Email marketing is not dead, contrary to popular opinion.
In fact, email marketing is still one of the most effective marketing channels, with an ROI of $45 for every dollar spent.
However, getting a potential customer to give you their email address seems almost impossible. This is understandable, considering the privacy associated with digital communication channels.
Many people and businesses would be willing to subscribe to your email marketing campaign if they expected to get something from it.
Here is a comprehensive guide on how to obtain more email subscribers.
Email Subscribers Are Earned
Adding an email address to your subscription list without the owners’ consent is a terrible idea and bad for your business.
It is also inefficient and counterproductive because the recipients will either ignore the emails or report your email address as spam, compromising your brand’s credibility.
The best way to get subscribers for your email marketing is by getting them to sign up willingly.
(It seems obvious, but you’d be surprised…)
This way, they will know to expect your emails and be more willing to read them. Depending on their expectations and your emails’ content, they will also be more willing to respond and engage.
This is why email subscribers should be earned, not bought or tricked into subscribing.
5 Tips to Get More Email Subscribers
The secret to getting more email subscribers is to appeal to their needs and expectations.
Here are five tested and proven tips to convince more B2B customers to sign up for your email marketing campaigns:
1. It All Comes Down to Value & Quality
Quality and value are at the top of most businesses’ considerations when engaging with any marketing channel, including email.
People expect content that will benefit them – otherwise, opening and reading the email is considered a waste of valuable time.
Besides benefiting your audience, valuable content will also benefit your brand by adding to its credibility and authority.
People are also more likely to share valuable content that they consider helpful, which would help you sign up more subscribers.
Here are three tips for creating high-quality, valuable content for your audience:
Be Informative & Relevant
The best way to make your content valuable is by teaching your audience something they didn’t know before. You can also simplify something they already knew and give them a new, better perspective.
Informative content is useless if it isn’t irrelevant.
Fortunately, you can make the content relevant to your audience’s present needs through data analysis and by tracking them through the sales cycle.
Make It Readable & Engaging
Just because your content is informative doesn’t mean that your audience will read it.
For example, few people would be willing to read through one large block of text without breaks between paragraphs.
Knowing that, it is important to make the content readable and engaging. This involves many moving parts, especially less-formal grammar and formatting.
Be Unique
Remember…people can get the same informative content that you’ve provided from a lot of other sources (including most of your competition).
So it’s important to make your content stand out by making it unique to your brand and relevant to the people following along.
2. You Content MUST BE Interesting to Obtain More Email Subscribers
Your content may be informative, but how confident are you that your audience will sit and read through all of it?
Unfortunately, people have increasingly short attention spans, so don’t be surprised if their minds drift off while reading your content.
To keep your audience’s attention your content has to be interesting. The idea is to make the content fun to read, in addition to being informative.
Fortunately, there are numerous ways to make your content fun and interesting – you are only limited by your creativity.
Some of the most popular tactics include:
Storytelling
Storytelling is one of the most effective marketing tactics because stories are captivating and intriguing.
People associate stories with their desires or past experience, and they will want to read to the end for closure. Stories also make it easy to explain and demonstrate the more technical aspects of your content.
However, storytelling only works when the story is relevant, creative, and entertaining.
Using Images & Videos
66% of people would prefer watching a video to reading an article.
This is not surprising, as content is more enjoyable to consume and easier to understand when presented as an image or in video format.
Videos also deliver content faster than articles, and 68% of people would be willing to watch a video to completion if it doesn’t exceed one minute.
So why not try integrating enjoyable videos and images into your content?
Citing Interesting Facts & Statistics
Facts and statistics give an unbiased view of the topic in discussion.
Citing facts and statistics also demonstrate your authority on the topic. But if you do this, be sure to back up your stats using verified research.
3. Offer Free or Discounted Rewards
People are more willing to share their email addresses when they expect to gain something from the deal.
While quality content is an integral component, the promise of free gifts and rewards is more convincing.
Think of it as a transaction: a free or discounted gift in exchange for their email addresses. An email address is worth about $20 to $40 depending on your business.
Popular giveaways for email marketing include:
- Downloadable resources such as checklists, PDF documents, and e-books.
- Video clips of valuable content such as training tutorials or explainers.
- Free trials on your products or services for limited periods.
- Discount codes on your products or services.
Your new subscribers will appreciate discounts or free gifts, but they shouldn’t be used as bait.
Instead, this is your chance to make a good first impression of better things to come in the form of valuable content – hopefully, your audience will trust your brand and turn into paying clients.
4. Mind Your Timing
One of the reasons people are hesitant to share their emails is because they don’t want to be bombarded with email after email.
For example, picture a manager at a large company trying to go about their day.
They get multiple email notifications.
Then they go to check and find that it’s yet another one of your marketing emails.
That’s not helpful…that’s annoying which turns them off from your brand.
That’s why timing is important when sending out marketing emails. Here is a quick overview of the best times to send out your emails:
- 8 AM when everyone is checking their emails.
- 1 PM when everyone is at lunch and has time to check their emails.
- 4 PM when people are closing for the day and checking their emails for the last time.
Timing goes beyond the time of day when you send the email – it involves sending emails relevant to your audience, at a time that is helpful to them.
5. Study & Understand Your Audience
Clients don’t appreciate being generalized along with the rest of the audience. People like to be recognized individually and feel special.
For example, picture two marketers trying to get the attention of one client.
Marketer 1 takes time to study the client and addresses them by name, while Marketer 2 only sees “another potential client” among hundreds of thousands of other potential clients.
As you would expect the client would be more responsive to Marketer 1 who paid attention to them as an individual.
So it’s wise to familiarize yourself with your clients (taking note of how they differ from the competition) before approaching them for their email.
Do your research. Talk with current customers and potential customers. That way you can keep up with their ever-changing needs and preferences.
What Do You Do When Everything Fails?
Some people will not share their email addresses, regardless of how much you try.
In this case, it is recommendable to reach these audiences via alternative marketing channels, including:
- Blogs
- Podcasts
- Webinars
- Social Media
For example, you can ask them to follow your brand on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok where they’ll see your content every time you post something relevant to them and their business.
After all, the goal is to communicate and engage with your audience, regardless of the channel used.
Get More Email Subscribers for Your Business in 2022
The tactics shared here will help you build your email list. Don’t forget to make value and quality the core of your email marketing.
And if needed, bring in a marketing consultant to help you evaluate and make any adjustments you need.
