There is no doubt that email is still a very effective method of communicating with your audience – especially if it is used in the correct way. However, you can only really tap into the power of email marketing when you have a large captive audience. Here are 5 tips to growing your email database.

1. Ask People if They Want to be on Your List

This probably isn’t the most effective because it will probably take quite a while to achieve. It also means that you would probably need to have some sort of relationship with them already to initiate this conversation. If you don’t, I would highly recommend that you don’t contact a stranger asking them to sign up.

If you do decide to do this, make sure you have a record of them signing up. If your email does get marked as SPAM you’ll need proof of that for your emailing provider.

2. Add a Entry Pop-up

There’s a little debate on how effective this is but there are some staggering results showing us that it actually works. When a potential client visits your website, you can give them a choice to sign-up to your newsletter or get your latest offer. There is also evidence showing that making a user realise that not choosing to sign up might mean that they lose out on something that can change their lives or business is even more effective.

On the other side of the coin, some people find these pop-ups highly irritating. You need to make sure the type of people you’re trying to get onboard will be receptive to what you’re offering.

3. Create an Exit Intent Pop-up

Used properly exit intent pop-ups are very effective. Using a range of measurements, they test to see when the user is planning to leave your site. A pop-up is then triggered asking them to sign-up to a newsletter or updates from the blog to not miss out on future content that help them improve their lives.

The reason these kind of pop-us are so effective is because they allow the user to first view the content which is more likely to earn their trust, especially if it’s quality content. This way, when they’re about to leave and see the pop-up, they’ll most likely want to sign up to get more.

4. Embed a Sign-up on Your Website

These can sometimes be effective but have become a little “transparent” to most users – mostly because they’re so common. However, I would recommend having a way for people to sign up to your newsletter anyway.

Look at ways in drawing attention to the sign up form without making it look like a sign in Las Vegas. Generally a sign up form in a sidebar or at the end of a blog post is a great place as these areas generally have a user that is already engaged and wanting more.

5. Add a Sign-up Option on Other Forms

This tip has seen the best results for us by far. If we quickly look at the buyer’s journey, you’ll see that by the time they’re completing a form, they’re wanting to speak to and listen to you. By simply adding an option to our forms, we’ve seen a massive increase in people wanting updates to our blog.

You can add this method to contact forms, quote forms, checkout pages and almost any form across your website. Changes are that when someone fills out your form, they’ll opt-in to receive your emails.

To finish up, we complete the list tip saying that your visitors will opt-in to receive your mails – we can’t stress this enough! We entirely against buying database no matter how “legitimate” they are and even if you’ve built up a database for a previous project, I’d highly recommend making sure that you get permission if you’re starting a new business before beginning a marketing campaign.

Let us know how your email database growing goes, we’d love to hear from you.