Introduction
As an online business owner, social media posts and email marketing are the easiest ways to build trust with your audience.
While most online businesses focus on social media to communicate with their audience, building an email list should still be one of your top priorities in 2023.
Imagine your social media accounts get hacked or suspended…
How will you stay in touch with your audience if you never grew an email list?
Furthermore, email marketing is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website and increase your sales thanks to sales funnels.
Growing your email list and sending out a weekly newsletter will help you build trust with your readers and convert them into loyal customers.
These are all excellent reasons to start building your email list today.
Want to know how to build an email list that will skyrocket your online business traffic and sales?
Let’s dive in!
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What you need to know before building your email list
Before you start building your email list, it’s important to understand that it’s not just about collecting as many email addresses as possible.
You need to focus on building a list of engaged readers who are interested in your content and offerings.
This means that you need a clear understanding of your target audience and your goals before you get any further.
Before you start building your email list, establish a solid email marketing strategy, including:
- How often will you send out emails
- What type of content will you include in your emails
Another important thing you need to know before you start collecting emails is that you need to follow the laws and regulations in place regarding email marketing.
This means that you need to obtain consent from your subscribers (do not auto-confirm subscribers!), and provide them with a link to unsubscribe in each email you send out.
Now that we’re clear on what you should know before building your email list, let’s discuss how to get started.
Step 1: Define your target audience
Create buyer personas
If you’re researching how to build an email list, chances are that you have already selected a niche, identified your target audience, launched a website, and thought about your future paid products.
So you should already know your audience by now.
Creating buyer personas is the next step to building an email list that will skyrocket your online business.
A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer that will help you understand their needs, pain points, and behaviors.
To create a buyer persona, you need to gather the following information about your ideal customer:
- Demographics: Define your ideal customer’s age, gender, location, income level, education, occupation, and family status.
- Needs and Pain Points: Understand the needs, desires, and challenges that your ideal customer faces. What problems are they looking to solve? What goals are they trying to achieve? By identifying their pain points, you can position your product or service as a solution that meets their needs.
- Psychographics: Dive deeper into the psychological and behavioral aspects of your ideal customer. Explore their interests, hobbies, values, lifestyle choices, and attitudes. This information helps you align your marketing strategies and messaging with their preferences and motivations.
- Communication Channels: Determine the platforms and channels through which your ideal customers prefer to receive information and engage with brands. What social media platforms do they use?
Remember, the more specific and detailed your understanding of your ideal customer, the better you can tailor your products, services, and marketing efforts to meet their needs.
Understand your audience’s pain points and needs
Now that you have listed your audience’s pain points, you need to understand them and define how you can give them a unique solution.
The idea is to create free content and offers that provide solutions and value to show your expertise and build trust.
To understand your audience’s pain points and needs, you can join Facebook communities, ask your readers questions or analyze reviews on your competitors’ products.
The more you know about your audience, the better you can tailor your email marketing strategy to engage them.
Step 2: Choose an email marketing service provider
Compare different email marketing platforms
When it comes to choosing an email marketing platform, there are several options available on the market.
The most popular ones being:
- Convertkit (my favorite)
- Constant Contact
- Mailchimp
- Brevo
Each platform has its own unique features and pricing plans.
It’s important to take the time to research and compare different email marketing platforms by reading reviews online.
Let’s see what you should pay attention to before choosing email marketing software.
Choose a provider that offers the features you need
One of the most important things to consider when choosing your email marketing platform is the functionalities supported.
You need to look for a provider that offers options to:
- Customize sign-up forms
- Automate email campaigns (including sequences)
- Segment subscribers
- Track analytics
- Create landing pages and self-host them
- Import HTLM templates
These features, all offered by Convertkit, will help you effectively grow your email list.
Consider your budget
Although most of the platforms offer a free plan until you reach a certain number of subscribers, prices can increase rapidly.
This is definitely something you want to keep in mind when choosing your email marketing platform.
Convertkit offers a free plan as long as you have less than 1,000 subscribers.
Note that email marketing platforms consider each entry on your forms as a new subscriber.
This means that if you offer several lead magnets and create one form for each of them, each email address collected will count as one new subscriber.
If you offer 3 free resources and a user needs to submit 3 different forms to receive them, it will count as 3 subscribers.
This is the reason why the price of your plan can increase fast.
If you’re just starting out, you may not have a large budget to invest, so a simple way to avoid this is to create a free resource library on your website where you will gather all your lead magnets and password-protect this page.
Create one form so readers can get access to the Library and send the link to the page and password by email to confirmed subscribers.
This simple trick can save you hundreds of dollars every year!
Step 3: Create a lead magnet
What is a lead magnet?
To start building your email list, you will need to create something to offer your subscribers in exchange for their email addresses.
This free resource is called a Lead Magnet.
Your lead magnet needs to be highly correlated to your offers to ensure you attract the right kind of subscribers.
Your free resource can be:
- A free eBook
- An email course
- Templates (Canva, Notion, and more)
- Printables
- Or any other digital product.
My favorite way to build email lists is to offer either a chapter from one of my eBooks or another extract of a paid offer.
This not only helps me ensure I collect emails from people who are truly interested in my products and services but also helps me promote them.
The goal is to let your readers know that your free resource represents a few steps of a greater process and that your paid offer will help them with the rest of it.
Packing your lead magnet with a lot of value will not only help your subscribers solve a problem but will also showcase your expertise and build trust.
How to create a lead magnet that converts
Creating a lead magnet that converts is crucial to building an email list that will boost your online business and help you make sales.
