We already talked about what is opt-in email marketing. So, you are starting your email marketing strategy and you want to start it right. But you stepped in a problem: contacts.

We created this guide to help beginners in email marketing to create a mailing list with permission, generating results for their campaigns. Check out these ways to create a mailing list to start your strategy successfully.

Consent

We’ve talked about this before, but it’s worth remembering. These are tips for creating mailing lists with addresses based on permission: with the consent of the contacts. At the end of the day, any contact obtained with permission will be a useful contact.

If you want to start your email marketing strategy and still don’t have a significant number of contacts, try to begin this search for contacts 1 month before your inaugural message. This way, they don’t have to wait too long, but you still have some time to gather some audience.

Web Forms

This is perhaps the most effective formula. Place a form on strategic pages, so that people can subscribe to your lists. Choose a prime location on the page, and make it clear what type of content you will send and how often.

A good tactic is to try to think about the behavior of your user on the page. For example, think of strategic locations, such as when he/she finishes scrolling a given page or access a certain content, and spots where email marketing can be useful.

Remember that email marketing forms should be short. Just ask for name and email. If it is important for your business, you can add some more field such as Team, or Preferred type of clothing, etc.

Pro tip: Mailee provides a very quick and easy to use form, ready to insert into your website. And it is already automatically double opt-in.

Blog forms

Blogging is an invaluable tool for self-branding. There is also, of course, the content marketing it generates, which has the potential to greatly assist your clients. Therefore, integrating it with your email marketing is a sure shot.

Look what we do here on Mailee’s blog. There is a dedicated page to the subscription on the blog newsletter, indicating to our audience that comes here and likes the content that there is another way to interact with Mailee. These forms also usually have very good rates and a qualified audience.

If your company already keeps a blog, don’t even think about it. Just start to integrate its contents with your newsletter, or create one for it if necessary. Just make sure that your content is  relevant and useful to your audience.

Pro tip: a good spot to place the form is at the end of each post. Thus, a reader who enjoyed the content can easily fill their email.

Modal Windows

Modal windows are those that open in a website when you are browsing. Calm down, they are not simply the (not so) good’ old pop ups that terrorized the lives of users before. This is because, unlike them, modal windows involve context.

They are a great tool to interact with users, according to what they are seeing. Want to see a modal in action? Visit www.mailee.me and move the mouse outside the browser. Voilá! Another on with the same style can be found here. Both offer something to the user, and the email address ends up coming in return.

 

 

The important thing to consider is to use the modal for something according to the user’s context, especially with some useful content, as a guide, access to a particular material, etc. That can also be a special offer or discount, but be careful to keep pleasing the contact when the discount is gone.

We eat our own dog food here: modal windows worked very well for us, because they were exposed to all our audience, and offered something relevant (in our case, an ebook on email marketing). After receiving something nice, your contact will be happy to receive highlights via email.

Content Marketing

Creating content marketing resources is a great way to stand out and offer something of value to your audience. In exchange for the right material, giving an email address sounds like something worth it. Especially if you put this as an advantage for the user: they won’t simply sign up for something uninteresting, but receive relevant offers on a topic of interest.

So, create an ebook or whitepaper (which are usually shorter, and more focused on a specific topic) and require an email from your visitors to download it. You can offer this in a modal (as we mentioned above) or in a specific landing page. The important thing is that the material should be focused on helping your user, so that they can better use your services.

The result will be a good growth of your email list if you keep the topics closer to the resource that you offered.

Point of Sale or sales contact

Any business contact that you have, whether or not in your Point of Sale, is a potential opportunity to remember your email marketing program.

This is because when you get in touch with leads and customers, you inform them about your brand and its benefits, and email marketing will serve as a tool to reinforce this. So, always remember your client that if he wants to keep hearing some very cool news about you, they should just leave their name and email address.

Just be careful to write it down correctly!

Events

Events are good opportunities to expose your brand and therefore your email marketing. Since your brand is being exposed to many different people in these situations, profit from it. Likewise, use email marketing as a “Trojan horse” to seep its contents to the new people that met you and want to receive this information.

That said, it’s worth remembering again:  Beware event listings. You can use them if you got emails with permission, but it is worth having a closer attention, if you want to make your efforts worthwhile. Look at what we have already spoken.

“Two main reasons: they create bad results of openings and clicks, and can bring many complaints and / or bounces. To avoid this, take these precautions:

• Engage your contacts acquired at events soon after they were added. If you wait too long, they may not remember you, and it is best to take advantage of the fact that they were already in contact with your brand.

• Make it clear, at least in the first two messages, how you got to this contact, and why it was included in your messages. We call this a disclaimer. It will help remind them of their relationship with you.

• Review the emails. Ok, this is hard to do in large lists, but try to at least eliminate the most egregious cases. @hotmial, @gmail.com.br, @ yaoo.com, are all cases that do not exist. Sending to them can cause problems for your reputation.

At signup

Businesses that depend on an online system where users log in another great place for asking for email addresses.

In every new user sign up, ask in the own interface if the user would like to receive special offers and content via email.

It is much better to make things this ways than just automatically send to them. After all, someone being registered does not necessarily mean they will accept promotional messages, especially when we are near the end of the year.

You can leave the checkbox to receive messages checked by default, and the contact may disable it if he wants.

If you really want, send messages for previous signups, but beware. This can produce bad results. It’s better to ask before if they want to join the conversation.

Email Signature

Finally, another useful place to draw attention of your contact to your email marketing is the signature of emails. Obviously, this is more effective in signatures of email addresses of people who are in close contact with your audience, such as your customer service team or social media.

Use an interesting signature, like: “Want to know our features before everyone else? Click here and sign up to our exclusive newsletter”. It’s important to use a link to a landing page that contains only the form, so there is no question of what you want the person to do.

Since this is a constant communication channel with other people, makes enough sense to put a call there for your newsletter.

Special Precautions

As usual, it’s worth it to be especially careful with your list now and ever.

• Don’t sell it  – You may be tempted to sell your mailing list to others, perhaps “partners”, to send messages to your contacts. Don’t be fooled. This won’t produce very good results, and you will hurt the confidence of  your contacts

• Keep your word – If you promised some type of content and frequency, keep your word. Or your contact will end up unsubscribing from everything.

• Keep it updated – Keep your list always updated, with new contacts, and remove old ones and those that don’t want to receive anymore messages. At Mailee, unsubscribed contacts can’t be included in messages, but maybe you’ll have to manually unsubscribe some contact that asked you.

With these tips, you have everything to keep a nice, healthy list, bringing good results home.