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Regardless of the type of business you’re operating, having an email list is essential for a successful marketing strategy.
Having this list allows you to promote your business, share your story, and display your products. At the same time, you’re transforming your subscribers into paying customers.
Hence, it is the foundation to create any successful blog, especially when you can use a service such as AWeber to make money with your list.
However, building an email list isn’t an easy task, and, getting subscribers often feels like it requires a lot of hard work and luck!
The good news is luck isn’t the only way to gain new subscribers. If building your emailing list seems hard, it’s simply because you don’t have an defined strategy.
With this in mind, this guide will explore 10 different ways to start building your email list using AWeber (see also ‘How Do You Use AWeber?‘).
Let’s get straight into it!
1. Examine Your Niche
Every email list should have a defined purpose, and if you offer something that is different and unique to the market, audiences are more likely to gravitate toward you – since you’re solving pain points and problems that others can’t
Think about the unique products you sell, services you offer, and your field of expertise.
Then find a niche (aka “pocket of people”) you can best serve.
The general rule of thumb is the more focused your niche, the better your results.
Thats because you can write with a specific type of person in mind (which in marketing, we call our customer avatar) and this makes your communications more personal.
2. Create An Impressive Sign-Up Form
Following this, you’ll want to start getting technical. But don’t worry! AWeber provides its users with easy-to-build and effective sign-up forms to help to attract your audience.
When creating your sign-up form, you should keep these factors in mind:
- Ensure consistent branding, this includes using the correct fonts and colors that will keep your business easily recognizable.
- Only have a few core form fields, such as email and first name. If you ask for too much info, it will hurt your signup rate.
- Send a welcome email on signup, informing your audience what they’ll receive from signing up and setting expectations going forward..
3. Deliver Value Consistently
Each piece of content and email you send has to be relevant to your audience’s needs.
But giving value doesn’t mean giving away everything for free.
If you ensure your emails are friendly, entertaining, educational, and informative, your audience is more likely to become engaged with your emails.
The key here is consistency. People love familiarity, and being a constant friend in their inbox is a great way to build trust and gain their attention.
4. Use Segmentation
While you may be tempted to constantly blast time-limited promotions to your whole list, the reality is that not everyone is at the same point in their buying journey.
Only a small minority will be ready to buy at any one time, and clubbing people over the head with promotions they are not ready for is a sure-fire way to burn out your list.
Instead, ease subscribers into promotions by leading with some value, and then focus your promotions on the subscribers who show interest.
For example, if you shared a link to a particular topic, you could then tag everyone who clicks to find out more, and then you can focus your promotion on just these people.
5. Leverage Other Channels
Relying on your emails doesn’t have to be the only way you can grow your list. Instead, you can send out the same messages via a range of other channels too.
Here are some additional methods you can use to grow your list:
- Offline – Put a link or QR code to a landing page on business stationery.
- Social Media – encourage followers to sign up for your list
- Website – place an email opt in form in your blog sidebar or header
Using AWeber, you can create sign-up forms that can be integrated with all of the above-mentioned channels.
6. Promote Email Sharing
The first essential step is ensuring your content is worthy of sharing, of course.
Assuming that’s in order, you can add a footer message encouraging people to share / forward to others.
AWeber also provides a range of email templates, which makes it simple to add a social sharing button in every email.
7. A/B Testing
As with all areas of marketing, testing is key to your success.
AWeber provides A/B testing tools that allow you to test different subject lines in your emails, and different signup form options.
Make a habit of testing, as it can make a huge difference to your conversion rates.
8. Link Your Email List And Blog
Make it simple for your subscribers to move between your email list and your blog.
For example, rather than sending a full article by email (which busy subscribers may not read), it’s often better to write a shorter “teaser” email and link them back to your blog for the detail.
This not only provides a more immersive experience for subscribers, it also allows you to segment subscribers by their interests by tagging people who click.
It also helps your blog perform in the search engines when Google sees people spending time reading and sharing your articles.
Likewise, on any blog you publish, ensure the sign-up form is at the last call of action (if you are not promoting anything else) to push visitors to your email list.
9. Partner Up
Remember, you are not in this industry alone. Other individuals and companies are all in the same boat, trying to grow their email lists, too, and some aren’t likely to compete for the same audiences. So, why not partner together?
This could be as simple as attaching your sign-up form on a partner’s website with a similar exchange on yours.
Another way to get the word out is through guest blogging.
These kinds of partnerships tend to generate significant growth for very little cost.
10. Constantly Scrub Your List
While you may think this sounds counterintuitive, if you’re looking to grow your list fast, then you’ll want to ensure you’re regularly cleaning and scrubbing your email list.
At first sight, this may seem counter-intuitive, but it is one of the most crucial steps.
When you have unresponsive email subscribers on your list who either do not check their emails or no longer have an existing email sends a negative signal to the email providers like Google and Yahoo.
This will negatively affect both your open and delivery rates, and you will find your emails appearing in the junk or spam folders as a result.
Final Thoughts…
AWeber is a great tool to help you grow your mailing list. It provides you with all the necessary features to create a successful list – generating both active members and passive income before long.
Hopefully, this guide has informed you on everything you need to know on how to create an email list in AWeber (see also ‘How To Create An Email In AWeber‘).
You can try AWeber free here.
I think you’ll love it (but if not, here’s how to cancel AWeber).
