What Is an Email List and How Can You Build it From Scratch

In a world where social media and paid ads influence your marketing efforts with everchanging algorithms and are dependent on external forces, an email list is the only best and organic way to connect with your audience. An email list means you have a potential lead database to harness for conversion and a ready crowd to promote your upcoming content and the latest product updates.

However, creating your own email lists with people’s permission is difficult. So, if you don’t have an email list yet, this article is perfect for you. It'll help teach you email list-building strategies.

What is an email list?

An email list is a collection of email addresses that organizations or individuals have gathered from prospects and potential customers with their permission. These prospects would like to receive announcements, updates, bargains, and other information about your organization in their email inbox.

Why should you have an email list?

There are several reasons why having a contact list will always benefit your organization. Here they are:

• Emails can help you with your narrative, build brand awareness, and showcase your products or services.

• With an email list, you can send emails to your subscribers to nurture your leads and convert them into paying clients.

• Unlike social media accounts, an email address is not removable. It cannot shut down or get deleted anytime, in which case you lose all your potential prospects. It is also not influenced by the algorithms.

• You can ensure that each of your subscribers receives the emails, unlike other forms of digital marketing, where the platform decides who to show your content to.

How to build an email list in 3 steps

Here, we have broken it down into actionable steps to start building an email list right now:

Step 1: Create incentives or content that people would want

For the first step, for people to join your email list, you need to provide something enticing they would not want to miss. Such content or incentives, known as lead magnets, can be accessed by people once they sign up with their email IDs.

We have listed down some ideas for lead magnets to get you started:

• Free content or lead magnet

Offer content that people in your niche will be interested in. It should be something that provides them value. The type of content depends on your industry and target audience’s needs and interests. For example, you can create an ebook and market it to your potential customers to get their email addresses.

The free content works like a lead magnet that entices people to join your email list to receive free and valuable content. Here are some of the most popular lead magnets you can create and send out.

Lead magnet	What is it?	Examples
Email Newsletters	News report with information about the activities of an organization.	Email marketing best practices, latest updates, etc. from Mailmodo
Guides	What or How-to articles that help people figure out a process or pain point.	Guide to improve hashtag strategy
Whitepapers	An in-depth report on a topic’s problem while providing a solution.	Google Cloud's AI Adoption Framework by Google
E-books	Digital book publication with text and images to read on electronic devices.	Email Design for Newbies
Courses	Short education programs	Email Marketing Free Course
Checklists	List of things to do to achieve something	The Ultimate Email Campaign QA Checklist
Reports	Document with organized and detailed information about a topic for specific audiences.	Lead generation and management report
Toolkits	Set of guidelines or suggestions to do something	Marketing tools for every business and budget
Webinars	Live or recorded online seminar	The AI marketing show
Cheatsheets	Like a checklist, but it also contains hacks to help people.	Hacks to write a viral blog post

• Early access or insider benefits with exclusive content

You can offer people early access to quality content available to the general public only weeks later. Exclusive content makes people feel special and like they are a part of something special. You can provide them something that'll help provide value, like improving their skills and processes, increasing growth, etc.

For example, Inktober gives people who sign up for their newsletter access to their challenge details one week before the general release. As a result, their audience wants to sign up because they get early access to the challenge.

• Special offers and exclusive discounts

Discount codes or coupons are great incentives that usually get people to sign up. If you are an e-commerce or B2C brand, these incentives will attract customers to your product or content.

• Offer incentives and free trials

Many product and service companies offer their audiences complimentary trials for a limited time or features. The free account or product requires people to sign up with an email ID to access a small part of the product or service.

For example, Mailmodo offers a 21-day free trial to try out the product.

Step 2: Create an email signup form linked with the incentive

Now that you have something to offer, you need a sign-up form to collect the email addresses of people. A sign-up or popup forms collect email addresses from people who want the incentive you are offering. Here are some ways you can create an email signup to collect email IDs

• Create a unique landing page

Your audience lands on the landing page when they click on your incentive. It has a signup bar to capture email addresses from people before providing them with the freebie.

• Pop up

Greet visitors to your website with a pop-up. The pop-up can inform people about incentives like seasonal sales and holiday offers.

Source: Inktober

• Promote offline

If you have an offline store or regularly interact with your customers offline, you can promote your products and services in person and collect email IDs. You can do this in-store, seminars, networking trade events, etc.

Step 3: Distribute the form and market your incentives

To build a great email list, ensure you are marketing the freebies to new potential customers. Now that you have set up the process and the backend systems, it's time to drive traffic toward your signup forms. You can tell your audience about the incentive to create exposure for your brand and increase your email list subscribers.

You can use the following ways to distribute the incentives:

• Landing page

What to distribute: inline and popup forms

You can add the incentive forms or assets into the landing pages where you get the highest traffic. You can add here popup and inline forms to get maximum number of email addresses.

• Blog or newsletter

What to distribute: ebooks, courses checklists etc.

Include a signup area on your blog, as the people who read the blogs are already interested in your email content.

• Include it in the checkout process

What to distribute: Sign up forms

If you sell online, then you can make people sign up before they checkout by providing them with a coupon if they sign up.

