How to Build Your Email List with Lead Magnets and Opt-Ins
Now to the fun part: filling your email list with eager prospects that are excited to hear from you.
There are many creative ways to build your email list (and, no, purchasing emails isn’t one). Tactically speaking, list building comes down to two key elements that work cohesively to grow your subscriber numbers: lead magnets and opt-in forms.
1. Use lead magnets.
Your lead magnet is exactly as it sounds something that attracts prospects to your email list, usually in the form of a free offer. The offer can take several formats, it should be valuable to your prospects, and is given away for free in exchange for an email address.
There’s just one problem: People have become hyper-protective of their personal information. You can’t expect to receive an email address without exchanging it for something valuable.
Think about a lead magnet that is relevant, useful, and makes your prospects’ lives easier.
Here are a few types of lead magnets you could create:
E-book
Whitepaper
Infographic
Report or Study
Checklist
Template
Webinar or Course
Tool
If you’re short on resources, you can even repurpose your existing content to create lead magnets.
How to Create a Great Lead Magnet
Remember that your lead magnet should be relevant to your prospects. Here are a few guidelines to ensure you’re creating a valuable asset for your potential list.
Make your offer solution-oriented and actionable.
Provide practical information that solves a problem and creates a realistic way to achieve the solution.
Ensure that the asset is easy to consume.
Lead magnets should be delivered in a digital format. Whether it’s a PDF, a webpage, a video, or some other format, make it easy for your new lead to obtain and consume it.
Create your offer with future content in mind.
There’s nothing worse than signing up for a great offer only to be disappointed by the content that follows. Make sure your offer is aligned with the value that you will provide throughout your relationship, otherwise you risk damaging trust.
Treat your lead magnet as a stepping stone to your paid solution.
The point of your email list is to eventually guide subscribers to a paid offer. You offer free content to demonstrate the value that you provide as a company, and those free offers should eventually lead to your product or service.
Create offers that are relevant to each stage of the buyer’s journey.
Every new lead will be at a different stage of the buyer’s journey, and it’s your responsibility to know which.
Segment your list from the beginning by providing separate opt-in offers that pertain to each stage of the buyer’s journey. You can tell a lot about a prospect’s mindset by the content they consume.
Create an enticing opt-in form.
Your opt-in form is how you get a prospect’s information to add them to your list. It’s the gate between your future leads and the incredible asset that you created with them in mind.
Here are some tips for creating an enticing opt-in form:
Create an attractive design and attention-grabbing headline.
Your form should be branded, stand out from the page, and entice people to sign up. You want to excite readers with the offer.
Make the copy relevant to the offer.
While your goal is to get people to enter their information, it isn’t to deceive them. Any information on your form should be a truthful representation of the offer.
Keep the form simple.
This could be one of your first interactions with your prospect. Don’t scare them away with a long form with several fields.
As promised during my broadcast here is a screenshot of a landing page/CTA using ConvertKit. As I said it took longer to produce than I was led to believe but even so, it was well under an hour. And I am sure I will get quicker with practice. The biggest challenge for me was sizing the images correctly.
To learn more about ConvertKit go to https://convertkit.com/
Ask for only the most essential information: first name and email are a good place to start.
Set your opt-in form for double confirmation.
It may seem counterproductive to ask your subscribers to opt into your emails twice, but some research on open rates suggests that customers may prefer a confirmed opt-in (COI) email more than a welcome email.
Ensure that the flow works.
Take yourself through the user experience before you go live. Double-check that the form works as intended, the thank you page is live, and your offer is delivered as promised.
This is one of your first impressions of your new lead — make it a professional and positive.
Next, let’s take a moment to cover some universally accepted email marketing best practices regarding how to send marketing emails.
Choose an email marketing service.
Use email marketing tips.
Implement email segmentation.
Personalize your email marketing.
Incorporate email marketing automation.
Use email marketing templates.
If all goes well, you’ll have built a robust list of subscribers and leads that are waiting to hear from you. But you can’t start emailing just yet unless you want to end up in a spam folder or worse, a blocked list.
Here are a few extremely important things to remember before you start emailing the list you worked so hard to build.
