Since email marketing is one of the best digital marketing methods that you can use to grow your business over the long term, a good email list is a very valuable tool to have. Email allows for more personalization, helps to keep things professional, and delivers instant updates and news directly to your customers.
What is an Email List?
An email list is a collection of emails that you have received through your website or blog. If you have ever subscribed to an email newsletter from a website to receive a free eBook or weekly emails, you are on the email list or mailing list for that website.
The email list is a collection of email addresses that are used by a company or individual to send marketing material to multiple recipients. Simply put, it refers to the total number of subscribers that your email newsletter has.
You can grow your own email list, rent an email list, or even buy an email list, although the latter two are not recommended by professionals since it is always better to ensure that you have permission from your recipients before you begin sending marketing materials to them.
In addition, renting or buying email lists can often come with several issues including poor-quality email addresses, out-of-date emails, and the fact that since many people often buy and send to the same list, they are not as effective.
What to Do With an Email List?
Whether you’ve been putting in work to build your email list or are looking to get started with creating one, what you do with your email list can make all the difference to the future success of your business.
The purpose of an email list is so that your business can send personalized and interesting email marketing content to your customers, helping you boost engagement and improve sales.
There are several things that you can do to achieve this with your email list, including sending regular newsletters to keep your recipients updated with the latest news from your company, sales and offers that they might be interested in, and information to help improve your reputation and standing in the community.
Some companies like to use their email list as an incentive to encourage more people to engage with them. For example, by offering something free and exclusive to users who sign up for an email newsletter such as a free eBook or exclusive access to content that would not be available otherwise.
Online stores often offer special discounts as a thank you to customers who sign up to their email marketing list through their website.
Once you have an email list, it’s important to ensure that it is kept up to date. You can do this by using an email verification service that will check your list to make sure that you are sending emails to valid recipients, to avoid a high email bounce rate, which occurs when emails are sent back due to a non-delivery.
How to Grow Your Email List?
Any email marketing expert will tell you that building and growing your email list is not something that you can do overnight. You will need to be dedicated to building an organic email list over a long period of time to get the best results, including higher open rates, excellent click-through rates, and more sales generated via email marketing.
For building and growing your organic email list, there are three main points to consider. These are:
Volume: Throughout the process of building your email list, it’s important to bear in mind that email campaign frequency needs to be consistent. If you change the volume or frequency of the emails that you send as your email list grows, this may have a negative impact. For example, recipients may opt out, making it more difficult for you to continue list growth.
Quality: You should regularly use an email list verification service to ensure that your emails are going to real people who check their emails on a regular basis and will see what you send.
Relevance: The content that you include in your emails is important. When people sign up for a company’s email newsletter, they expect certain types of content. In addition, it’s important to ensure that your subscribers are people who are interested in your industry and niche.
This is one reason why building your list organically through sign-ups is the best option since these recipients have chosen to receive the material you send.
What are the Mailing List Best Practices?
Sticking to some best practices while growing your email list and sending emails to your recipients will ensure that you get the best future results.
Some of the main things to consider include:
Regular checks: As mentioned earlier, it’s important to perform regular verification checks on your email list to make sure that you are sending email marketing content to real people.
Get consent: Most people don’t like to receive marketing emails that they did not consent to.
While it may seem like building your email list will be faster if you rent or purchase a list, this can often have the opposite effect when it comes to the success of your email marketing campaign since recipients are more likely to ignore your emails, send them to spam or opt-out of receiving more since they are not interested in your industry or company.
Asking for consent, for example through a website sign-up form, guarantees that you are only sending emails to an interested audience.
Personalization: Making a positive first impression is a key to keeping the interest of your readers and avoiding opt-outs. You can do this by personalizing your emails and ensuring that recipients know that you are invested in them as an individual customer and person, rather than a number on the list.
One of the very basic ways to do this is to address each recipient by their name, however, you can segment your email lists further to ensure that recipients are receiving relevant information to them.
Izabela is a leading contributor to the Bouncer’s blog. She is inspired to help companies all around the world to get emails into their recipients’ inboxes
