If email isn’t already a facet of your marketing strategy, that needs to change right now. Email marketing is one of the biggest revenue drivers for ecommerce businesses, making up to 40% of total digital revenue in some cases. 80% of retailers say that it’s also their most important customer retention tool. So, long-story-short, email marketing should be a significant focus of your overall marketing strategy.If you’re not familiar with email marketing, check out our 101 blog post all about email marketing basics.Convinced? Good. So you’ve accepted you need email marketing in your life and you have a good grasp on the basics. Now it’s time to understand how you can grow your subscriber list. First, let’s discuss some the two key factors that affect list building.

List management

List management refers to the building, monitoring and organization of your business’ email subscribers.Your email list is the backbone of any successful email marketing program. Think of it as your heart. If your heart isn’t healthy, the rest of your body suffers. So pay close attention to how your list is “feeling” and treat it right.The best way to ensure a healthy list is by understanding your deliverability status. List deliverability indicates the number of emails sent that reach their intended inboxes, rather than a spam folder or the infinite inbox abbiss. Factors like up-to-date email addresses, opt-in email addresses and proper segmentation deeply affect deliverability, thus affecting the health of your list. Basically, take care of your list and it will take care of you.

List Fatigue

Email list fatigue happens when your once-engaged customers either opt out of your email list or disengage with your emails. This leads to a decrease in overall engagement and, ultimately, conversions.You can fatigue your recipients by over-sending or sending repetitive or irrelevant messaging. Essentially, you want to put effort toward developing new and compelling content on a frequent basis. Never send emails to your list just because you feel like you should - do the work to research your user base and only send content when it is super relevant. Pay attention to your key performance indicators (KPIs). If you notice those stats are dropping, you’re exhausting your list and need to pull back on send volume or cadence.

Grow, baby, grow!

Now that you know the factors that go into proper list management, here are five ways to grow your email list in meaningful way.

1. Add an email capture pop-up to your site.

Sorry if you find popups to be annoying, but they’re the most effective way to capture the abundance of traffic coming to your site (and avoid losing interested prospects). Create a pop-up with messaging that is compelling and information. Your potential users need to know what they’re getting themselves into. Also, make sure your copy and imagery are eye-catching, on-brand and incentivizing. This may sound like a no-brainer but there’s a lot of content out there, how do you stand out from the crowd?

2. Advertise.

In order to build your list, you need to drive traffic to your site where your newly built (and expertly written) email capture awaits. What’s the most effective method in driving that traffic? Pushing ads through various media platforms. Pick your poison: Facebook ads, Google Display ads, Youtube ads, etc. Whatever floats your userbase’s boat. Identify the channel that works the best for you and see the magic happen.

3. Engage in social media marketing.

On social media, you have the ability to send followers to sign-up forms or boast about your “must-see” email content. Conversation is king on social media, so join in and let your consumers know how beneficial it would be to sign up!

4. Utilize referral programs.

Installing a referral email program has huge benefits. Not only are you leveraging current customers to become brand ambassadors, but you have the ability to do so on an ongoing basis. Referral programs incentivize your customer base to get their friends on board in a scenario where both individuals win. The goal is conversion, but the fringe benefit could be another email address on your list!

5. Do giveaways (wisely).

Giveaways aren’t always the best option, but they can be fruitful when done properly. The best way to leverage giveaways for list-building is to team up with brands who share similar audiences and give away products from all the brands involved. In order to avoid users who are only in it for the prize, segment them into their own grouping and monitor their behavior.The results can be mixed, but if you follow up with personalized content, you have a better shot of standing out from the crowd.

You Got This.

Whatever you do, don’t let perfection get in the way of progress. Like with most things email marketing, it’s better to trial and error than to try to get it perfect on the first try. The key to an awesome email program is consistent testing and optimization. The digital world changes everyday so as long as you’re learning from yesterday, your tomorrow is looking pretty bright.