How To Build Your Lists With Email Opt-ins

Before you can nurture those prospective buyers towards the purchase, or build your owned audience channels, you have to capture your lead’s email address. When your visitors land on your website or landing page and see your pop-up, or lead gen offer, you’re going to need their expressed permission to collect their information and send them emails or text messages. This type of permission-based marketing is called opt-in marketing. When your prospects make the decision to join your list, they are fully aware that you are adding them to your list to receive promotional and marketing messages on behalf of your brand. With this consent, you can send email newsletters, promotional automation, nurturing email campaigns, and other campaigns and be sure that you are reaching the right people who want to hear from your business.

While the concept seems simple enough— you ask for their email address, they agree and *VOLIA* they’re now subscribed to your list. However, the process of consent is extremely important for your business. Sending emails unsolicited to people who did not give you expressed permission can not only impact your reputation, you are also sending spam. Even if you received an email address from someone in the past, if they did not agree to receive continued emails from you, then you are sending unsolicited emails.

Now that you understand the importance of opt-in marketing, let’s look at a few ways that you can build your list with opt-ins.

Make It Visible

You want visitors to know that at any moment during their session on your site, they can opt-in to join your list. In order to do this, your opt-in form should be visible on every page on your site. The best way to ensure this is to add your form on the footer, or header of your website. People who scroll all the way to the end of a page won’t have to scroll back up if they want to take you up on your offer, lead magnet, or newsletter promotion.

Set Expectations

Let your subscribers know what to expect from your brand. Once they have joined your list your first communication with them should be a welcome email. Included in that email you should set expectations for the frequency of emails you plan to send, as well as what to expect from your email topics and content. If they’ve signed up for an offer or special discount, be sure to include that code or link once again for access. By setting those expectations, potential subscribers know that you won’t spam them every day and that they’ll always receive something of value.

Attract With A Lead Magnet

Email addresses and phone numbers are considered to be the digital currency to brands and marketers. In order to receive that valuable currency your business needs to provide something valuable to make the exchange. This opt-in offer is called a lead magnet. This is the key to attracting new prospects to be happy to sign up to join your list. This offer should be attractive, relevant to your business, and be free. From downloads to free trials to discounts or gated content like quizzes or e-books, people love to feel like they are receiving special treatment or are gaining access to something not everyone else can get.

Make It A Double

Having your subscriber confirms their subscription provides extra verification that they indeed granted your business permission to send them emails. With a double opt-in, users submit their opt-in form and are then required to check their inboxes to then confirm the subscription process via a separate email or landing page to officially be added to a mailing list. This process reduces the risk of spam complaints and increases the interest level of the user.

Get Creative With Popups

When it comes to capturing attention you only have a limited window of time to convince prospects to opt into your list. Pop Ups help you get your offer seen quickly. From the time visitors land on your website, popups are useful in conveying relevant and valuable offers before they move about the site. You want to be careful and creative with how you time your popups, however. The last thing you want is for your popup to disrupt the user experience. Experiment with different types of popups, for instance, first purchase discounts and exit-intent, in order to see what incentivizes your target audience.

Give Subscribers An Out

While a robust list is beneficial for brands, you should always be trimming the fat and getting rid of those unengaged subscribers. This benefits you both. You don’t want people on your list who no longer want to hear from you, as that affects your conversion metrics. Likewise, people’s inboxes are cluttered enough, and they don’t want to be inundated with communication from brands that are no longer relevant to their interests. Let your list know that if they want to opt out, it is as easy as clicking a link placed in the email that will lead them to the area where they can unsubscribe.

Building a healthy, engaged list should be a priority for your business. Growing your email list with opt-ins can result in huge wins for your business. But it all starts with email collection. Collecting emails begins the process of lead nurturing so you can create relationships with your subscribers and turn them into returning customers. If you’re ready to grow your email list using an opt-in and want your prospective customers to eagerly join, contact the team at Idealgrowth to get started on an optimized strategy.