How to Grow and Make the Most of Your Email Marketing Database
Is your email list working as hard as it can for you?
The digital world is becoming increasingly busy, and it's easier than ever for consumers to get the answers they need without heading to your website.
Of course, organic traffic is still the holy grail of any content marketing efforts and will make up 70-90% of your business, but now is the perfect time to get your email marketing up to speed, to take some of the pressure of that singular approach to sales.
Here, I will take you through the tactics I have used for clients to grow and make the most of their email marketing database. All of these suggestions are relatively simple to implement and will help your brand grow its audience and build in more loyal customers.
Short on time? Here are the key takeaways
Email marketing remains one of the most cost-effective ways to convert leads into paying customers.
A large email marketing database isn't necessarily a good one. You need to ensure you are attracting the right people to join to ensure you maintain a high conversion rate as the base grows.
There are several free and paid ways to grow your email marketing list, most of which occur on your website, but also some that occur off-page on social media channels.
The best way to keep your email lists engaged is to create content that suits your target audience while also helping you achieve your email marketing strategy. That means segmenting audiences to ensure marketing campaigns suit their needs and constantly searching for and removing invalid email addresses to help reduce bounce rates.
Why a Large Email Marketing Database is so Important
When I think about email marketing, I often describe it to clients as the equivalent to a cash ISA in the investing world.
It's not the most glamorous form of marketing. It's not the most recent fad. But it gets results, year on year.
However, because it isn't the hottest new toy in a digital marketer's playbook, growing an email marketing database is often overlooked or done as an afterthought when, in reality, it should be at the forefront of all that you do.
It's a fantastic way to retain customers, remain at the forefront of their minds, and identify any inactive customers that you need to re-engage.
Not to mention the fact that it's significantly less expensive than other marketing outlets! Contacting email subscribers is much more cost-effective than any PPC ad or social media campaign.
The best part? Most email marketing can be done on a 'set and forget' basis, setting up automated emails that go out to subscribers at predetermined times.
However, bigger isn't always necessarily better...
That said, focusing on getting a large email marketing database because 'bigger is better' isn't always the right approach.
After all, you could purchase thousands of email addresses in a matter of minutes, but that would be a terrible approach to take.
Not only will the list hygiene be less than desirable, but contacting email addresses that have not opted in to receive your marketing emails is actually against the law.
Not to mention the fact that it will ruin your email sender reputation, meaning any future emails you send end up in the spam box!
Instead, focus on getting the right email addresses and getting as many of those as possible.
Looking at the example above, Copado asks you to not only provide your email, but also what your job is and what company you work for, as their brand only provides B2B solutions.
They also only accept business email addresses, helping them cut out anyone who is using a personal email account as those visitors are likely not enquiring on behalf of a business.
6 Ways to Grow Your Email Marketing Database
With that in mind, let's take a look at how you can increase your email marketing database for future email marketing efforts.
Offer incentives
In an ideal world, customers will flock to your website, ready to willingly give over their contact details in the knowledge that you're going to create stunning, personalised emails that they can't wait to receive.
Back in the real world, though, your customers have been stung too many times before. They've been promised relevant content delivered to their inbox, only to get hit with a ton of spammy, rubbish emails.
Regardless of your online reputation, you will struggle to convince customers that 'this time it's different.'
That's where incentives can help. One easy way to grow your list of email addresses is to offer unique discounts or early access to future offers.
Ecommerce brands are particularly good at this, as it's a tried and tested way to acquire high-quality leads that are close to purchasing already.
You could include these incentives on your website in the form of banners or popups, or you could also take them to social media and paid ads, depending on your budget.
Adding an incentive was one of the first things I did when working with Allwear, and it helped us increase email opt-in rates by 23% MoM.
Make the most of popups
Speaking of pop-ups, they are another excellent way to garner more email addresses for your website.
Say, for example, you are offering an incentive to get more people to sign up for your email list; a popup is a fantastic place to promote that incentive, as it disrupts the customer experience and must be interacted with to remove it from the page.
Take a look at this example from Reebok.
The pop-up highlights that by signing up, you will gain access to tailored new arrivals, stock updates, and more.
The beauty of this pop-up is that it's offering quite a lot without offering anything at all! There's no cost to the brand here, yet there's much more 'perceived' value here than just asking someone to sign up.
There are several options when it comes to popups and when to show them to customers. From my experience, the best option is to have it trigger as the consumer tries to click off your website. That would suggest that they are leaving the website and are done interacting with you, so a popup at this stage isn't too intrusive.
Plus, you may as well shoot your shot while they're on the way out!
