When it comes to effective business communication, it’s hard to think of a channel that’s as popular and widely used as email.
Even in the modern age, where messaging platforms and project management tools are commonplace, 74% of businesses still prefer email to communicate both internally and externally.
Group email and listserv solutions are ideal for keeping internal teams connected and aligned and improving collaboration on shared projects.
Email is also effective as a marketing channel, reaching customers at all stages of the purchase cycle. Highly promotional emails can be a great option for prompting action and driving conversions, while email newsletters can be valuable for creating trust and authority with your audience.
But before you get started with a calendar of engaging email newsletter content, it’s important to recognise that the success of any email marketing rests on the quality of your email marketing list.
So in this article, we’re going to look at ways you can build your email list organically and also look at some top tips for crafting an engaging email newsletter.
7 tips for building your email list
Simplelists makes the process of managing your email lists easy, and we’ve already put together a comprehensive guide on how to best manage your email contact list.
But let’s look in more detail at organic email list building techniques to help deliver the best results for your email newsletter campaigns.
1. Set clear goals and objectives
As with any form of marketing activity, before you get started with email list building, it’s important to define your objectives.
Ask yourself what you want to achieve with your email list – are you looking to boost sales, increase your brand awareness, or position yourself as a thought leader in your industry?
Having a clear understanding of your goals will help guide your list building approach and will also influence your email content and sending frequency.
2. Identify your target audience, and offer value to them
The next step in building a natural, high-quality email list is to make sure you’ll be attracting the types of people who are going to help you satisfy your goals and objectives.
Take the time to create personas around the types of people you’d like to sign up, and identify their needs, interests, and likely pain points.
Once you have this, you can create tailored incentives for signing up for your email list.
For example, imagine you wanted to establish your business as an authority in the field of SEO. You identify your target audience as cross-channel marketing managers who might need technical SEO explained to them in easy-to-digest terms.
You might create an e-book entitled “Technical SEO 101 – Everything you need to know about optimizing your site” that users can access when they sign up for your list.
Alternatively, if you wanted to build an email list around people who are looking for SEO services, you might offer a free SEO audit or a discount for your services as an incentive to sign up.
3. Make sure you meet all legal requirements
This goes without saying, but you need to ensure that your email list building aligns with your internal data governance policies and data privacy legislation.
We’ve put together a more comprehensive guide on the things you need to remember to comply with GDPR, but it’s worth ensuring you have a clear opt-in process, keep valid records of consent around when people subscribed and what they subscribed to, and make sure you’re clear about how your organization uses personal data.
When you’re thinking about list compliance, it’s also worth taking time at this stage to check that it’s easy for users to unsubscribe from your emails if they choose to. A simple link in your email footer most commonly achieves this.
4. Use a cross channel approach to email list building
Once you’ve defined your objectives, identified your target audience, created a suitable lead magnet, and ensured your sign-up process is compliant – it’s time to start building an email list!
The most common approach used by businesses is to configure pop-ups or modals on high-traffic website pages, promoting the benefit of signing up for their email list.
It’s important not to forget other complementary approaches, however. Social media can often be a great way to promote the benefits of signing up for your list, and platforms such as Meta and LinkedIn have tailored “Lead Gen” ads that are specifically designed to collect leads.
If your business regularly attends or exhibits at trade shows, exhibitions, or in-person events, this can be another effective way to build your email list. Just make sure your data collection process is compliant. For example, loose sheets of paper with email addresses and personal details are not a good idea, and you’d be better off using a secure online app.
5. Optimize your sign up forms
Optimizing sign-up forms is all about striking a balance.
On the one hand, the more information you collect from your subscribers, the better you’ll be able to segment and tailor content for their specific needs.
On the other hand, shorter forms tend to have higher completion rates. So, by asking more questions to help segment your audience, you might be reducing the number of form completions.
The question really comes down to quality vs. quantity. Testing and experimenting with different form lengths can yield great results, as you can find the sweet spot that strikes the right balance to building an email list.
6. Segment your email list
This is really a continuation of the previous point. By gaining additional information about your subscribers’ demographics, purchase intent, and interests during the sign-up process, you can deliver more relevant, targeted email content.
Segmentation can help you improve the performance and effectiveness of your email campaigns and can reduce spam complaints and unsubscribes.
