Being a successful online marketer is all about growing your email list. Columnist Neil Patel shares these techniques for getting more email leads.
Email is the clear leader of the pack in the online marketing world. With its high engagement rate and ROI, email is an obvious marketing solution. I have built my businesses based on email marketing. I’ve seen its success and reaped its rewards.
In this article, I want to share three easy techniques that will allow you to get more email leads. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. This list is not industry specific. Whether you design aircraft carriers, bake cookies, develop software, or clean houses — you can use these three simple methods on your website.
Email addresses are extremely valuable. The more addresses you get, and the better their quality, the more successful you will be as an online marketer. Here’s how to get them.
To Get An Email Address, You Must Make An Exchange
Before I share with you a few of my actionable tips, I want you to see the underlying strategy.
Every single time you gain a new email address, you are making an exchange.
It’s very important that you keep this principle in mind — the principle of the exchange. You must give or promise customers something of value. They, in turn, give you something of value — their email address.
It’s just like any other economic transaction. If you want what they have (an email address), then you must give enough to them so that they will hand it over. Value perception is critical here. If users don’t feel like they are receiving sufficient value, then they won’t provide their email address.
How much do people value their email address? More than you might think. An email address is a gateway to a person’s life. The average knowledge worker receives or sends 121 emails per day. Nearly one-third of an employee’s workday is spent on email. Thirty-nine percent of workers use their off-hours to send, check, and receive email. Forbes reports that email “makes the lives of employees…miserable.”
And you’re asking to send them more emails.
Do you see how important it is to achieve the right value exchange? The more valuable you can make your offer or promise, the greater chance you have of gaining the individual’s email address.
One final note: Make sure that you hold up your end of the bargain. If you say that you’re going to give them something in exchange for their email address, make sure you do it.
1. Create An Email Harvest Landing Page
The most direct strategy is to create a targeted landing page for harvesting email addresses. Many of today’s landing pages are designed to sell something. An email address landing page is designed to both give information and get information — the exchange we talked about.
I’m using HubSpot’s definition of a landing page, which has two characteristics:
- The page must have a form.
- The page must exist for the purpose of capturing a visitor’s information through that form.
The reason this is such a great strategy is because you can customize it for any industry. What you must do is develop a landing page that deals with a major concern of your audience.
Here are the ingredients of a great landing page for email signups.
- Make the page about one topic.
- This topic should be of critical interest to your audience.
- The page should provide enough information to engage and interest the audience.
- The page should promise more information only accessible if the user provides his or her email.
Let me show you an example.
SocialTriggers is a site that provides marketing information. The page on email list building has a lot of great information, including a five-minute video. Notice what happens at the end:
The page has all the ingredients of a successful email harvest landing page — a single topic, great information, engagement, and then the form.
What about another industry? Let’s take a look at the basement waterproofing industry.
BDry, a basement waterproofing company, has a landing page that deals with “water seepage between basement floor and wall.” This is a common problem that will interest many homeowners. BDry’s page has lots of information, pictures, and two videos. Then the form.
Note: BDry’s page offers a quote in exchange for the email address. The purpose is still the same.
Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income shares a few brief thoughts on a topic (email list strategies), and then the CTA. You can get even more information by subscribing to his email list.
2. Use A Popup (Or Lightbox)
No matter how many people complain about them, no one can dispute the fact that email popups work.
A popup is a box that appears on top of the content that a user is looking at. The popup asks for the user to take action by inputting his or her email address. Successful popups offer something of value, and the customer can either make a choice to input an email address or exit the popup.
Here’s an example of a popup from ConversionXL.
Social media guru Dan Zarrella demonstrates his personal experiment with popups and bounce rate. His test results overwhelmingly prove the success rate of popups:
(Note: A 3.08% subscription rate is very good.)
Some may demur that they would prefer to use a sidebar to capture email addresses. That’s fine. I think a sidebar form is a great idea, and I use one on my blog. But I also use a popup. Why? Because popups can potentially drive up to 1,375% more subscribers than sidebar forms.
You may not like the idea of annoying your customers. But that’s the wrong way of looking at it. Instead, of annoying your customers, think of it as giving value to your customers.
A popup is not inherently annoying. A popup is annoying only if the offer is not right for the user. If you strategize your offer and develop an ideal exchange, your customers will love you for it — and willingly hand over their email address.
I see a lot of marketing bloggers using the popup, but does the technique work for other industries? Absolutely.
Take blogger Nikki McGonigal, for example. She was the one who experienced a 1,375% increase in signups from using this popup:
She’s in the crafting industry, providing online craft classes and craft information.
Popups are suitable for any industry, and are guaranteed to get you more e
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