Other options also include having your popup on a time or based on how far they scroll down the page, which are both fine options as well.
You can also tailor your popups based on which page the user is on. For example, if you offer men's and women's clothes, you can have different popups serve in each category.
By implementing behavioural segmentation, you give yourself the best chance of high click-through rates.
Run a giveaway
If you have the budget to do so, running a giveaway is another fantastic way to grow your audience with minimal fuss.
When working on PureGym’s opt-in process, we tested running a giveaway where everyone wins something or one person wins something big and found that the one-winner approach was much more attractive.
Not to mention, much easier to manage!
If you're worried about the price of your giveaway, it may be worth reaching out to other brands your audience likes to see if they will sponsor your strategy in return for exposure.
As PureGym is an established brand, I was able to collaborate with leading brands such as Jet2 to offer members free flights, for example. Of course, Jet2 aren't doing that for smaller brands, but it should give you an idea of what is possible.
And hey, you never know if you don't ask!
Create landing pages
Another great option is to develop specific landing pages for acquiring more signups. This process can take quite a bit of time and manpower, but also ensures there are plenty more opportunities for website visitors to become opted-in leads.
Landing pages are an integral part of any marketing funnel as they are excellent for any potential customers who need a little more convincing, as they provide you the space you need to sell the benefits of signing up to your email list.
Copado does a fantastic job of this, as they have an entire suite of resource landing pages, ranging from eBooks to whitepapers.
For each resource, you are required to input your information to access it.
As you'll see from the screenshot above, the landing page does a fantastic job of offering more than just a call to action, highlighting what you'll learn from the resource, which shows the value the consumer has in passing on their coveted information.
Host webinars
Another more recent approach to growing email databases is to host a webinar. Neil Patel does a great job of this, hosting webinars regularly on hot topics in the world of marketing.
To access the webinar, website visitors are required to provide their contact information.
Not only are webinars a fun and unique way to gather more email addresses, but it's also a fantastic way to improve brand authority.
Hosting webinars is not cheap and very time-consuming, but the results can be highly effective.
Create amazing email content
Lastly, creating amazing email content is the best way to attract more people to sign up for your email marketing journey.
Word of mouth is still the most effective way to market your brand, and if you're sending out great emails that people love to receive, it's only a matter of time before they discuss them with friends and suggest they also sign up.
Take advantage of your chosen email service provider and all the capabilities it has on offer, such as A/B testing, plugins for consumer data, and highly personalised audience segmentation.
If you need a suggestion for which email service provider to choose, I often recommend Klaviyo, and it is one of the top 10 content marketing tools you should consider for your marketing pack.
How to Keep Your Email Marketing Database Engaged
Now we've discussed in depth how you can increase your email database; we should probably also briefly touch on how to keep your email marketing database engaged!
I'll likely do a deeper dive into this in another blog later down the line, but given the impact, an engaged email base can have on customer lifetime value, it's extremely important your email efforts don't stop at acquisition.
You should be constantly tweaking your content strategy to ensure you are providing high value to your audience via email, not overstepping and sending too many emails, while also not being too quiet that you are forgotten about.
I am personally a huge fan of automated email programs (welcome series, abandoned basket journeys, re-engagement journeys, etc), as they are a great way to maximise your time and effort.
Sure, they take a fair bit of time early on setting up, but once they're live, all you need to do is some testing from time to time on send dates, subject lines, and CTAs.
Final Thoughts
Even in the rapidly evolving digital world, marketing emails continue to provide brands with a great way to engage with potential customers, improve loyalty from existing customers, and improve your marketing efforts.
If you want help increasing your contact lists and curating a high-quality email database quickly and ethically, let's chat!
Frequently Asked Questions About Email Marketing Databases
What free tactic can I use to increase my email database?
One of the best tactics to use is to tell your audience that email opted-in customers get access to exclusive content, such as first access to offers and discounts. If you do go with this approach, ensure you only produce valuable content, or your audience will quickly opt out.
How do I improve my sender reputation?
When conducting email outreach, there's no worse feeling than realising your emails are landing in the dreaded spam inbox! To rectify this, ensure you're removing invalid addresses regularly and only contacting email opt-ins that are engaging with your content. Clean email lists will help improve your sender score, as will asking your audience to add you to their safe sender list.
As a small business, how can I conduct an effective email marketing campaign?
When resources are tight, the important thing is to keep things simple. Focus on personalized emails to your healthy email list, keeping the content simple and clear. As you get more advanced, you can then look at deeper personalization and audience segmentation. Remember, something is better than nothing!
