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How to Get Email Lists for Marketing? in 2024

Written and researched by experts at AvadaLearn more about our methodology

By Sam Nguyen

CEO Avada Commerce

Drive 20-40% of your revenue with Avada
avada email marketing

Brand marketing is a multi-pronged approach that typically starts with raising awareness. Consider this: how can customers purchase your goods or services if they are unaware of them? The greater the number of people who are aware of your brand, the bigger your customer base will become.

Sharing information about your company with customers through email marketing campaigns is an effective way to raise brand awareness. A sizable email list is at the heart of every effective email marketing campaign. In this article, I will share with you how you can get email lists for your next email marketing campaigns. Let’s jump right into the details!

What’s an email list?

What’s an email list?

An email list is a list of email addresses from people who have opted in to receive messages from your company. Brands with a healthy and compliant email list obtain it in a voluntary manner, which means subscribers provide their details because they want to keep up to date with the company and receive promotional messages.

Building an email list opens up a world of networking possibilities. A welcome series can be used to introduce new subscribers to your brand and product, or newsletter content can be used to nurture future customers.

You can also use cart abandonment emails to recoup abandoned items on your website, or use a winback email sequence to re-engage past customers. The key to unlocking all of the possibilities that an innovative email campaign holds for your brand is to create an email list.

Why is Building an Email List Important?

Why is Building an Email List Important?

Email marketing generates a 4300 percent return on investment (ROI) for companies in the United States, according to the Direct Marketing Association.

Email subscribers are very interested in what you have to say because they entered your email list via your website and verified their identity via your double-opt in. As a result, they are more likely to become paying customers.

In our market, email list conversions outperform social media campaigns by a factor of ten. This makes sense when you know the reasons why email is such an effective communication tool:

  • Email is Personal
  • Email is Purposeful
  • Email is Targeted
  • You Own Your Email List
  • Email is One-on-One
  • People Use Email Several Times a Day

How to get email lists for marketing?

How to get email lists for marketing?

Since email is so efficient, growing your list is the best way to scale your sales. After all, the greater your subscriber base, the greater your sales potential.

Building a large email list from scratch, on the other hand, may seem to be a daunting challenge. By implementing the techniques outlined below, you will exponentially expand your email list and maximize your earnings in a short period of time.

1. Encourage your subscribers to share and forward emails.

Encourage your subscribers to share and forward emails

Word of mouth is one of the most effective ways to grow your mailing list. At the bottom of your marketing emails, you can always have a “Email this to a Friend” icon.

Your existing fans can forward your emails to their friends if your content is useful and shareable. In my experience, the best place to position your share link is in the email’s P.S. segment.

Add a link to your employees’ signatures

Your email signature is also a good place to provide a link to an email sign-up form or list. The call to action in the signature will direct people to a special landing page where they can sign up for your mailing list and get a free offer.

3. Do a contest on social media.

Do a contest on social media

Hosting a giveaway is most likely the quickest way to expand your email list. And, in most cases, the larger the prize, the more likely you are to draw new subscribers.

In general, a prize worth at least $150 is preferable, but the higher the value, the better. Also, avoid generic prizes such as Amazon gift cards; otherwise, you’ll draw a slew of untargeted freebie seekers.

4. Add a call-to-action to your Facebook business page.

Add a call-to-action to your Facebook business page

People are probably visiting your Facebook business page if you’re on social media. Don’t waste this chance to collect email addresses. You can take these people to a custom landing page with an email offer and sign up form by using a call to action button on your page.

5. Ask website visitors for feedback

You should have a live-chat widget on every page of your website to allow visitors to ask questions about your business. When a customer interacts with your live chat widget, request their email address so that you can “follow up” if necessary. Furthermore, you can entice visitors to include their email address by giving them discounts or deals on items from your eCommerce store.

