The Absolute Best Way to Grow Your Email List

Marketing through an email list is one of the most effective marketing tools for any business. Consider today’s marketing strategies, they focus on socially connecting to our market and building communities of followers. What better way is there to build trust than to stay in touch with someone and get to know them? While it’s the smartest marketing strategy you can follow, it’s certainly not the easiest.  Read on to learn about the best opt-in strategy for growing your email list.

Create an irresistible free offer.

For this strategy to be successful, you have to get deep into the minds of your audience members. What is that you can offer that will make their life a ton easier? When I’m working with a new industry or new business, I immediately pull together a focus group of clients to talk about what is most meaningful regarding the business. Your goal is to “make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

So, what makes something irresistible? Here are a few trigger points.

1. Money – Offer a savings, or discount. Can you discount your product for people who join your community?

2. Time – Provide clear and simple instructions on how to do something your audience needs to do, but people most can’t. Your offer will save them hours from trying to learn on their own. This tactic can be doubly valuable, because doing it yourself can often also save money. We’re not talking about things you should hire a professional for, it’s more along the lines of “you would have to do a lot of research to learn how to do this on your own, but I’ll teach you if you join our community.”

In this instance, it may mean helping them with something related to your industry, but not specifically your business. For example, an auto insurance sales person may share simple instructions for car maintenance – a free guide with pictures or videos. In my case, I struggle with writing headlines.  It makes my stomach turn and my brain hurt.  However, a clear and convincing headline is critical to my business success and engaging my audience.  One blogger I now follow offered 52 headline strategies as his download. Sold!

3. Toolkit – Provide a collection of important items for your audience. In my business, a toolkit might include a sample press release with a listing of where to distribute it, along with a marketing plan template, a content calendar, and a guide with 75 ways to market your small business. (We’re actually working on this.) You may already have a toolkit in the making by using other downloads you’ve offered over the past few years. Refresh them and put together a toolkit.

The point is, you have to think “valuable”, if you want to stand out. In today’s competitive world of content marketing, people are used to getting outstanding content for free. As business owners, we have to do this if we want to succeed. The only way around it is if you are the only seller of your widget. If you’re the only game in town, then chances are you’re busy.

Equally important as the offer is positioning the offer.

What good is an offer if people don’t know about it, right? Add this irresistible new item to your homepage and as an item on the sidebar of your other website pages. Include it in your email signature, and sales materials. Add it to your LinkedIn profile and your company’s LinkedIn profile. Feature it in blog posts and guest blog posts, where you demonstrate how this offer has helped many people save time or money. In every piece of communication your company uses, consider if there is a way to share about this irresistible offer.

Need more help? Here are six more ways to grow your email list, so you quit losing business.

Now it’s time to try to stump me. Do you think your audience or industry is a tough one? Struggling with what you could offer to make your business stand out?

Share it in the comments and we’ll solve the problem.