9 Ways To Build Your Email List

Introduction

After writing a killer blog post or getting up the gumption to record a video for YouTube you feel satisfied when you check your Google Analytics to see that the traffic to your site is ticking up.

When you do some further investigation you realize however that visitors are leaving comments with some even clicking on your affiliate links. All very encouraging so far. But hold on as several questions swirl around in your head.

• Do you have any mechanisms in place to capture the email addresses of your visitors?
• How do you intend to directly communicate new offers or advice with your more valued visitors?
• Do they just arrive and leave without any action?
• And why would you desire to embark on any type of email marketing strategy?

Did someone not say that email marketing was dead as a doorknob? With the social media juggernauts like Facebook, Tik Tok and YouTube is email not a dinosaur form of communication that should be reminisced upon like writing letters?

Facts About Email

Well lets us look at some quick facts

• The average order value of an email is three times higher than social media
• Email is 40 times more powerful at acquiring customers than Twitter and Facebook.
• For every $1 spent on email, there is on average a 41% ROI
• 92% of people online use email
• Personalized emails improve CTR (click-through rate) by 14%

So the numbers don’t lie. Email marketing should still be considered a valuable tool in your affiliate marketing toolbox. If you are starting to feel then that email marketing deserves a second look, the next question I am sure is on your mind, is how do you do it? More specifically, what approaches can be taken to stimulate your customer engagement, your deliverability, your conversions and more.

Are you ready? Let’s go!

1) Juice Your List

One of the things always to remember is that to manage you need to measure. And a metric you should know is the CTOR or the Click To Open Rate. What the CTOR does is measure the number of unique visitors that actually open your emails. If no one opens your emails then your CTOR would be zero.
If 10 out of 100 or 10% of people open your emails then your CTOR is 10%

Now you would like your CTOR to be as high as possible. Thus, when launching your first campaigns you should do so to your most engaged followers. Friends and family. People that you already have a direct relationship with. The people that would feel bad ignoring you or who you could call up on the phone and ask them to take the action you want. This way you can build a strong CTOR from the start.

2) Send Emails Regularly

While it is a good idea to keep engaged with your community, you should always try not to be annoying. Sending an email every day does that in most cases and will likely lead to a decrease in your CTOR. Carefully timed messages work best in letting people know that you are there and when you do email that it is going to be something interesting/ important.

3) Tease the Next Email

Once not overused you can build anticipation of an upcoming event with ‘coming soon’ or ‘book your seat’ type emails. You can always inject a little urgency by saying book now as seats are filling up fast but don’t overdo.

4) Use Split Testing

You never really know what campaign your audience is going to respond best to. So it is advisable that you send out two very similar emails for the same campaign. What you then do is assess which of the two performs better. This is called Split testing. Once you identify which email works better you drop the dud and try to create a new email that will be the original winner. The intention is that you would get your target CTOR.

5) Giveaways are Good Incentives

There’s nothing better than a good freebie to entice a visitor to leave their email address. The freebie could for instance be a discount coupon, E-book. This carrot or magnet helps to give undecided persons just a little nudge to be more committed.

6) Use Storytelling

Are you a robot? Do you talk like R2D2 from Star Wars? Well then your emails should not sound like that just highlighting the technical specs, pros and cons in a monotone type of way. Instead, try to inject personality into your copy or script. Some use storytelling quite effectively seeking to embody the challenges the target audience goes through so that you see yourself. This can be very effective in being engaging and persuasive.

7) Use their Names

When you are in a meeting or trying to talk to someone, do you say Hey and start talking? Well, probably you do. But you know that it is far more personal when you remember someone by name. Similarly, use the feature in the autoresponder so that you can address your followers by their first name. Hi, Roy or Simone sounds so much better than a hi friend!

8) Be Brief

You are not writing a thesis so get to the point. Be succinct as people just do not have the time to wade through the fluff. Make sure that you get your core point across – the top 10 tips; why you should attend this seminar, inclusive of speakers, positions, date, time and cost. If you deliver value more than likely your followers will deliver value back through a sale. That’s what you call a value exchange.

9) Ask People to Forward on Your Emails

If you have a committed following you could always ask them to forward your emails to like-minded persons. This is an excellent way of building a following and likely to add a number of organic leads. Remember however that you would have to include an opt-in form within the email so that people can sign up otherwise it would be a waste of a good effort.

Are you using any email strategies above?
Or are there others email stratgies you have had success with?

Let me know by your likes and comments.

Thanks
Hugh