• Social media

What to distribute: Landing page, discount coupons, exclusive content, etc.

You can use social media channels to tell people what valuable incentive you offer them for free. Direct them to your signup bar when you advertise on social media. You can use the following media and create social media accounts to inform the audience about your email list:

Facebook Facebook ads, posts, stories, shares in relevant groups, etc.

YouTube Promotional videos, video descriptions, etc.

Instagram Instagram stories, bio, posts, Reels, etc.

Advertisements You can create ads about your free product or service on Google or social media. The ads will direct people to your landing page, where they'll sign up to receive the freebie.

• Events or conferences (virtual or in-person)

If your organization is going to organize meetups, set up stalls, or present at trade shows, you can inform people of the free resources or benefits you are providing when they sign up online. You can also collect their contact information during the event and later add it to your email list.

• Email Signature

What to distribute: Opt-in form

In the signature of all your personal and professional emails, link to your opt-in form. Then, the people who receive your emails can sign up if interested.

• Brand partnerships or co-marketing

Email co-marketing occurs when two brands collaborate to develop an email marketing campaign. They are not creating something new but only marketing what they already have.

• Referral Marketing

You can do referral marketing on your website (landing pages) and through email marketing. Email marketing-led distribution will include enticing your existing subscribers with offers and gifts in exchange for referrals. For instance, Marketing Brew in this email invites users to share the link and rewards them with gifts.

Using AMP emails, you can add an interactive referral widget to your email so users can easily share the email ID inside the email.

Email list building best practices

To boost your email marketing efforts, here are some best practices to keep in mind:

Get consent to collect information

Sign-up sheets are helpful because they get permission from people to collect their email addresses. Consent is necessary because you have to value their privacy. And also, according to laws like GDPR, CAN-SPAM, HIPAA, etc., people must permit companies to manage their data.

Validation of emails through opt-ins

Send people an email to verify and opt into your email list. Use a combination of single and double opt-ins to ensure that people want to be part of your list. This will help ensure the user is actually accepting to be a part of your contact list.

Gamify the signup process

Users can sign up easily by making the signup process engaging and fun. You can use gamification in your sign-up forms to get users to sign up. For instance, if you want the users to sign up for your emails, you can use an interactive spin-the-wheel with exciting offers that pop up on your website. The user has to give their email ID to spin the wheel.

Source: Optimonk

Beware of 'email list builders and providers'

Let us tell you a secret: There are no email list builders. You can only grow an email list; no tool can make one for you. You can grow your email list with your target audience with consistent effort and valuable content.

Let's talk about email list providers now. These providers will sell you an email list; however, it is harmful to do so. It can hurt your domain reputation and cause legal violations. Moreover, a bought email list will target an inaccurate audience, so you are technically not gaining anything. It will only annoy the recipients, further leading you into their spam boxes.

Keep your promise and deliver the incentives

Once they have joined your mailing list and verified, ensure you fulfill your end of the deal in time. Send them the reward or incentive you promised and for which they signed up. If you promise and do not deliver, you will lose credibility and a potential customer.

Choose an ESP with list management features

Your email list requires continuous management and segmentation. You need a powerful email service provider (ESP) to help you create, automate, send, and manage the contact list. Moreover, you can also analyze the data to understand user behavior and preferences. Choosing an ESP is crucial; it is a platform where you can manage everything in one place without worrying about missing anything.

Learn how to choose an email service provider in this guide.

Create an effective CTA

Your CTAs are crucial in email list building as they direct the user to take the desired action. That's why the CTA copy, placement, and design matter so much when designing your CTA.

For instance, in this email, Airbnb places a clear CTA in the first fold to make it more visible while giving a brief context to what they can expect.

Source: Really Good Emails

What's next now that you have an email list

Okay, so you've got an email list; what are your next steps? How can you keep these subscribers with you for a long time? Here are a few things you can do after you've built an email list:

Manage your email list health

Once you have a list, keeping it clean and healthy is crucial. You must remove incorrect email addresses and segment them based on their interests. Check out our article on how to maintain a clean email list.

Segment your email list

When you segment your contact list, you ensure that each subscriber receives relevant content. This helps maintain email engagement and connection with the brand.

Keep the subscribers engaged

Consistency is the key. Maintain a consistent schedule for sending targeted emails to your existing subscribers to stay relevant in their minds. To maintain engagement, you can use interactive AMP emails to get more conversions and responses from your subscribers.

Takeaway

Building an email list is a gradual process. It doesn't happen overnight and nor do you have a genie to build it in a whiff. It takes constant work. And a part of that work is providing valuable and relevant content to attract people. While creating content, keep in mind the etiquette we discussed in this article. Those are important as people should know what data you are collecting.

Once you have an email list, you must maintain it and send emails. So, signing up to an email marketing platform/ provider like Mailmodo makes the whole email marketing process much more manageable.

Mailmodo provides tools to manage email lists, create campaigns, and track and analyze email metrics. It helps you create and manage your email marketing campaigns all in one place. You can also send AMP emails for a better user experience. So sign up with us and start building your list.