1. Choose an email marketing service.
An email marketing provider (ESP) is an excellent resource if you’re looking for any level of support while fine-tuning your email marketing efforts.
Here are examples of features services like HubSpot offer to consider when choosing an email service provider:
CRM platform with segmentation capabilities
Good standing with Internet Service Providers
A positive reputation as an email service provider (ESP)
Easy-to-build forms, landing pages, and CTAs
Automation
Simple ways to comply with email regulations
Ability to split test your emails
Built-in analytics
Downloadable reports
2. Use email marketing tips.
While you probably don’t think twice about the formatting or subject line of an email you send to a friend, email marketing requires much more consideration. Everything from when you send your email to the devices on which your email could be opened matters.
Your goal with every email is to generate more leads, which makes crafting a marketing email a more involved process than other emails you’ve written.
Let’s touch on the components of a successful marketing email:
Copy: The copy in the body of your email should be consistent with your voice and stick to only one topic.
Images: Choose images that are eye-catching, relevant, optimized for all devices.
CTA: Your call-to-action should lead to a relevant offer and stand out from the rest of the email.
Timing: Based on a study that observed response rates of 20 million emails, Tuesday at 11 AM ET is the best day and time to send your email.
Responsiveness: 55% of emails are opened on mobile. Your email should, therefore, be optimized for this as well as all other devices.
Personalization: Write every email like you’re sending it to a friend. Be personable and address your reader in a familiar tone.
Subject Line: Use clear, actionable, enticing language that is personalized and aligned with the body of the email.
3. Implement email segmentation.
Segmentation is breaking up your extensive email list into sub-categories that pertain to your subscribers’ unique characteristics, interests, and preferences.
Our subscribers are humans, after all, and we should do our best to treat them as such. That means not sending generic email blasts.
We talked about segmentation briefly above. The reason why this topic is important enough to mention twice is that, without it, you run the risk of sending the wrong content to the wrong people and losing subscribers.
Why should you segment your email list?
Each person who signs up to receive your emails is at a different level of readiness to convert into a customer (which is the goal of all this).
If you send a discount coupon for your product to subscribers that don’t even know how to diagnose their problem, you’ll probably lose them. That’s because you’re skipping the part where you build trust and develop the relationship.
Every email you send should treat your subscribers like humans you want to connect with, as opposed to a herd of leads you’re trying to corral into a one-size-fits-all box.
The more you segment your list, the more trust you build with your leads, and the easier it’ll be to convert them later.
How to Segment Email Lists
The first step in segmentation is creating separate lead magnets and opt-in forms for each part of the buyer’s journey. That way, your contacts are automatically divided into separate lists.
Beyond that, email marketing platforms allow you to segment your email list by contact data and behavior to help you send the right emails to the right people.
Here are some ways you could break up your list:
Geographical location
Lifecycle stage
Awareness, consideration, and decision stage
Industry
Previous engagement with your brand
Language
Job Title
In reality, you can segment your list any way that you want. Make sure to be as exclusive as possible when sending emails to each subgroup.
4. Personalize your email marketing.
Now that you know whom you’re emailing and what’s important to them, sending emails with personalized touches will be much easier.
Sure, you’re speaking to 100+ people simultaneously, but your leads don’t need to know it.
A 2021 report by Litmus revealed that 80% of customers are more likely to purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences.
To drive this point home, consider this: Personalized emails have higher open rates. In addition, 83% of customers are willing to share their data to create a more personalized experience.
You’ve gathered all this unique data. Your email marketing software allows for personalization tokens. You have no excuse for sending generic emails that don’t make your leads feel special.
Here are a few ways to personalize your emails:
Add a first name field in your subject line and/or greeting.
Include region-specific information when appropriate.
Send content that is relevant to your lead’s lifecycle stage.
Only send emails that pertain to the last engagement a lead has had with your brand.
Write about relevant and/or personal events, like region-specific holidays or birthdays.
End your emails with a personal signature from a human (not your company).
Use a relevant call-to-action to an offer that the reader will find helpful.
This is the second in a series on the topic of email marketing you can find the first article via this link https://thegeriatricentrepreneur.com/2022/12/13/e-mail-marketing-what-you-need-to-know/