7. Consider an email preference center
If your testing and experimentation around the length of your sign-up forms shows that shorter forms are best – there is always the option of collecting further information about your subscribers via an email preference center.
An email preference center is essentially just a form that allows your subscribers to control the types of emails they receive, how frequently they receive them, and the types of products and services they are most interested in.
This is often a great option if you’ve chosen a shorter sign-up form. It can also help improve engagement and loyalty with your audience by empowering them to tailor their email experience.
6 tips for creating a high-quality email newsletter
If you were asked to think about an example of email marketing, you’d most likely imagine a highly promotional email that provides details about a flash sale or time-limited offer.
And this is a great example of a conversion-focused marketing email, for customers who sit lower down purchasing funnel – and just need a bit of persuasion to convert.
Informational email newsletters are also a form of email marketing, but they sit in the middle of the purchasing funnel – targeting subscribers who have shown an interest in your business or brand, but may not be quite ready to purchase just yet.
To create an effective email newsletter, it’s important to keep it informative and only include subtle promotion. Let’s take a look at six email newsletter tips.
1. Invest in design
A visually appealing email newsletter is more likely to capture your audience’s attention and keep them engaged. Good email design is not just about imagery and icons, it’s also about laying out information in a digestible, easy-to-understand way using HTML templates.
It’s worth remembering that 81% of emails are currently opened on mobile devices, and this number is only set to increase. So, designing your emails so they display correctly on mobile devices is imperative.
2. Deliver quality content
It’s important to make the content of your email newsletters genuinely valuable.
As a slightly abrupt but incredibly useful rule of thumb, if it doesn’t provide value, don’t send it.
Sending weak email content is likely to frustrate your email list and lead to higher rates of unsubscribes – which can impact your future deliverability.
To keep your audience engaged, consider offering a mix of content types, such as industry news, expert tips, product updates, and behind-the-scenes insights into your business.
3. Use personalization
The ability to personalize your emails really depends on the data you capture in your initial sign-up form and email preference center – or, for advanced personalization, a user’s browsing or purchase behavior.
At a basic level, email newsletter personalization can be as simple as including the subscriber’s name in the subject line or opening line of your email. This simple tactic in your subject line can increase open rates by 29%!
More advanced personalization, such as customizing the content of your emails based on previous purchasing or browsing behavior, can further improve email performance.
4. Be mindful of timing and frequency
It’s important to use analytics to determine the optimal time and frequency for sending your email newsletters. There isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach to the best time to send an email, and you need to do a bit of experimenting and A/B testing to find the right sending schedule for your business. However, studies have generally found that Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days of the week for B2B emails.
When it comes to the frequency of your email newsletters, it’s important to take a pragmatic approach based on point two in this list – how often can you deliver genuinely valuable content?
It’s often recommended that businesses start with one or two email newsletters per month and gradually build up frequency, keeping an eye on subscriber engagement levels to ensure they stay strong.
5. Include a catchy email subject line
Your email subject line is the first chance you have to make an impression on your subscribers.
It’s the deciding factor in whether they open your email newsletter, skip over it, or hit ‘delete.’
To help increase your open rates, best practices include creating subject lines that are clear, concise, and compelling, avoiding using ‘spammy’ or misleading language, and always making sure the subject line accurately reflects the content of your newsletter.
6. Include a subtle but clear Call-to-Action (CTA)
While the focus of any email newsletter should be to engage users in the middle of the purchasing funnel and provide genuinely valuable content – there is still an opportunity to include a subtle call to action.
If you are going to include a CTA in your email newsletter, make sure it’s placed carefully so it feels natural and relevant. Also, take care to follow CTA best practices, such as using clear, concise, action-oriented language.
Build your email list and newsletter with Simplelists
An effective email newsletter strategy can deliver incredible results when it comes to establishing authority and trust with your audience and gently guiding them towards conversion.
If you follow the best practice tips in this article, you’ll be in a great position to deliver successful email newsletters.
But don’t forget that a high-quality, well-segmented email contact list is at the heart of every winning campaign.
This is where Simplelists can help. With the ability to create an unlimited number of lists for your customer emails, the granularity of segmentation you can achieve is limitless.
And our solution makes email list management easy – with no prior technical knowledge needed to configure your subscriber lists.
Curious to find out more? Sign up for a one month free trial today!