To do so, you first need to be clear on your paid offer and decide what your freebie will be about.
Once you have it figured out, many different platforms can help you create it:
- Canva is an amazing tool for creating templates and printables
- Podia is the perfect platform for creating online courses
- Notion is the go-to tool for creating productive templates
Note that if you create printables or templates with Canva or Notion, you will need a 3rd party platform to sell them, such as Sendowl or Gumroad.
Step 4: Create a landing page
What is a landing page?
To collect email addresses, you can:
- Add forms to your blog posts and other parts of your website
- Create a landing page
A landing page is a standalone web page that is designed to capture the contact information of potential customers.
It is typically used in conjunction with a marketing campaign or promotion, and its sole purpose is to convert visitors into leads.
Elements of a high-converting landing page
A high-converting landing page is essential for building an email list that will skyrocket your online business.
Your landing page will need a clear and concise message, a compelling call-to-action, and a form for visitors to enter their contact information.
Your headline should grab the attention of your audience and clearly communicate the value of your offer.
Adding social proof, such as customer testimonials or reviews, will help build trust and credibility with your potential customers.
Finally, your call to action should be clear and compelling, encouraging your audience to take action and sign up for your email list.
Best practices for creating a landing page
When creating a landing page, it’s important to keep in mind the best practices that will help you convert visitors into subscribers.
First, make sure your landing page is visually appealing and easy to navigate, and follows your branding standards.
Use clear and concise language to explain the benefits of subscribing to your email list and include sneak peeks of your free resources, such as screenshots, video extracts, or gifs of the lead magnet.
Another important aspect to pay attention to when creating your landing pages is that you need to self-host them.
To create your landing page, you can either create the page from scratch directly on your website, import a template or create it using your email marketing platform.
If you decide to create your landing page using your email marketing provider, don’t forget to change the DNS records of the page to self-host it on your website.
This is key to building trust with your audience and ensuring your landing pages look professional.
Step 5: Drive traffic to your landing page
Ways to drive traffic to your landing page
One of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your landing page is through social media.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are great places to promote your landing page and attract potential subscribers.
You can create eye-catching graphics with Canva that highlight the benefits of subscribing to your email list and post them on social media.
Another great way to drive traffic to your landing page and collect a lot of email addresses is to add opt-ins to your blog posts.
Promoting blog posts including forms to subscribe to my newsletter on Pinterest is how I grew my email list by thousands of subscribers.
Want another free way to skyrocket your email subscriptions?
Pop-ups!
I used to think people were annoyed by pop-ups because I hate them.
Turns out that adding a form that pops up when a user has been on my website for more than 20 seconds helped me get +1,000 email subscribers in January 2023 alone!
Related read: How to use Pinterest to promote your online business
Organic traffic strategies
Organic traffic strategies are a great way to build your email list without spending money on advertising.
One of the most effective strategies is to create high-quality content that is optimized for search engines.
This means using keywords that your target audience is searching for in search engines such as Google and Pinterest and creating blog posts that are valuable and engaging.
Users will land on your blog posts and, if they find them interesting enough, will subscribe to your email list to receive your newsletter.
Related read: How to become viral on Pinterest
Paid advertising
Paid advertising is a great way to quickly grow your email list.
With platforms like Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, and Pinterest Ads, you can target specific audiences based on demographics, interests, and behaviors.
This means you can reach people who are most likely to be interested in your business and opt-in to your email list.
Additionally, make sure your ads are clear and compelling, with a strong call to action to encourage people to sign up for your list.
Don’t forget to set a budget and track your results to ensure you’re getting a positive return on investment.
If you don’t see any results, pause the ads, analyze what your competition is doing differently, and tweak your ads until you find what works for your business.
Step 6: Nurture your email list
Why email nurturing is important
Once your landing page is live and you start collecting emails, you will have to stick to your email marketing strategy.
Email nurturing is important because it allows you to build a relationship with your subscribers.
By sending them relevant and valuable content, you can establish trust and credibility with your audience.
This can lead to increased engagement, higher open and click-through rates, and ultimately, more sales.
Additionally, email nurturing allows you to segment your list and personalize your messages based on your subscribers’ interests and behaviors.
This will help you deliver more targeted and effective marketing campaigns, which can result in higher conversion rates and a stronger return on investment.
3 Types of email campaigns
The easiest way to nurture your email list is to send automated email campaigns.
You can, for instance:
- Create a welcome sequence with your most popular blog posts
- Create a 7-day email course on something you want to teach your audience
- Send out 3 emails with personal anecdotes you want to share with your readers
Another popular way to build your newsletter, which provides regular updates on your business, new blog posts, and exclusive content.
You should aim to send at least one newsletter per week.
Try sending it out on different days and hours of the week to see what works best for your audience.
I have personally noticed that emails sent during the weekend, especially on Sundays, have better statistics. This is probably explained because my readers have more free time over the weekend and read my newsletter right away after receiving it.
The last type of email you can send to your subscribers is a promotional email.
This type of email lets your subscribers know about special offers or upcoming launches.
Whatever type of email campaign you choose, make sure it aligns with your business goals and provides value to your subscribers.
Final Thoughts
Building an email list is a crucial aspect of any successful online business.
Your email list will provide you with direct access to your audience, helping you build trust and authority in your niche.
By following the steps above, you will create a loyal and engaged audience that will help you grow your business and increase your revenue.
Remember, building an email list takes time and effort, but the rewards are well worth it in the end.
Following the best practices from this blog post will help you ensure that your email list becomes a valuable asset for your online business.