“The money is in the list”.
As a blogger, we have all heard this quote many times.
Needless to say, your email list is one of your biggest online assets.
However, just because you grew a huge email list, doesn’t mean that you can make lots of revenue by selling to your list.
Aside from growing the list, there are lots of other email marketing tactics you need to focus on in order to boost your sales and revenue.
If you’re undervaluing these tactics, it is highly likely that you’re growing a dead list that hardly makes any profit.
Tactic #1: Email marketing basics
Send Your First Email Newsletter Today – AWeber Communications
One of the first things you should be doing for building an email list is to choose the best email marketing software that suits your needs. As there are many tools out there, you’ll need to compare them and find what works best for you.
Some of the popular email marketing tools are AWeber, MailChimp and GetResponse.
Apart from choosing the right tool, below are a few practices you need to follow for building your first email list:
Create a landing page
Adding an opt-in form in the sidebar is a commonly followed practice for building an email list.
However, if you’re running a marketing campaign to grow your list, always create a customized landing page specifically for growing the list.
If you’re on WordPress, you can easily build one by installing any landing page plugin.
Create beautiful opt-in forms
Your opt-in form is the most important component of your landing page. Test it with different variations of opt-in forms and stick to the one that gives the best result.
If you’re looking for a free plugin, install Optin Forms for creating an eye-catching form.
A/B test your landing page
A/B testing your landing page doesn’t cost you a lot. If you’re after a free solution, give Simple Page Tester plugin a try.
Tactic #2: The art of growing an email list exponentially
Now that you’ve set up your first email list, it’s your turn to grow your email list exponentially.
While there are numerous ways to grow your list, you should focus on attracting the right leads to your list so it delivers the best result for your online business.
Bribe your readers to subscribe
One of the common email marketing tactics many bloggers use is to offer something for free, like an eBook or a newsletter course for enticing more visitors to subscribe to their email list.
While offering an eBook or a newsletter course for free can help you grow your list, the reality is that it is not as effective as it used to be.
Since more and more marketers are doing the same practice, it is hard to stand out from the crowd. Then, how can you encourage more visitors to subscribe to your list?
Offer something unique
You’re not going to get the attention of your readers if you’re offering some vague resource as an opt-in bribe that almost everyone else is giving away.
So the rule of thumb is to offer something unique to get lots of eyeballs on your offer. Maybe you can survey your readers to get an opt-in bribe idea, so you can then offer it as a free downloadable resource.
Email marketing tactics: increase perceived value
When it comes to growing an email list, many marketers assume that they’ll need to offer something huge as an opt-in bribe.
In reality, you only need to increase the perceived value of your offer. For example, QuickSprout increases the perceived value of their offer by mentioning what the offer is worth in terms of dollars.
Other ways to grow your list
What if I told you that there are many ways to grow your email list and that you shouldn’t necessarily stick with offering an eBook?
Some of them are listed below.
Content upgrade
A content upgrade is focused on delivering an exact resource that your visitors are looking for.
Best of all, it attracts more eyeballs than the opt-in form you placed in the sidebar because the offer is highlighted inside the content area of your post.
When your visitor clicks on your offer, a popup form appears enticing more visitors to subscribe to it. By creating a content upgrade, Backlinko has found a rise in conversion rate by 785% in a single day.
Free paywall
Another effective, yet underutilized, strategy for growing a list is to create a premium content library.
Instead of publishing all of the valuable content as a blog post, why can’t you offer it as a premium library, which can be only accessed by subscribing to your list?
MyCopyblogger is one of the best examples of offering premium content behind a paywall. This strategy helped them to grow their list by 400%.
Tactic #3: Nurturing your email list
After subscribing to your list, most of your leads wouldn’t likely purchase your product right away.
You’ll need to nurture those new leads throughout different phases of the customer life cycle, so you can sell and retain them by creating a strong, bonded relationship with them.
For instance, you may welcome your new leads by sending welcome emails. Then, slowly, you can nurture the relationship by sending personalized emails that address the exact needs of your potential customers.
Once you have created a relationship, you can encourage them to become customers.
Personalize the emails you send to your leads
Email personalization helps you to send customized, targeted emails to your leads.
Compared with promotional, untargeted emails, personalized emails are more likely to convert because they’re tailored to your leads’ preferences and interests.
But the question is—how can you learn each of your email lead’s preferences and interests?
Conducting an email survey is one of the most effective ways for learning them.
For example, if you ask your email subscribers how often they’d like to receive emails from you and what kinds of email they would wish to get, you’re more likely to retain them in your list.
And you’ll be sending a lot less annoying marketing emails.
Once the survey is over, make sure to segment your emails into distinct groups based on the survey results.
When done correctly, personalizing emails on the basis of segmentation is proven to bring in more revenue.
Focus on the engagement rate
Besides the number of leads, one of the biggest success indicators of email marketing is your engagement rate.
Usually, email engagement is determined by looking at the open rate and click through rate of your emails.
Open rate
The email open rate tells you how many of your leads actually open it.
The subject line of your email has a huge influence in the open rate. Make sure you test the open rates of your campaigns by using different subject lines.
Email click-through rate (CTR)
The CTR is another important metric that tells you how engaged your leads are. In order to improve the CTR, you’ll need to edit the email copy and the link placement.
What is your favorite out of all these email marketing tactics listed above?
Do you have any you’d like to add?
Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below. 🙂
About the Author
Shahzad Saeed is a passionate Freelancer who blogs about WordPress, ecommerce and marketing on a regular basis. You can find his Twitter profile here: @shahzadsaeed.
Featured image:
Image courtesy of KROMKRATHOG at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
