Make the Most of Your Holiday Campaign with Email Lists

He’s making his list, he’s checking it twice, he’s going to find out who’s creating their email lists and who’s buying them. This holiday season, if the only list you’re concerned with is Santa’s, then it’s time to take a good look at your marketing strategy. All businesses can benefit from email marketing, but all good email marketers start with one important thing: email lists.

Creating a good email list may seem like a daunting task. There are many websites out there that offer you email lists for purchase. While this may seem like an easy solution, it can severely negatively impact your business. Buying email lists is a quick way to get contacts that won’t land you the results you want. So, our advice is to take a page out of St. Nick’s book and build your list carefully, one contact at a time. In this article, we’ll explore what exactly an email list is, why you absolutely need one, and our tips for building email lists.

The basics of email lists

What is an email list?

First things first, you may be wondering what exactly an email list is.

It’s simple. An email list is a collection of email addresses from past and prospective clients. These could be gathered via your website, blog, through social media, or even old-fashioned face-to-face networking. Your email list is the overall amount of subscribers you have, and this list will allow you to send out business updates and marketing material.

Why is building email lists so important?

Glad you asked. Year over year, email marketing has proven to be the digital marketing strategy with the highest ROI. Email marketing even beats out increasingly popular social media marketing strategies. This is due to the fact that creating and sending out emails is relatively cheap compares with other digital marketing methods. Therefore, building an email list isn’t only a business necessity, but it’s also a cost-affordable method to actually grow your business.

Reasons for building email lists

Now that you’re familiar with the basics, it should be becoming clearer why creating email lists is important. However, if you’re not yet convinced, here are a few more reasons why email list building is effective.

They offer opportunities for personalization

The opportunities to personalize your emails are endless. Unlike traditional marketing campaigns where an advertisement is created for the masses, email marketing allows you, the business, to gather a little more detailed information about your clients in order to effectively sell to them. This is something called audience segmentation.

Segmentation is when you create different lists based on your clients’ common attributes. For example, when sending out a holiday promotional email, you may segment your clients into different groups based on the date of their last purchase, their location, or age group. This way, you can send slightly different emails to each group in order to maximize your ROI. Audience segmentation and personalized mail lists are just one of the ways you can make the most out of your email marketing campaigns.

Keep things professional with your clients

Many consumers say that they consider emails to be the most professional way for a company to communicate with them. Once you’ve gathered your clients’ email addresses, they’ve chosen to opt-in to receive communications from you. This decreases the chance you’ll get complaints or angry or confused clients who aren’t sure why they’re seeing your advertisements.

Why you should never purchase an email list

Purchasing an email list may seem tempting. It can be a quick and easy fix to growing your email lists with minimal effort. However, before you do so, consider the following negative impact this may have on your business:

• Quality: the emails you receive from your purchase are overused, therefore these users won’t engage much with the emails you worked hard to create and distribute.
• Legality: with the introduction of the GDPR law, sending out emails to clients who didn’t opt-in can land you in serious legal trouble.
• Integrity: your reputation as a business can be tarnished if you continue the practice of sending out unsolicited emails.

In our opinion, purchasing email lists simply isn’t worth the headache. Of course, while building email lists is a simple concept to understand, gathering email addresses and creating one can be a little more challenging. Next, let’s explore some tips for building email lists.

How to create good email lists

By now you should be convinced of how important it is to create email lists. So, let’s go over a few ways to actually do it. These tips for building email lists are a great starting guide for beginners, as we’ll look at how to create them from scratch.

Get the best email marketing software

You need to begin somewhere, and we suggest starting with using a professional email marketing software.

Constant Contact is a fantastic option that even offers a 60-day free trial. This allows you to test whether or not it’s a good fit for your company. Constant Contact boasts some fantastic features, such as drag-and-drop email templates, real-time reports, as well as a 97% campaign deliverability rate.

Another option is Sendinblue. This software allows you to use a responsive email design editor or an HTML editor. They also offer great email marketing automation tools, such as email triggers and tons of third-party app integrations.

Benchmark is another great recommendation that email marketers love using. They offer a free plan and a paid pro plan. With a ton of customizable email templates, a drag-and-drop editor, and plenty of automation tools, this is a great entry-level email marketing option.

Opt-in forms everywhere

It’s no longer enough to have one simple opt-in form at the bottom of your homepage. You need multiple prompts to get users to sign-up. However, it’s also important not to overdo it and chase your clients away.

You should be adding email opt-in forms on your most visited web pages, as well as in a pop-up form when users enter or exit your website. Adding it as a menu option also makes it more noticeable.

Aside from your website, you should also add buttons on social media platforms, such as on your company’s Facebook page. Add a quick ‘sign-up’ button for users who came from Facebook to quickly register to your mailing list. On Instagram, add a link in your user bio that allows your users to access your email list sign up form in one simple click.

Incentivize potential clients

Gathering email addresses isn’t as simple as adding one simple form and expecting users to sign up. Often, you need to incentivize potential clients. This can be with some sort of prize, free content, or even giveaway.

If your business is content or service-based, you can gather leads by offering free content such as an ebook, a short guide, or a checklist. For businesses based on selling products, you can also offer things like a one-time welcome discount when you sign up for the mailing list.

Giveaways are another great way to amass a large number of emails in a short amount of time. Offer users an exciting and exclusive product or service for free. This will get people excited for the giveaway and more likely to sign up for your email list.

Content is still king

Of course, gathering all these emails is only the beginning of a winning marketing strategy. Once you have a steady list of emails in your repertoire, the next step is keeping them, and the best way to do that is to ensure they are engaged and interested.

Make sure you have a killer content plan in place to ensure that users continue opening your emails and clicking on the links you provide. You don’t want to bore your users week after week. Adding a variety of different types of content both in the medium and the message is important. Offer different written content each time, as well as media such as photos, gifs, and videos.

Believe it or not, yours is not the only email that landed in your client’s inbox today. They likely receive countless promotional emails each day. Making yours stand out from the crowd is the best way to increase your email marketing ROI. You’ll also keep your customer base happy and engaged.

Final word

Now that you have a better idea of what email lists are and how to use them, you’re ready to take the next step and get started with email marketing software just in time for the holidays. Using one of our recommended email marketing platforms is a great first step to creating professional email campaigns. In no time, your email lists will even have Santa envious of your list-building skills.