first names. Additionally, you can ask for their birthdays and collect similar information for VIP giveaways.
Service Calls Are Golden Opportunities to Get Email Addresses
Another smart way to get email addresses is through service calls. Specifically, instruct technicians, sales people, and consultants to collect every customer’s personal information–including their email address, first name, and gender–when they meet. It’s a great way to grow your list and stay connected with people who want what you’re offering.
They Ask For Your Advice; You Get Email Addresses
If you’re an expert, there’s a good chance people call for your advice. Use these requests for help as a chance to expand your email list. After all, you obviously have information they want. Why not make the exchange simpler with the beauty of automated messaging? Set a goal to collect an email address for every consultancy call you take.
Yet another way to get email addresses is making guest appearances on vlogs, YouTube channels, and podcasts. Invite viewers and listeners to email you with their questions. This starts a dialogue that can quickly turn to sales conversions. And if you do business through trade shows, by all means, use them to get email addresses as well.
Finally, trade shows present an excellent opportunity to grow your email list. Make sure to put out a guest book for anyone who wants to learn more about what you’re offering.
Don’t Get Email Addresses through Purchased Lists
When it comes to email addresses, quality is always more important than quantity. That’s why we urge you: don’t buy email lists. The reason email marketing is effective is that subscribers have opted in to receive your messages. If readers get emails from you out of the blue, they’ll be annoyed. They could drop your messages into their SPAM folder. And that means you could wind up on a blacklist, making it virtually impossible to deliver your messages to the people who really want them.
Just don’t do it.
Once You Get Email Addresses, What Do You Do With Them?
After you collect those quality subscribers through meaningful engagement–your website, customer contact, person-to-person interactions–you’re ready to automate. Sending a welcome series of automated messages to new contacts is one of the best ways to convert readers to customers.
Pro tip: when you set up an automated message system, create one email that goes directly in the reader’s primary tab or contact list. And, before scheduling it to drop, evaluate the SPAM rating and adjust the content accordingly. These simple steps ensure your messages will go straight to inboxes—instead of SPAM folders.
How to Get Email Addresses to Accurately Measure Engagement
Once you send automated messages to your email list, how do you know that your audience appreciates the content? By using their email addresses to measure their engagement. Email metrics are tricky, though. While open rates are fine for tracking trends, they really don’t tell the full story.
When it comes to email analytics, the click rate is the magic number. It shows how many readers are digging deeper into your content. Therefore, to increase your click rate, you should have something to click on within every email message. This link will confirm your data:
- Who clicked on the message
- How many times the message was clicked
- When the reader clicked on the message
- Where the recipient was when they clicked the link
Now the Fun Begins
After you send an automated message, you can use email analytics for future marketing campaigns. Pay careful attention to who is clicking on your messages, when they’re engaging with your emails, and what subject lines incite interest. All this information gathered from clicks is invaluable to creating targeted messages that inform and engage your readers, converting them to customers.
Let Us Help You Grow Your List
Obviously, there’s more to nailing email marketing than simply collecting email addresses. As a full-service email marketing agency, we’re ready to help with everything from building your list to crafting a campaign strategy to designing professional messages that get responses. Not only that, but we’ll track your data to grow your list, bolster your brand, and increase conversions. It’s one of the best business decisions you’ll ever make.
