Building a large email list is the smartest thing you can do as an online marketer.
If done correctly, it’ll boost engagement, improve your brand’s reputation, and drive sales better than any other online communication platform.
Here’s why you should be making efforts to add people to your email list in every piece of content you create.
The Battle to Earn Repeat Readers
Driving new readers to your content is difficult. It can take years to build a sizeable social media audience or for your domain to earn a decent SEO ranking, and this is what is needed if you want to guarantee a significant number of brand new readers on every blog post you create.
And even then, there’s no guarantee they’ll return, or even stick around to the end of the article. To them, you’re still just one of millions of websites creating content on the web. The majority of new readers will take the information they need and leave your website, immediately forgetting who you are.
As a result, the same battle to recruit new readers occurs over and over, with each new post. How exhausting.
Luckily, there’s a better way to do it…
What if you could just send an alert about your blog post to a list of thousands of people that trust you, are waiting to hear from you, and know from experience that you produce fantastic content? Doesn’t that sound like a better way to attract traffic and build an audience that’ll eventually want to buy from you? This is what happens when you build a quality email list.
By shooting off a quick marketing email, you’ll attract an audience who is interested in your to your posts, building trust and authority in their eyes with each piece of content you produce.
Email vs Social Media
Some people may think that social media produces the same result as email marketing, but there are some key differences.
For starters, social media is controlled by an algorithm which determines what percentage of followers see your post. You have no control over this algorithm at all.
This guide from Hubspot shows the decline in organic traffic to Facebook Pages from this date. There’s nothing stopping Facebook, Twitter, Instagram from censoring you, banning you, or removing your page. On the other hand, email deliverability rates are more or less in your control. No-one can censor your emails.
Email is generally seen as a more professional platform than social media too. Social media is where people to go to be social. Email is where people to go to get things and, more importantly, to complete transactions.
Also, unread email stays in the inbox until it’s dealt with. Unread social media messages are swallowed up by new messages in your timelines within hours, if not minutes.
How to Get Email Subscribers
Getting email subscribers might not sound like an easy task. After all, there’s no one out there actively wishing they got more email. The technique that most top bloggers and marketers use is to offer readers a free downloadable in exchange for their email address. The downloadable typically represents the best free content that the website has to offer – something so irresistible that readers are willing to give up their contact details to get their hands on it. This free download is advertised aggressively on pop-ups or at the bottom of blog posts
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From there, an introductory email explains that subscribers will get high quality content sent to them occasionally, but they can unsubscribe at any time.
Typically, if the blog post and the free downloadable impresses the reader, they won’t be in too much of a hurry to unsubscribe. If the content in the emails produce as much value as the downloadable, you’ll have a subscriber for life.
Create quality content with a strong call-to-action pointing people towards this free download and you’ll have a email list full of engaged leads before you know it.
