19 Best Ways to Grow Your Email List as a Business

Photo by Stephen Phillips - Hostreviews.co.uk on Unsplash

Email marketing remains one of the best ways to market your business and get leads. Despite some marketers predicting that email marketing would die, it’s still very much alive and thriving. Your email list is a vital part of your email marketing strategy. But a big challenge is growing it. To help you we’ve put together 19 of the best tips that will grow your email list.

Sign up Field on your Website for Your Email List

This should be obvious so if you don’t have one get it ASAP! A sign-up field gives your website visitors the option to sign up to your newsletter right there and then. It's prime real estate. Be strategic with its placement – ideally have it on every page on the top navigation or the footer.

Make it Worth their While to sign up For Your Email List

Why should people sign up to your email list? There must be a benefit to them. Offer an incentive like free content, large discounts, promotions, etc. Tell them how many emails they will receive from you. Honour that promise or else you’ll come across as spammy and lose their trust.

Add a Pop-Up on Your Website to Collect Emails

A pop-up is similar to a sign-up field but on a bigger scale and it pops up when a visitor visits a page on your website. It’s like a mini billboard. Please avoid putting too many pop-ups on your website as it looks spammy and makes for a poor user experience.

Instead, be highly strategic and use when you have an offer like a guide or eBook to download. Ensure it closes after 25-30 seconds or else it is distracting and again makes for a poor user experience.

Include a Timed Pop-Up Survey on Your Website

Create a survey that pops up on your website only after a customer has spent a reasonable amount of time on your website. A pop-up survey is a special form of customer feedback. Companies use them to get insights from website visitors in an unobtrusive way. Again, be strategic in their use and avoid too many for an optimal user experience.

Segment Your Email Marketing List

Segmentation plays an important part in marketing and when it comes to your email marketing list it should be considered. It comes down to understanding who your audience is. You can segment them into groups for instance, by age, location, existing customer, new customer, etc. You send emails based on these groups. This enables you to make your messaging more targeted for each group.

Create Valuable Content Consistently for Your Email List

Without consistent and valuable content your email list will cease to exist. Remember your subscribers signed up for a benefit. Give it to them with content that they just love to engage with. Mix it up by including text, videos, images, etc. A sure and fast way of losing subscribers is creating content that’s boring or not relevant to them.

Collect Email Addresses via Content Subscriptions

You can collect email addresses via content subscriptions (blog, article, video, etc). Ask them to sign up at the end. If they love your content, they will be more likely to want to see further content.

Request an Email Address for Access to Content

This is a super effective strategy that many brands (both B2B and B2C) have been using now for a while. Essentially, it’s about requiring an email address to get access to content (eBook, guide, whitepaper, etc). It’s a clever marketing bribe. Remember to hype up the content so they just need to have it.

Subscribe Option in Email Signature to Your Email List

One of the easiest, but commonly overlooked strategies is your company’s email signature. Add a link in your signature where people can sign up for your email list.

Leverage Social Media

When it comes to growing your email list you can’t ignore the power that is social media. Apply the following best practices:

• Make it easy for followers to share your emails (include buttons that link to your social media and ‘’email a friend’’ links in each of your emails to make content shareable).
• Utilise Facebook groups where you ask followers to sign up to your email.
• Add a CTA to sign up to your email list on your social media pages.

Send out an Opt-in Campaign for Your Email List

If you have an old email list that isn’t generating much engagement, send out an email with an opt-in message and a promise to remove any email addresses that don't respond. This may appear counterintuitive to remove contacts from your list. But it can actually give you better results by ensuring you only send emails to people who want to receive them.

Have Games/Quizzes on your Website for Your Email List

An innovative way of gathering emails is providing website visitors a game or quiz they can complete on your website. They need to provide their email in order to receive their results. Clever huh?

Giveaway/ Prize on your Website for your Email List

Let’s face it – everyone loves a good giveaway or prize and so many brands use this as an incentive not only get brand loyalty but also to get email addresses. Request an email address for people to get your giveaway or prize. Promote it on your social media and link back to your website.

Use Live Chat to Grow Your Email List

Make it a rule that before anyone can start a live chat on your website, they must provide an email address. This comes in handy not just for having their email address but also for a follow up if they get disconnected.

Allow Customer Reviews on your Website

Alongside a piece of content like a blog, you can allow your customers to leave reviews on your website. This not only boosts your brand reputation and helps you be seen in a favourable light but is also another great way of gathering email addresses. Make it a requirement for users to provide their email address to leave a review.

Don’t Forget about Contact Forms for Your Email List

Don’t forget to add the people who have already reached out to you via the contact form on your website to your brand’s email marketing list! This can easily be overlooked but is an effective way of gathering email addresses. Be sure to ask their permission before you start sending emails.

Collect Emails at Tradeshows & Events

If you’re attending or hosting any tradeshows or networking events, it’s a great opportunity to collect email addresses. Set up a station where people can sign up for your email list. Be sure to follow up immediately after the show/event to thank them for signing up. Deliver valuable content that makes it worth their while for having signed up in the first place.

Add QR Codes to your Promotional Materials

A quick and effortless way to collect email addresses and maximize your marketing efforts is to add a QR code to your printed materials. This allows you to collect email addresses even from a poster or brochure.

Conduct A/B tests of Your Email List Content

So much of marketing including email marketing involves testing to see what works and what doesn’t. When it comes to your email marketing send out different versions of the same email to your audience to see which one performs better. This is what A/B testing is all about.

If you use a mix or all of these strategies your email list will grow exponentially. Book a Time with WORD EMPIRE to discuss how to further grow your business with world-class content & marketing that builds online empires.