Better Ways to Collect Emails in 2021

We have compiled these articles to help you find different methods of increasing your email marketing list. In 2021 it is so important to have an email collection strategy.

^[1]Collecting email addresses from your website visitors is key if you want to cultivate a community of regularly returning readers and life-long customers. But it is not always an easy task as you will find few people willing to share their data without good reason.

In this article, we will discuss 9 tactics for collecting email addresses that are tried and tested. These include displaying popups and floating opt-in bars on your website, hosting webinars, running competitions, driving traffic from social media to landing pages, and more.

1. Use custom email opt-in popups

Popups are commonly used to collect email addresses and can be extremely effective. For example, Neil Patel, KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg co-founder, states that popups improved lead generation conversions by 17% on his website.

However, to ensure popups on your website are effective, you need to consider your marketing goals. A well-timed, well-positioned, and well-designed popup will quickly see an increase in subscriptions.

Take Getsitecontrol newsletter popups as an example. They include a range of customization, targeting, and smart trigger options to make your popups more personalized and optimize conversions.

Let’s take a closer look at these features…

• Customization — upload your own images, change the colours, fonts and add animations so the pop-up voice and appearance match your site’s branding.
• Targeting — display popups to your target audience based on various criteria, including country, device, traffic source, new or returning visitors, and many more.
• Smart Triggers – set popups to appear after a set time period, the amount of scrolling, or on a set date or day of the week. This will enable you to display popups at the optimal time for collecting emails from your website visitors.

Ideally, it would help split test popups understand what designs and settings work best and increase conversions. If you’ve never run an A/B test before, here is how to do it.

2. Offer an incentive in exchange for the email address

Providing an incentive in the form of a lead magnet will encourage more visitors to part with their email addresses. For example, when the Digital Marketer team created a lead magnet consisting of a resource of Facebook ad templates for their visitors, they generated 35000+ leads in 60 days. But, of course, to make it work, you should make sure a lead magnet provides real value to your audience’s experience.

A series of useful video tutorials helping your viewers solve problems relevant to your website’s niche is a great example of a lead magnet.

Video content is a preferred medium of choice for many and will grab your audience’s attention more than a PDF doc. Place a link to the promised video content in your website visitors’ first email after subscribing to deliver this incentive.

Other ideas for a lead magnet can include:

• A-List of Resources
• Quick Start Guide
• Free Course
• Templates
• Free Trial

Most lead magnets are offered within an opt-in popup. However, you can also entice email subscriptions by offering a content upgrade. A content upgrade is a piece of extra information valuable to the reader, typically offered at the bottom of a blog post in exchange for an email. Content upgrades are tailored for each post individually as they should contain extra information relevant to the article.

For content upgrades to work, your article content must be top-notch – while the offered upgrade should be specific, targeted, and irresistible to the readers.

3. ^[2]Create Targeted Email Lists

Growing your email subscriber list involves getting to know more about the subscribers you already have.

Who are they? Where do they live? What are their interests? What are their pain points?

Once you’ve gathered this information, you can start segmenting your audience into buckets. That way, your readers won’t all receive the same messages — only what’s most relevant to them.

For example, some fashion retailers offer subscribers the opportunity to choose which email lists they’re most interested in. And they have the option to choose as many or as few as they want.

4. Convert Important Content Into Gated Content

From white papers to ebooks, chances are you have plenty of high-quality content that you’re giving away for free.

If you really want to grow your email list and skyrocket engagement, try restricting your best content so it can’t be accessed unless a user enters their name and email address.

Gated content needs to be both well-written and informative to give the reader the expected payoff. Remember, you’re exchanging value for value.

A strong example of gated content is Klood’s ebook “The Beginner’s Guide to WordPress.” Users only get permission to view it when they sign up.

5. Personalize For Optimal Results

It’s been shown that personalized emails have transaction rates six times higher than those for non-personalized emails.

Instinctually, any hint of personalization makes us feel special, with more than 70% of consumers saying that a personalized experience is more likely to influence their decision to open and read brand emails.

And email personalization doesn’t just mean including the recipient’s name in the subject line.

OpenTable encourages engagement by sending emails with personalized subject lines asking how the customers’ most recent meal they booked through the platform.

6. Make Your Opt-In Form Prominent

When it comes to growing your email list, opt-in forms are critical for boosting conversion rates.

Studies show that 55% of visitors spend only 15 seconds or less on your website, which means you need to capture their attention right from the get-go.

While the copy should be concise and the design visually appealing, the primary goal is to make your form stand out from the rest of the elements on your page.

Whether you’re using an exit-intent form, a slide-in form or a notification bar, the pop-up must be prominent.

7. Offer An Incentive

If you want visitors to subscribe to your email list, you need to offer them something in exchange. In other words, please give them a reason to want to hear from you.

Incentives can often be the extra push that helps persuade visitors who would otherwise leave your site to take action and sign up.