6. Place sign-up forms across your website

Place sign-up forms across your website

Many of your website visitors want to hear from you, so don’t make it hard for them to join your mailing list. Many of your email signup forms should be prominently displayed on certain pages of your website. For instance, on our ecommerce store blog, we include multiple forms on each and every page. Signup forms should also be included on your About Us and Contact pages.

7. Host an online webinar or Facebook Live.

Host an online webinar or Facebook Live

Webinars can be a powerful tool for increasing sales and collecting email addresses. You will attract email subscribers in exchange for the free content you are offering as long as what you are delivering is relevant to your targeted audience.

Popular makeup brands also use this technique to teach their customers how to apply their cosmetics, and they need an email address in order to sign up. You can also use Facebook Live to increase sales and expand your email list quickly.

As prospects leave comments on their Facebook posts, a Facebook Messenger bot is used to collect email subscribers with the click of a button.

8. Run a joint promotion with a partner

Working with brands with similar demographics to create buzz in your niche is what group promotions involve. And running a joint giveaway is the quickest way to create your email list with a community promotion.

Here’s how this works:

  • You collaborate with a comparable brand in your niche and donate a gift card from your online store. Your partner should ideally not be a direct rival, but rather share a shared audience. It makes sense, for instance, for my wedding linens shop to collaborate with a wedding florist. The clientele is similar, but they do not compete directly.
  • Your partner also contributes a comparable-sized gift card, and the deals are merged into one giant sweepstakes giveaway.
  • You both then send an email to your respective lists to promote the giveaway.
  • When interested recipients enter their email address, they will receive exclusive offers from your company.
  • Finally, a grand prize winner is decided.

You and your partner both keep the whole email list at the end of the giveaway. Since the prize pool is so big, group giveaways are highly successful, and your partner and you both walk out with an enlarged list of targeted prospects.

9. Use an interactive pop-up form.

Use an interactive pop-up form

Pop-up forms are one of the most successful ways to increase the email list subscribers. And, whether you find pop-ups irritating or not, they do work. Sumo.com found that the average conversion rate for all popups is 3.09 percent after studying 1,754,957,675 popups. This is an incredibly high number.

The most basic pop-up type you can use for your ecommerce store is to deliver a coupon in return for an email address. The most effective pop-up type offers typically include gamification or a lead magnet.

10. Collect emails at checkout.

This goes without saying, but lots of people may not be doing it. You’ll need your customers’ emails to send them follow-ups, such as an invoice or tracking details, after their purchase. Don’t forget to put these emails into your email list.

11. Run a referral program

Before making an online purchase, the majority of consumers seek advice from a friend or family member. According to Nielsen, 92 percent of consumers worldwide trust earned media, such as reviews from friends and family, more than any other type of advertisement.

To develop the email list, the easiest way to introduce a referral program is to create a special link that directs a referral to a landing page where they can claim their referral reward.

Here’s how it works:

  • Select a reward for the referral. This can be a gift card or a discount.
  • Request that your current customers refer their friends (via a unique tracking link) to a dedicated discount landing page.
  • Referred customers must include their email address in order to receive the discount, and if they buy, both the referrer and the referred receive a reward.

12. Capture email addresses with AVADA Marketing Automation’s pop-up forms and spin-to-win wheel

AVADA Marketing Automation’s pop-up forms and spin-to-win wheel

Pop-up forms and Spin-to-win are among the simplest ways to capture the email addresses of website visitors. AVADA Marketing Automation provides these two features free of charge to help you build email lists before you can run an email marketing campaign.

AVADA Marketing Automation is a dedicated email marketing automation platform that can help you create, run and manage email marketing campaigns. Main features include email capture, list segmentation, email automation, drag-and-drop email build, pre-made email templates, and reports. Pricing starts at $9/month for unlimited emails, full features and a storage of 1,000 email addresses.

AVADA Marketing Automation

Final words

That’s it! I hope that this article has provided you with valuable information about how to get email lists for marketing. Please feel free to leave comments below for further discussion on this topic!