Some “refreshing” tips on growing your email marketing list.

The basis of any business is its customers. Whether you interact with them in a store, online, or by email, it’s about building trust and relationships with qualified prospects in order to sell your products and services. It’s not phony − it’s “sales”! For email marketers, the likelihood of closing sales depends largely on the quality and size of your permission-based email list. If you build a list of contacts and subscribers that are interested in your offerings and trust your brand then you’re halfway there – the rest is up to you.
Developing and maintaining a responsive, opt-in email list is challenging, even for the most experienced marketers. It doesn’t matter if you’re at the beginning of your list-building journey or you already have millions of contacts, list management is hard work, but well worth the effort.
Addresses change, subscribers become inactive, and some unsubscribe, chipping away about 20-30% of your total list every year! However, consider the alternative: studies show that low-quality lists waste tens of millions of dollars annually, and no business can afford that. Quite simply, small investments in list management can
reap huge returns in marketing efficiency and campaign ROI.
As our aim is always to help our customers, we’d like to provide some “refresher” tips on growing high-quality email marketing lists. Simply choose what works for you!
•    Add a sign-up form everywhere prospects go
Sign-up opportunities should be easily accessible on every page of your website. Make sure they “pop” visually and clearly indicate what visitors are signing up to receive, and perhaps how often.
•    Add sign-up forms to your social media fan pages
Nowadays it’s a must! If you’re not sure how to do it, feel free to follow our advice and social media tips.
•    Offer incentives to sign up
The most popular incentives are free articles or reports, e-books, “thought leadership” papers, etc. They increase your reputation as a subject matter
expert!
•    Create a great squeeze page
Make sure it’s compelling and convincing. It should feature a powerful headline and a few of the “juiciest” benefits to get visitors salivating to sign up to your list! Entertain your visitors with an audio or video message telling visitors why they should subscribe.
•   Include testimonials in your squeeze page
Customers giving their opinions about your product or service can be the most powerful conversion tool of all! Put one or two strong testimonials in multimedia format from satisfied subscribers on your squeeze page.
•   Include a “Sign Up” button in your e-newsletter
This enables readers who are not your subscribers, but found the newsletter shared on social pages, to sign up to your email campaigns.
•    Add sign-up forms to blog updates
Place a sign-up box on your blog to keep your readers notified of new posts. To help you with it, GetResponse has recently integrated with WordPress.
•    Promote your GetResponse Email Campaign Archive
It’s much easier for prospects to decide if they’d like to sign up when they can review your offers and newsletters from a single brand web page. The more informed they are, the more likely they’ll open and respond to your email messages. Need some help?
•    Use a co-registration service to build your list
Co-registration is a great way to build your email list. Your newsletter ad or link appears on other related websites and those additional visitors are able to sign up on the spot to your list!
•    Contact other newsletter publishers
Let publishers of complementary content know that you’d be interested in promoting their newsletters or offerings, if they’d do the same for you.
•    Advertise in ezines and other newsletters
Use newsletter directories to find other newsletter and content publishers that target your audiences.
•    Be active on similar websites
Post relevant, helpful comments with a trackback to your blog or squeeze page, including, of course, your newsletter signup form! Visit discussion boards, forums and similar sites to provide helpful comments and information, while including a link to your subscription page in your signature.
Use sign-up forms along with value messages everywhere you come into contact with prospects and customers. You can vary the content or the design, but if you make it quick and easy, your list-building engine will generate new contacts 24/7!
We’ve highlighted a few useful techniques, and you can much more information in our “How to grow your email marketing list” white paper.
If you have your own proven list-building tips, we’d be delighted if you’d share them with us and other users! Your ideas are always welcome!