Strong ways to grow your email list through social and offline

‘The best way to improve your email campaign results, is to increase your email list size’, Dela Quist said at the DDMA Email Summit conference. You have to put an even amount of effort into creating your email campaign, whether you send your email campaign to 500 contacts or to 500.000 contacts.

It’s easier to get a high ROI out of email marketing when you have a big email list compared to a smaller email list. In this blog article, I will talk about ways to get new subscriptions for your email list. Besides that, we’ll also discuss some law specific considerations.

Stay focused on your target group

There are different opt-in channels to choose from. To make the right choice in opt-in channel, think from the perspective of your target group. Imagine what your customers like to do, where they go and what customer journey they have. Use this as a base to decide what channels you will use for increasing your email list.

Increase your email list through Facebook

Facebook is an interesting channel to use as input for increasing your email list. The platform has 1,23 million users worldwide, so therefore it’s potential reach is enormous. You can easily use it to generate email opt-ins via Facebook. To do this, you can add a tab on which people can go for a free download, under the condition that they will sign up for your email list.

You can consider giving Facebook users discount on your products and letting them email their coupon. You can also do targeted Facebook Ads and refer them to a special landing page to get an opt-in.

Always remember: you can only add people to your email list who have explicitly given permission by means of an opt-in request. Just asking for an email address isn’t sufficient.

Increasing your email list size through offline channels

You can also consider increasing your email list through offline channels, which is specifically interesting for the retail industry.

Email list growth through your retail store

A retail store that actually focuses on increasing their email list through offline is retail store Yves Rocher. When you make a purchase at one of their stores, you are asked to fill in a sign up form and get an instant discount on the current purchase.

When filling in the sign up form, you are also kindly requested to sign up for the email list. After Yves Rocher processed your subscription, you receive a ’Thank you for your first visit’ welcome email in your inbox.

Take the law into consideration

When doing email marketing, always make sure you have the approval of the contacts in your email list. Although laws might vary in different countries, it is always a good to use the opt-in regime. Contacts in your email list have to explicitly give permission with a checkbox and the following text (or similar): ‘I’d like to subscribe to the newsletter’.

After people have agreed to be added to your email list, you are only allowed to send them emails from your company, which include relevant offers and products. If you want to send your contacts other kinds of emails, like third party emails, you should get a separate or combined opt-in permission.

Soft opt-out for paying customers

When someone is already a client who pays for your services or products, you don’t need an explicit opt-in to be allowed to add them to your email list. In this case, it’s legitimate to add an opt-out request in the order form when your customer does a purchase.

This means the check box is already ticked to ask for permission to be added to the email list. If your customer doesn’t want to be added to the email list, they can untick the box. This is opposite of what’s the case with non-customers, as written above.