Common incentives include limited-time offers, free shipping and access to exclusive content. Discounts, in particular, encourage 67% of consumers to make a purchase they weren’t originally planning to make, according to a recent survey from RetailMeNot.

8. ^[3]Use embedded signup forms

Embedded signup forms are perhaps the most traditional of strategies for attaining email subscribers. Static embedded forms should be placed on high traffic pages in visible areas, such as headers, footers, sidebars, and splash pages.

For example, placing a signup form here could be a quick win if you have a high-traffic blog post.

The benefit of an embedded signup form is that it’s non-intrusive.

9. Introduce gamification

Gamification in email list building is applying interactive elements of game playing to encourage engagement with a sign-up form. Some examples of gamification include quizzes, tests, surveys, spin-to-win (aka wheel of fortune) pop-ups, and scratchcards.

Gamification offers exclusive prizes, like 10-50% discounts or other freebies that shoppers must claim by entering their email address. The value of gamification lies in its ability to appeal to consumer psychology. Customers are motivated by prizes that appear easily attainable. This enthralls visitors who feel they are getting something for nothing and will eagerly sign up to take advantage.

These sign-up forms are one of the most fun and engaging ways you can build an email list.

10. ^[4]Use Facebook ads

“Without question, the most affordable and cost-effective way to grow a list of leads for email marketing is through Facebook ads. We’ve easily made 7 figures in sales in the past 12 months by using direct targeted Facebook ads to capture leads (name and email). The user base for Facebook is at an all-time high, and the age range of its users is ideal for most businesses these days. The user base ages 30-55+ has seen massive growth while 13-25 has dropped off significantly.

Whether you are a solopreneur, a medium-sized business, or a large corporation, Facebook is a compelling way to capture new leads. With even a modest budget, you capture dozens of new leads every day. And the best part is that these are leads that are pre-disposed to buy what you sell. You can target them very specifically based on their age, geographic location, behaviours, and even their online purchase history.

Our company grossed well into 7 figures in sales, just from Facebook leads alone. On average, we capture anywhere from 50-150 leads per day using targeted Facebook ads. However, the good times will only last for so long before the user base moves on to something new. So now is the time to dive in full force and strike while the iron is hot.” ~ Corey Robert, Marketing Director of Black Card Books Publishing.

11. Offer free tutorial videos

“At Deskbright, we collect email addresses to use for marketing purposes by offering free Excel tutorials and lessons via email for our users. We’ve developed a huge corpus of free content online, which draws users through referrals from other websites and a solid organic search presence. Visitors who find our free articles helpful can sign up to receive more information and classes via email as we update our site and add content. Our users stay up-to-date on the latest free content available on our site, and we get to collect valuable email addresses to market our paid products.” ~ Sam McIntire, founder of Deskbright.

12. Promote your newsletter signup throughout your website

“I collect email addresses through newsletter signups which I include throughout my website. The location I get the most signups from is a popup on my blog, but visitors can also sign up if they select a box on any form. Putting it in front of visitors is the best way you can do it, so any opportunity you have, put an option to sign up in front of visitors. My favourite tool is Mailchimp because it ties in well with WordPress websites and the management of subscribers and campaigns is extremely easy. It makes it easy to create beautiful newsletters and send out my newest blog posts automatically. I have used contests in the past to gather subscribers but if this method is used, make sure entrants can opt-in/out of your newsletter, or else you will get many unqualified subscribers who aren’t really interested in what you have to say.” ~ Nick Leffler, founder of Exprance.

13. Get personal

“Rather than sending out mass mailings to your whole database, segment your lists based on the recipients’ interests. For example, if you are a pet food wholesaler and have a database for cat owners, you can send a mailer to that database with details of a special cat offer on your website. It’s always useful to build the demographics of your database so you can do more effective marketing through segmentation.

Think of this as a “boutique” mailing. Handpick a small list of people with whom you want to develop a relationship. For example, people who fit the profile and persona of your perfect client. You’re not shot-gunning a message to thousands of strangers here, you’re picking out just the right ones because you know they will love doing business with you, and they are right in your wheelhouse. Please make sure the piece you send them is highly personalized, so they’ll never forget it. With today’s variable data digital printers, how much you can personalize a mailer is limited only by how much you know about the recipient. Don’t settle for just personalizing their name in the salutation; include their company name and what type of business they are right in your message.” ~ Victor Clarke, Be Better, Do More.

Conclusion:

It is challenging to find better ways to do things, and we hope that this article has assisted you in finding more ways of increasing your email list.

Articles compiled by hughesagency.ca

Article reference links:

1. https://getsitecontrol.com/blog/collecting-email-addresses/ ↑
2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2021/06/04/five-tips-to-grow-your-email-list-in-2021/?sh=6763c7f78e6c ↑
3. https://www.yieldify.com/free-guides/email-list-building-strategies/ ↑
4. https://www.shortstack.com/blog/best-ways-to-collect-email-addresses/ ↑