How to build an email list for your blog

Last Updated on March 25, 2022

Every online entrepreneur knows that the money is in the list. If you can generate email subscribers from your blog and communicate effectively with them chances are they will also buy your product/service. But how do you actually do that? Today we discuss how to build an email list for your blog.

What is an email list?

An email list is a list of email addresses of users who have voluntarily signed up on your website to receive email updates from you. It can be a weekly newsletter, a product/service update (coupon,feature,etc) or just an update of a new blog post.

Why do we want to build an email list?

Before we dive in, let’s first understand why we like to build an email list in the first place.

Out of all the channels you can use to communicate with your followers The email marketing channel is the most lucrative one for many reasons, but here are the main ones:

• Better engagement– Users exposed to your content via email are more likely to click, like, share and eventually pay money for your product/service.
• Better reach– Unlike social networks which are a big medium for online marketers where your message is more likely to get lost in the feed, email message is more likely to get read and clicked. People tend to check their emails a lot more carefully than their Facebook feed. People view email as private, and if they let you in, it means they trust you and want to hear what you have to say.
• You own it-An email list is an asset, you actually own the list, you can have a facebook page with 100,000 likes, and get shut down by facebook for no reason (google facebook ban my fan page if you don’t believe me). Data is the new currency, and if you own it you can use it as you see fit, you’re not limited by characters or ridiculous policies.
• Highest earning potential-The bottom line, email is known to generate the highest EPC (Earning per click) out of all the marketing channels.

And just one final note to help you realize how important it is to build an email list for your blog,when you signed up to Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, or any other online website, they asked for your email right? (:

How to start building an email list for your blog?

Well the very first thing you need is a good ESP-email service provider. An email service provider will provide you with all the tools you need to:

• Collect email address (and other data you may need like first name, address, phone, etc.)
• Send emails- automated email sequences, weekly newsletters, and updates.
• Reach the inbox- you may not realize this but making sure your email reaches the user inbox (and in the spam folder for example) requires a lot of work and a professional operation.

Now you probably thinking, ok so which mail service provider should I use. Well there are more than a few out there and we used a few ourselves, so our pick is GetResponse, and here’s why:

• 30 Days Free Trial- You can sign up for free and use all the features you need to start building your email list.
• Pricing-If you decide to continue after your free trial ended it will only cost you $15/Month (up to 1000 email subscribers). Perfect especially for beginners.
• Landing page and optin form wizard creation- A drag and drop wizard to build and awesome professional landing pages and optin forms and popups. Watch how easy it is==>
• Automated list building and marketing- Get the tools you need to automate the list building process and email communication with your customers.

Need a more visual understanding? Watch this:

Sign up to GetResponse 30 Days Free Trial==>

Add contacts and an Optin Form to your site

Now that you choose your email service provider it is time to add contacts you may already have from your current customers, gmail contacts or previous marketing efforts. Right after you would wantto add an optin form to your site. an optin form is a form you add to your site where new users/customers will submit their emails (and other data you may want to collect) and subscribe to your list. Follow this short video to get started:

*Pro tip

If you want to create pop up forms (like you may have seen on this site) when a user visits your site or about to leave it,which has proven to be very effective in collecting leads, than follow this video:

Communicating with your Subscribers

Once you started building your list you need to start communicating with them. It can be by setting up an automated email messages sent on predetermined intervals (for example:email 1 right after sign up, email 2, 3 days after sign up and so on. You can send  a weekly/monthly newsletter and you can just send an email at random times to update about a new discount, an event etc. And of course you can mix it all together.

Not every email needs to be promotional or trying to sell something. You’re building a relationship with your subscribers so don’t abuse their trust or they will unsubscribe from your list.

Watch this video to see how to create an email newsletter

And this one on how to create follow up messages:

We hope this guide helped you realize the importance of email marketing for you business and gow to build an email list for your blog, if you’re not using email as a marketing channel you are leaving a lot of money on the table. Try GetResponse email service provider free and see the effect on your business.

Questions?Comments, please reply below!

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