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If you’re new to email marketing, you might want to avoid the more complicated remarketing campaigns. Begin with the basics.
It’s easy to get lost in the details of list building, just like any other marketing discipline.
This blog will help you generate a large number of interested subscribers and turn your newsletter into a powerful communication tool.
Understand this: Your subscribers, customers, and the bottom line will profit from an email strategy based on facts and value.
This blog covers:
This blog covers: 5 Foundations
- Offer Something For The Reader’s Email
- Make It Simple For People To Join Your Email List
- Take Advantage Of Relevance’s Influence
- Your Opt-In Forms Should Be Tested Extensively
- Simplifying The “After Sign Up” Process
- Let’s Recap!
#1. Offer Something Of Value In Exchange For The Reader’s Email Address
Offering ‘free updates’ isn’t enough to grow your email list quickly.
What else can you do?
Give your readers access to something that they do not get otherwise.
These are often referred to as opt-in bribes, ethical baits, lead magnets, etc.
First, identify a challenge that your audience is experiencing.
Next, produce a free download that gives them directions on how to overcome that challenge.
What you do is, part with information of value in exchange for the email address of prospects.
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Here are a few opportunities for Ethical Baits For B2B Marketers
- Ebooks
- Workbooks
- Playbooks
- Templates
- Checklists
- Cheat Sheets
- Email Courses
- Video Courses
- Content Upgrade Offers
- Newsletters
- Quizzes
- Whitepapers
Luckily, this doesn’t need you to write 50,000 word ebooks and give it away for free.
In most cases, you can accomplish this, or get even better results, by delivering something on a smaller scale.
In particular, checklists and templates work well. This is because they are much faster to implement for the prospect.
Regardless of what you offer, keep it specific and make it useful for the prospect.
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Lead magnets can be replaced with interactive content.
Creating interactive content, such as quizzes and contests, instead of exhaustive lead magnets is a wise idea.
Specifically, online b2b quizzes and b2b social media giveaways.
They are both highly shareable because of their viral nature and can sometimes have better results than typical lead magnets.
Giving away prizes on social media is the easiest way to start, but you must offer an appealing prize.
An appealing prize doesn’t mean you need to spend a lot of money on a prize. Usually, you can partner with a brand which can provide prizes.
Typically, in order for people to participate in these giveaways, you will need to request that they carry out a specific action.
For instance, ask them to follow your Instagram account or sign up for your newsletter.
Be sure to include your partner b2b brand as well.
Using a social contest app like SweepWidget makes managing this whole process much easier.
Multiple entry methods make the process easier and more efficient.
They also help protect against fake entries.
If you’re creating an online quiz, you don’t have to offer a prize, but you do need to think carefully about it and plan.
Your quiz can run 24/7 on your blog instead of having a start and end date like your giveaways.
To do the giveaway, you’ll need a tool. There are plenty of quiz makers online.
One of the favourites is TryInteract. The cool thing about it is that it includes quiz templates.
Both quizzes and contests are really shareable.
Not just for email subscribers and social media, but they also help to get you more traffic and attention.
#2. Make It Simple For People To Join Your Email List
One opt-in form isn’t enough.
Make sure your audience can sign up multiple times. In other words, give them multiple opportunities.
Readers can easily miss sidebar opt-in forms when they’re focused on your content.
It’s still a good idea to have a sidebar opt-in form because it’s the first place people will look when they decide to join your list.
Use form techniques like:
It’s a good thing that there are a variety of tools available to you for setting up opt-in forms.
WordPress email subscription plugins is a good place to begin.
Also, make sure you set up a landing page with an opt-in form.
The reason they work is that they have one goal: to convert.
Nothing else should distract you.
With all the tools on the market, some specialise in a single type of opt-in form, so there are bound to be some that overlap.
When you use different tools for different opt-in forms, you get limited access to your data.
It’s best to use fewer tools. It’s typically best to use two tools – one to build opt-in forms and another to build landing pages.
#3. Take Advantage Of Contextual Relevance
Which of the following do you think you would be more likely to sign up to receive if you were reading a blog post about social media marketing?
- The 17 Best Ways to Generate Leads with Social Media
- 17 Marketing Automation Tips For More Leads
You’re probably going to pick the first one.
What’s the reason? Because it is more pertinent to what you would be reading at the time.
Remember, some effective list building strategies, like the content upgrades, leverage relevance.
Content upgrades are nothing new. They are simply post-specific lead magnets.
The creation of these takes a lot of time, but they have a very high rate of conversion.
#4. Test Your Opt-In Forms
It’s not enough to follow best practices.
Some things work in one industry but don’t work in another.
You need to run split tests to boost your conversions.
Test different variations of your offer, copy, colours, etc.
Thrive Leads and OptinMonster support this functionality, and both are easy to use.
#5. Simplify The “After Sign Up” Process
There’s one more step to follow once your opt-in form is all set up.
Following their subscription to your list, what do your subscribers need to do?
Subscribe links appear in confirmation emails, but you should also ask that your email address be whitelisted.
Adding multiple reminders for this is a good idea, such as:
- Thank you page
- Welcome email
- Follow-up email
in the autoresponder series.
It won’t matter how hard you work at building your list if your emails don’t end up reaching your prospects.
Clicking the confirmation link in the email is also a challenge that some prospects face.
Inevitably, some people won’t confirm their address — some will be people who want your lead magnet but won’t confirm, and others might be bots.
The good news is that you can increase the chances of prospects confirming their subscription.
To do this, you should edit the confirmation email.
For instance, a professional email marketing platform like ConvertKit will offer this feature.
You can make this email as compelling as possible by listing all of the benefits subscribers will receive once they confirm.
Let’s Recap!
This guide assists you in developing a strategy for email marketing that will benefit not only your subscribers, but also your bottom line.
List building is like any other marketing discipline – it’s easy to get bogged down in the details.
You don’t have to offer a prize for an online quiz, but you should.
Remember that multiple capture methods improve efficiency.
Some opt-in forms work in one industry but not in another.
Some won’t confirm their email address, so you must whitelist yours.
Make your confirmation email more compelling to increase the chances of them confirming.
Now that you understand the fundamentals of list building, it’s time to plan how you’ll expand your mailing list.
Accelerate your leads with Opt-in List Building today!
Digitalzone puts your B2B leads and sales on steroids.
Using a global B2B database of 71 million companies, we have created and managed 46,872 successful campaigns for companies based in the USA.
We help B2B companies, just like yours, with Account Based Marketing, Content Syndication, Intent Based Marketing, Demand Research and Content Creation
Get in touch with us today, to accelerate your sales.
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