Launching a startup is one of the most turbulent and rewarding processes that you could ever go through. Ultimately, throughout the startup process, your goal is to continue to grow your brand perception and awareness while expanding your customer base. Growing your email list is an ideal way to do this in a way that can offer endless opportunities for increased return on investment. In this article, we explore tips and tricks that you can use for growing your email list for your startup business in order to effectively run email marketing campaigns.
1. Make it easy to capture email
Before anyone ever receives an email, their first exposure to your brand will be your site. And, if you’ve taken the time to build up your organic traffic or optimizing advertising to drive traffic, capturing signups is especially important because not everyone is going to convert on their first visit. Rather than hiding away the email signup block somewhere in your footer or on a contact us page, make email growth a priority in your user experience design process. You may choose to implement tools such as pop-up boxes, recurring blocks in the landing page, or bundle offers in key placements on your site that they can take advantage of — simply by signing up for your email list. There are endless ways that you could weave in value and redirection to your email list in your website, all of which should be easy-to-see and customer-centric in nature.
2. Frame your offer correctly
You can do this via engaging, value-based messaging and copy and pre-framing the offer via ad copy or organic social. Find good copywriters and designers to create assets that promote the value proposition people can gain by joining your email list, Your copy or graphic assets should always be compelling and customer-centric, focusing on the value proposition of them joining.
An example of this for e-commerce is a 15% off sign up for an email list that we’ve done for our own loose leaf tea brand The Tea Kitchen. We’ve created a set of social media ads with a 15% email list sign up offer:
And, that same offer is on the site in an email pop-up we’ve created so the customer sees it again, increasing the chances of them signing up to our email list:
Especially in e-commerce, this omni-channel approach is a big way to convert customers down funnel.
3. Create a lead magnet incentive
If you’re a B2B business, creating a lead magnet for your email subscribers as an incentive is a great way to introduce your business. This is especially helpful if that lead magnet can offer something your potential customers are looking for to help with their current needs. Common lead magnets to sign up for email include:
- eBooks or White Papers Showing Your Unique Tips
- Checklists or Tip Sheets
- Case Studies
- Larger Infographics and Charts
- Research you’ve done about your industry
- Recordings and Webinars
By offering up checklist and ebooks about your industry or research studies that you’ve enlisted a third party for, client prospects would gladly give you their email to gain access to those studies. And, you can even get more demographic information from them in the sign up form so you can funnel them into specific drip/crm email campaigns.
You can even crowdsource ideas and recommendations from prospects to determine which magnet would best suit your startup by using micro-survey services such as OnePulse, giving you feedback in seconds.
4. Incentivize referrals from the very first welcome email
Every email you send your list should do three things: introduce yourself, your business, and your offering in a new, unique way, add value to your subscriber in a way that will resonate with them, and incentivize them to refer others to your list. You can do this in a way that works for you by offering points, rewards, gamification, or some other benefit — but you should set the tone from your very first welcome email. Taking the time to do this and to devise such a reward system could pay off significantly in the long run. There are additional subliminal benefits that your business could be rewarded with, such as:
- Increased brand perception and awareness to new groups
- Higher engagement among your current customer base
- Enhanced customer loyalty
- Potential higher conversion rates through purchases made with given rewards or points
