The following is a guest blog post by Sam O'Brien, Senior Website Optimization & User Experience Manager for EMEA at RingCentral.
In an ultra-competitive marketplace, youâve got to work hard to make your company and its products stand out amongst the crowd. Whether youâre plugging a team collaboration tool or youâre looking to drum up interest in online telemedicine courses, youâve got to find new and increasingly inventive ways of getting the word out there. Email marketing is tried and tested in this regard and there are all sorts of businesses that swear by it.
If you get it right, email marketing can deliver exceptional results â driving sales and revenue and helping you take your business to new heights. But this can be tricky and building an email list is always a challenge. Plenty of businesses â even those pushing cutting-edge tech like augmented reality and machine learning â have a tendency to be stuck in their ways when it comes to email marketing.
This means that they donât always take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves. As such, they canât leverage email marketing in the ways they might otherwise be able to, resulting in them missing out on new customers (and all the valuable revenue that comes with them). You donât want your business to fall into the same unfortunate situation. Thankfully, there are tricks and short-cuts you can use to help expand your email list and your customer base.
Weâve given the matter some careful consideration and assembled six of our top tactics. These suggestions should help you grow your email list at a much faster rate and drive more conversions. Whatever field youâre in, the chances are you already have a good idea what your customers want. If you can apply that knowledge to your email marketing campaign, youâll stand in very good stead.
You donât have to be a public relations expert to know that customers love little extras. It stands to reason, then, that if youâre going to tempt them to hand over their email address, you should give them a compelling reason to do so. The best thing you can do here is put yourself in the customerâs shoes: what would it take to get you to sign up for an email list?
Perhaps you think that your products are incentive enough by themselves. Perhaps youâre certain that youâre selling the best VoIP router in the business, for example. And you may even be right, but it doesnât hurt to give the consumer a little something else. Offer them something theyâd genuinely value and emphasize to them that itâll be worth their while to sign up. They get asked to sign up to a lot of email lists so yours has to offer something thatâs genuinely compelling â like a hefty discount.
Consumers can be a cynical bunch. And with good reason â theyâre constantly being bombarded with demands on their time, attention, and wallet. When youâre trying to encourage people to join your email list, you have to prove your credentials to them. Emphasize that youâre not just undertaking a data grab, your intentions are genuine and honorable and that you can offer outstanding customer service. Itâs vital that you put a considerable amount of effort into earning the customerâs understanding.Â
Keep in mind that data theft is all too common. Of course, your intentions are no doubt completely honest and above board, but itâs difficult for consumers to be sure of that, especially if theyâve never heard of you before. Emphasize your ethics. Make it clear to your customers that your list isnât a spam list and that it offers them content thatâs of genuine value.
Speaking of content: This might seem like an obvious observation to make, but youâd be surprised how many firms donât take it seriously. If you want people to sign up for your email list, you have to provide them with content theyâre actually going to find useful, relevant, and interesting. A lot of people find that after theyâve signed up for a few email lists, their inboxes become unmanageable. Be mindful of this, as it may very well be the reason why potential customers may be hesitant to join any new email lists.Â
The most effective way for you to get around this is to create great content. Think about what you specialize in â which areas do you know more about than anyone else in your field? Maybe youâre an expert in smart contracts or you have some personal advice to share about remote working. What new insights can you offer? Why would that be of interest to the people youâre targeting? Once youâve resolved these kinds of questions, youâll be in a much better position to target potential new signatories.
If youâre a customer and you click through from an email to a website only to find thereâs no apparent consistency between the two, youâre probably going to close the tab and look elsewhere. Chatbots can help, but your messaging needs to be clear and coherent between your emails and your website. Having comprehensible and consistent messaging gives customers more faith in your business, as it looks more professional and legitimate, and also makes it easier for them to find what theyâre looking for.
You should also think about how you can use your website to expand your email list. Visitors reaching your site will probably visit your homepage first. Why not include a plug for your email list here to attract new signatories?
Anyone conversant in the most basic SEO principles will know the importance of strong calls to action. A compelling CTA is far more likely to encourage customers to take the next step in their user journey, from the top of the sales funnel all the way to completing a purchase. If youâre looking to attract people to sign up for your email list, then make sure you include a strong and relevant CTA. Incorporating CTAs is an undeniably effective way to attract interest to your email list
In all likelihood, you probably send out multiple emails a day when youâre working â to colleagues, clients, and various other associates. You might not have realized that you can attract new sign-ups to your email lists by including a sign-up link in the signature at the bottom of your messages.Â
Thereâs a good chance that at least some of the people you send emails to would happily sign up to an email list. Why not include a link? Youâve nothing to lose from it and potentially quite a bit to gain.
Hopefully, this list has given you some useful pointers to help you attract new subscribers to your email lists. Remember, these are just six quick wins â there are lots of other tricks that people use to bolster their email lists and attract additional customers.
Itâs worth experimenting a little to see what works best for your business. Little changes like these are incredibly simple to implement and you can reap real rewards from them. Good luck!