One of the best things about content marketing is the opportunity to use it to extensively grow your email list. And we all know that continually growing an email list has a whole plethora of benefits for your company. Read on to learn about the importance of growing your email list and how to do so using content.
Importance Of Growing Your Email List
Email marketing may seem old school, but in fact, according to VentureBeat, email is the channel that is generating the highest ROI for marketers. But, you can’t see the ROI you’re looking for if you don’t have a robust email list.
When users subscribe to your list it indicates that they are interested in your products or services. They are actually engaged with your company and want to get regular updates from you. In addition, people are much pickier on who they decide to subscribe to via email compared to social media followers. So, if they decide to subscribe then you know they are interested.
Related: 5 Effective Ways to Build Your Email List
It is important to nurture these subscribers as they likely will be your most loyal customers. Email is personal and targeted and it allows you to have a direct line of communication with your customers. This direct communication increases the chance of those people actually continuing through the sales funnel.On top of that, most people check their email at least once a day.
And for the most part, many people check their email multiple times a day. This can’t be said for all social media platforms. Email is an easy way to get in touch with your customers and there is a good chance they will actually see that communication. So now that you’ve heard why email is an excellent marketing tool, how exactly do you use content to grow your email list? Here are a few tips to get you started.
Blogs, Blogs, Blogs
One of the best ways to build your email list using content is through your blog. A blog not only brings people to your website, it also gives people an incentive to opt-in, so that they will receive new content or exclusive content on a regular basis.
Related: 7 Tips to Make Sure You Never Run Out of Blog Topics
But, in order for this to work, the content needs to be amazing, engaging and relevant. We are talking high-quality content that customers actually want to read. If your content is consistently five-star, people will want to continue to be subscribed to your email list and receive updates from you. Additionally, this interesting content is how you get people to subscribe in the first place.
If they read an article that they enjoy and has been informative, they are more likely to subscribe and receive updates from your company. By producing content that they love, it will incentivize them to stay engaged and hopefully down the line purchase your products.
Gated Content
In addition to the already extensive library of excellent content, a lead generation offer using exclusive content is another way to build an email list. Offer a piece of premium content in the form of a downloadable PDF, online article, checklist, how to guide etc. and have users sign up in order to access it. This content needs to offer something of value to your customers so that they are inclined to sign up using their email to access this content.
One key to offering gated content is to make sure that your free content is packed with value so that users are incentivized to offer up their email. The same goes with your gated content and email marketing strategy, if it is lackluster users will likely unsubscribe and fail to convert.
Social Sharing
One way to ensure that more people will see your content is to push it out through paid social. Whether that is Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, pairing your content with social media efforts is a winning combination. By promoting your lead generation offer, blog articles, and other content via social media, it will increase the amount of views and engagement your content will receive and in turn heighten your chances of capturing more emails.
Related: Why You Need To Integrate Your Content and Social Ad Strategy ASAP
In addition to utilizing paid social, you should also share your content through organic social. Encourage your fans to share and engage with your posts to create and even greater chance of gaining more subscribers.
CTAs
Whether it is a pop up on your blog or buttons throughout the content, utilizing CTAs on key pages of your website will play an extremely important role in building your email list. It is important to split test these CTAs to see which version is driving more conversions. Some best practices for CTAs include keep them simple, use bright colors, and be transparent. Let your customers know exactly what they will get when they subscribe.
Quizzes
Another form of content, but one that is interactive and immensely engaging. We’ve all taken those fun quizzes online that tell us which house we should live in based on our personality. Well, these quizzes can help you increase you build up your list of subscribers and have proven to do so quite successfully. Just remember to pick a topic that is relevant to your product/service and that is also interesting.
Related: Designing Online Quizzes That Convert
The key to these quizzes is to promote an offer on the results page only available through signing up via email. If your potential customers are signing up to receive a discount for your products/services, than they are qualified customers and are more likely to buy your offerings.
Webinars
Webinars are a unique and efficient way to expand your email list. Because of the interactive nature of webinars (listening, taking notes, reading slides), people are more invested and involved. They are actually paying attention and in most cases want to learn about the topic the webinar is focused on.
One way to promote your webinar is by writing and blog about it and pushing it out through social media. Another way to utilize webinars is to use it as a lead magnet to incentivize people to subscribe to your blog. Because of the flexibility of webinars they can be used as a standalone product or serve as a segment of your sales funnel.
Related: How Often Should You Scrub Your Email List
If you are looking to build your email list, using content to do so is a great place to start. Whether it is putting CTAs throughout your blog or hosting a webinar, there are endless opportunities to capture emails and push those subscribers through your sales funnel. Try out these various ways of growing your email list to see how they perform. Using a mix of these tactics is important as you want to make sure there are multiple sales funnel entry points for your potential customers.
