7 Tips for Building an Engaged Email List

Updated July 2019.

Email marketing only works if subscribers want to receive emails from your company. Reaching the right audience with a timely message has become critical for savvy marketers focused on driving results. It all begins with your audience, and growing an engaged one is crucial to your success.

Don’t worry though, even though growing your email list may take a bit of effort on your part, you can still succeed in building a profitable list. Email list building only requires that you follow a few simple rules that we will look at below.

Never be tricked into or be tempted to buy an email list. Buying an email list will not only cost you money, but you will also pay by:

• Losing your reputation as your “subscribers” are likely to report you
• Running campaigns that have little or no conversions

So, how can you grow an engaged and profitable email list?

Tips for growing an email list that can sustain your business

Email list building is one of the best strategies you can use for growing a profitable business. Here’s what you need to do to successfully build your email list.

Let your ideal customers opt-in.

Create a resource that your ideal customers will love and willingly trade for their email address. Be sure to let them know that by opting into your offer, they’re giving you permission to send them promotional material every now and then. Place your offer on your website, social media channels, and anywhere else your customers can be found online.

In order to capture email addresses, you will need to design easy-to-fill sign up forms. These should:

• Offer the benefit of signing up
• Be brief and to the point

With a well-designed sign-up form and a hard-to-resist offer, your email list will soon be bursting at the seams.

Collect the right data.

Right from the onset, make sure to collect relevant data about your prospects.

What is the right data you ask?

That will depend on your:

• Business
• Product
• Goals

In summary, the right data is the kind of data that will help you run a successful, hyper-personalized campaign. So, the more data you have, the higher the degree of personalization.

Keep your email list healthy.

Email list decay is a fact you will have to come to terms with as an email marketer. In order to keep your email list healthy and engaged, you have to remove all inactive email addresses. These may be email addresses that bounce or those that don’t react to your emails. Before you deal with the latter, however, send a re-engagement campaign to re-activate readers who are still interested in being on your list.

Value is the key to growing and maintaining an email list.

Constantly provide valuable content and offers to your readers. Failure to do so will lead to high unsubscribe rates and low engagement rates. Both lead to poor performance whenever you send out your email campaigns.

To help you remember all these tips, we’ve created a beautiful infographic for you. Enjoy!

7 Tips for building an engaged email list

(WITH NO TRICKS, HACKS, OR SHORTCUTS)

Growing an engaged email is an ongoing effort that pays off big time if you put in the work. In this infographic, we share 7 tips to build an engaged email list the right way.

1. Opt-in is everything.

Ensure every subscriber on your email list is acquired through opt-in. This means subscribers explicitly request to be on your list and opt-in to hear from your company. We call this permission-based marketing.

Don’t be tempted to buy a list. Ever. Reputable email service providers won’t let you send to a purchased list and you won’t get the results you desire. Think of a purchased list as calling people who didn’t give you their number. Stick to opt-in and only send to people who want to hear from you.

2. Use signup forms.

Using a signup form is the single easiest tactic to grow your email list. You can set it up once, place it on strategic pages of your website, blog, social media channels and it becomes a powerhouse for acquiring new subscribers. Plus, it’s permission-based.

3. Collect the right data from the start.

Data has increasingly become important to marketers and quality data is considered gold. Many marketers struggle with data because their data may be dirty or incomplete, or they don’t have the data they desire to accomplish their goals. You can overcome these challenges for your email list by collecting the right data from the start in your sign up forms and gated content.

Keep your sign up forms short and only collect the information you need. 1-3 pieces of information is optimal as form fills decrease when there are too many fields.

4. Strategically gate content.

Gating content is an age-old lead gen tactic that most marketers use to collect email addresses and leads. When gating content, it’s paramount to consider what assets you’ll gate at what stage of the funnel and how you’ll use that data to grow your subscriber base and nurture leads to your end-goal.

5. Measure email list health.

Your email list is your most valuable email marketing asset. To ensure your email list is healthy, keep an eye on your engagement metrics such as open, click-to-open, and conversion rates. These are all key indicators of engagement. Additionally, be aware of where you are acquiring your most engaged subscribers. Do they come from your website sign up form, social media or some other channel?

6. Cleanse your list on a regular basis.

The key here is that you are focused not just on growing a big list but on a healthy and engaged list that will take action on your messages.

Is a large percentage of your list inactive? Have a majority of your subscribers not clicked on a link in the last three months? If so, instead of continuing to mail to inactive subscribers over and over gain only to have them ignore or delete your messages, you can create a reactivation campaign to win them back with different content or a relevant offer.

7. Provide valuable content to your subscribers.

Many marketers fall into the trap of sending out offer after offer in an effort to drive sales and revenue for their growing businesses. However, subscribers can soon tire of promotional offers that don’t deliver true benefits for them. The most savvy marketers know that a balance of value adding content (like email newsletters, blogs, etc.) and offers are the key to success.

There are no shortcuts, tricks, or hacks to growing an engaged email list. Use the 7 tips in this infographic and you’ll be on your way to creating an engaged email list the right way.

Wrap up

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