Email marketing is an important part of any marketing strategy to help grow your business. For B2B marketing, email can help to build relationships with prospects, increase brand awareness and fill your lead generation funnel with email content tailored around the buying cycle and the pain points or challenges your customers may face.
Building an engaged database of prospects is a challenge faced by many marketers. It takes time to create email lists and then time to continually grow these lists by continually adding fresh contacts, as your contacts can change jobs or decide to opt-out of your marketing. Whilst there is the option to buy data, growing an organic email list is another way to boost your contacts.
We have shared some strategies to grow lists organically, but please remember that it’s essential to let people opt-in to receiving emails from your company.
Sign up forms & gated content
Include sign up forms on your website and create gated-content. For example, you could add a CTA such as ‘stay updated with our newsletter’ on your homepage. If you have a landing page with content such as a downloadable guide or webinar registration form – this is a great opportunity to add a tick box to obtain permission to send marketing emails.
Encourage subscribers to share and forward your emails
Don’t underestimate the power of adding a sharing button to encourage your current subscribers to share your email content with their colleagues. If you also include a ‘subscribe’ CTA link then the people receiving the forwarded email can easily opt-in too.
Networking
Reach out to people in your network or make new connections from attending events and exchanging business cards or connecting on LinkedIn. Whilst this activity doesn’t always lead to obtaining contacting information for your lists, it can generate conversations and awareness and traffic to your website.
Use your email signature to promote your mailing list opt-in link
It may be helpful to add a hyperlink ‘Join our mailing list’ on your email signatures to take people through to your landing page to sign up to your marketing emails. This could be especially useful for your sales team, when they may already have an email conversation with a prospect. As the prospect has already shown interest in your product or service they may be more included to sign up.
Share newsletter previews on your social channels
Create a post which gives your audience a preview of your newsletter. If the content seems appealing, they may be interested in signing up for future content. Within the post include a link to your opt-in page.
Email list housekeeping
Keeping your email lists clean with only engaged prospects will have a positive effect on the performance of your campaigns. KPIs will improve for engaged lists and less likely to be reported as spam. Make it easy for people to unsubscribe from your marketing emails and keep your CRM up to date.
Whether buying data or using organic strategies, growing an engaged email list takes time and investment. A constant stream of relevant content and a CRM are also vital. (Please remember, always ensure you are following GDPR and have the required permissions.)
If you are looking at new digital marketing strategies to generate leads for your business, or perhaps feel your digital channels are not performing, then our free guide might be of interest: The Digital Lead Generation Blueprint – For B2B Marketers (capsulemarketing.co.uk)
