Wondering how to generate an email list? One of the best things you can do for success online with any business is to generate an email list of subscribers. With an email list you can remind people of your products and services over a much longer period of time than is possible just from a website. If you’re an affiliate marketer, building an email list is definitely something you should do.
On a website, most visitors will click away within a few minutes, and they are often gone forever. But if you can capture their email details, you can continue to send them messages. You can follow up with them over weeks, months and even years and decades.
To generate an email list you’ll need an email autoresponder. You can get one for free by clicking the image below.
How To Generate An Email List
Once you have access to an autoresponder you’ll be able to create a sign up form from within the software. You can then grab the code for the form and paste in into your website. If you don’t have a website, you can create one for free using a free building platform such as Weebly.com. Or use a landing page software (I use this one) which lets you create super fast landing pages. More on this later.
With your form in place, you can collect subscribers from a website. However, to encourage people to opt in, you’ll need to offer something of value. This can be an ebook, a video course or some kind of pdf digital download. It should be something your subscribers can access immediately once they have entered their name and address on your form.
This is known as a lead magnet. A good lead magnet will offer huge value so people are more likely to sign up. It should also encourage the right kind of people to sign up – those who are likely to be interested in what you have to sell (your target audience or customer avatar).
How To Generate An Email List – Benefit Driven Headline
Your form should have a clear benefit driven headline. This means that it’s immediately apparent as to the benefit for the visitor. Your website visitors are interested in WIIFM – What’s In It For Me! So avoid overly long titles and headings which talk about features of your giveaway download. Here’s a landing page I created with a clear benefit driven headline:
You might see some forms on a website which simply say “sign up to my newsletter”. The benefit of such a title isn’t immediately apparent this kind of headline. Ask yourself why you would sign up and you get the point! Without a strong motivation for your visitors to hand over their details, (to get your freebie) fewer of them will do so!
Traffic To Your Form
There’s various ways to get traffic to your form on your website or landing page. The fastest method is to pay for advertising and if you’re going to do this you really want a professional looking landing page. A professional landing page builder will be faster and more slick than a free website or a blog.
Landing pages are designed specifically to generate leads so you can build your list quickly. If you were to send paid traffic to a normal website, many of your visitors will simply browse around and click through your content. But a landing page only gives two options: sign up or leave. This means you can optimise it to make the most out of your advertising dollars!
Another way to generate traffic to your form is through blogging. This article, for example, is a piece of content which can attract traffic from the search engines. Content generation takes some time and effort to build up, and you’re not guaranteed traffic from Google. But you can promote it yourself too in many ways including posting on social media sites. See also best free blog plugins for WordPress for some helpful software.
Using Popups On Your Website
You can also use popups, drop downs and other kinds of plugins which give your website visitors more options to join your list. On this site, fore example I have a standard form, a pop up and a drop down opt in.
This gives me three opportunities to offer someone visiting my site a chance to opt in. As annoying as those pop ups are – they work. This is why so many marketers use them on their websites.
I use a tool called Icegram Engage which is a free plugin which lets you create a drop down menu. Aweber offers pop ups and a combination of different styes of opt in form.
You can of course link through to landing pages in your text as well. Checkout one of my landing pages here.
Using Social Media For Lead Generation
You can also use various social media platforms for lead generation too by sending people from it to your landing pages. You can set up your profile to showcase your giveaway offer and link through to a landing page. Quora.com, Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook etc. can all be used in this way.
First set up your profile to offer a clear call to action, sending people to your landing page/website. Then you need a strategy to attract your target audience to your profile page. On Quora you can do this through asking and answering questions in your niche.
On Facebook you can join groups where your target audience might be hanging out. Interact with the groups and get to know people in it. Over time they will visit your profile page and see what you have on offer.
PPC – The Fastest Way To Build Your Email List
Pay per click advertising is definitely the fastest way to build a huge list of subscribers. With other cheaper methods, there’s a lot more work involved too. Blogging for example can take months of work just for a few visitors, who may not actually subscribe to your list!
Paid advertising platforms such as Facebook, Adwords (Google), YouTube, Bing etc. can all be used to target a specific type of person who is most likely to be interested in your offer. This is your target audience or customer avatar. So for example if you’re selling golf equipment, you’ll want to target golf enthusiasts through your advertising. If you were to target everyone, without zoning in on your perfect customer, you’ll likely waste a lot of money in ads.
A good place to start is with Google Adwords, or Bing. Both these platforms allow you to place ads and put them in front of online search queries which specifically relate to the offer (and product) which you are promoting through your email list.
You can also target people through the many paid marketing platforms via criteria such as location, age, sex, interests, online searches and a number of other demographics.
Cross Testing A Landing Page
But of course you’re going to need to spend money to send targeted visitors to your website or landing page. If you’re doing so, it’s much wiser to send them to a landing page where you can capture their email address more easily. On a website there’s more options and so you’re more likely to lose your visitors as they scroll around a website.
On a landing page too, you can cross test different pages to find the best performing ones. With a landing page software, this is much easier to do than to manually do it yourself.
With cross testing, you compare one landing page against another with the same target audience. When more visitors opt in to one page, over another, you will know which one to spend more money on. You can keep doing this over and over to get your lead cost down as much as possible.
Summary
Generating an email list can take some time but it’s well worth the effort. You initially need an autoresponder software (get one here). Once you have designed a form, you can place some code on a website and this allows you to capture the email address of your visitors. But to do so you’ll need to offer something in return – such as a downloadable course or ebook, for example.
The best way to collect emails in bulk is to send paid traffic to a landing page where you offer your visitors a freebie giveaway of some kind which relates to your product/service. You can use a landing page software to split test your landing pages and find the best performing one which gives you the cheapest lead cost.
Once you start building your list, you should also create a follow up series of emails which provide some kind of value to your subscribers. Build trust and offer value through your email marketing campaign and you’re subscribers will more likely want to buy from you when the time comes and if your product is a good fit for them!
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