The Best Ways to Collect Email Addresses

How to Collect Emails: A Comprehensive Guide

Email marketing offers one of the best returns of any marketing strategy. At the heart of marketing via email is your mailing list. Knowing how to collect email addresses for email marketing is key to growing your list and expanding your reach.

At the same time, you need to know how to maintain that list of emails. After all, you can expect to lose 22% of your email contacts, on average, every year. Let’s dive into what you can do to increase the size of your email list.

Collecting Emails: Why is This Important?

Email marketing is so effective because it’s a direct line to each individual lead/customer. Building relationships is the foundation of modern-day business. When someone is willing to give you their email, they’re putting their trust in you. When you figure out how to collect emails, you have an opportunity to deliver highly targeted marketing campaigns that hit all the right notes.

Not everyone you get an email address from will engage with you. Most of them will never even open your email; therefore, this is a game of numbers. The larger your email list, the greater the proportion of engaged subscribers. However, figuring out how to collect email addresses is easier said than done.

How to Collect Emails and Build an Email List

The crux of the matter is how to get emails in the first place. Unless you’re already an established brand, you need to start from ground zero. Email collecting is a matter of trust. People need to learn to trust you before they’ll give up their data. They also need to know that they’re getting value from doing so.

How to Build Your Email List Through Your Website

The infrastructure of your website lends itself well to collecting emails. Make your website one big email-collect platform, and you’ll see an uptick in your opt-in rates. Follow these best practices to capture email addresses.

Custom Email Opt-In Pop-Ups and Overlays

Land on any major brand’s website, and the chances are you’ll be confronted by some type of overlay or pop-up asking you to give up your email address in exchange for something. There’s a reason for it, and the reason is: it works.

They trigger the core elements of how ordinary people behave. Naturally, they need to be tailored to your target market, but they’re essentially an initial call to action. What’s more, they take only minutes to implement.

Live Chat App

Chatbots are more intelligent than ever before due to the advancements made by artificial intelligence. A live chatbot is a welcome message to your platform. It can be used to disseminate offers and capture email addresses in a non-intrusive manner.

Furthermore, live chat apps act as a direct line to your team, which can help create that human touchpoint early in your sales funnel.

Product Giveaways

Everyone loves something for free. The majority of B2B content is gated and requires giving up some form of personal data, such as an email, to receive it. Some examples of successful product giveaways include: eBooks, White papers. Video tutorials, Free demos, Special discounts. Experiment with different product giveaways to see what your target audience responds to best.

Include CTAs in Your Blog Posts

Many of your customers will land on your website through a blog post. Your blog is designed to provide something of value. Part of how to collect emails is to convince people that they can get more of the same great content directly into their email inboxes at regular intervals. You can’t expect to get anything from customers if you don’t tell them. Add compelling CTAs as part of every blog post.

How to Build Your Email List Through Email Marketing

Your website offers a method for passively collecting contact info. Now it’s time to focus on active email collection as part of implementing cutting-edge email marketing strategies. Incorporating them into your collection campaign can grow your email list by thousands in just a few months.

Facebook Ads for Email Collection

Facebook ads are one of the most powerful ways of growing your email list. The ads platform on this social media network is by far the most advanced in the world, allowing for highly detailed targeting. It does come with a learning curve, and you’ll need to be willing to invest the time and the money to get it right. But with 2.91 million monthly active users, this is simply the biggest audience accessible to you.

Other social media platforms, such as Twitter and Instagram, also offer paid social media ads for getting people to subscribe to your list, but they’re far less effective than Facebook.

If you want a free option for collecting your email list, creating compelling social media content is the way to go.

Although organic reach has been crippled, slowly building up your following provides you with a platform for email collection.

Experiment with different types of content. Don’t restrict yourself to in-your-face sales posts, as this isn’t what people want to see. Like with all published content, think about whether you’re meeting your target market’s needs and helping them to solve their pain points.

Free Webinars

Free webinars are a great way to capture email addresses. Everyone needs to send their email to access the webinar in the first place. The registrations from a high-quality webinar stuffed with useful content can be used for email marketing.

You can even enhance your email collecting capabilities by using the recording itself as a content upgrade or lead magnet. This can help to force people from mildly interested parties to full-blown prospects.

Email Finder Tools

Email lookup tools enable you to scrape email addresses, contact them, and attempt to engage them.

Never add scraped email addresses to your full list. This is the equivalent of cold calling via email. Segment your list and approach these addresses in an entirely different manner.

The quality of email lookup tools does vary, so you’ll need to do your research in advance to ensure you’re getting high-quality email addresses.

How to Collect Emails at Events

Conferences and trade shows offer one of the best opportunities to collect emails. In many cases, you can collect these emails in person, so you’ve already got something in common, and you’ve built up an in-person relationship.

Approach how to collect email addresses at events in the right way can help you make the most of every event where your brand is represented.

The same principle of persuading someone to give you their email address applies to the offline world as it does the online world. You need to provide them with a reason to sign up to your list.

Giveaways are always popular at events. Branded merchandise, such as water bottles, tote bags, and keychains is a relatively low-cost investment that can encourage people to join your mailing list.

If you’re attending a larger event, you might even want to provide a significant prize. For example, maybe everyone who signs up gets entered into a lottery where they can win an iPad or some other high-value item.

The giveaway should take place immediately upon entry to encourage urgent action.

There’s no reason why you can’t integrate the initial event signup with email signup. Include the option for attendees to subscribe to your email list immediately. In many cases, people will do both at once because they’re already entering their personal details.

All it takes is a checkbox that permits you to also add their email to your list. It’s much easier than asking them in person at a later date.

Give attendees the power of choice. Don’t force them into subscribing in a specific way. If someone needs to ask how to do it, the chances are they’re not going to give you their email.

Make the process as painless as possible. Some ideas for email collecting at events include:

Add a bowl so attendees can drop their business cards inside.
Include a tablet or laptop at your table with the email signup form open.
Set down a signup sheet where people can handwrite their email addresses.

Get as creative as you like with signup options. The only principle you must adhere to is that it should be quick and easy.

Utilize QR Codes

QR codes streamline email collection even further. Include a QR code on every single piece of event material you have. It could be a flyer, poster, or even a QR code posted on your table. Make sure there’s a clear CTA and an obvious value proposition.

The QR code should be linked with an email signup form or a landing page. Keep the form simple so people who scan the code don’t turn away.

Ask only for the most basic contact details, such as names and email addresses. Remember, people will be on their smartphones and don’t want to deal with complex signup forms.

Email Collecting: Is It Still King?

Is it worth collecting emails in 2021 when other marketing strategies are coming to the forefront?

Even though the world is changing fast and email marketing can seem archaic, there are still lots of good reasons to invest in this marketing strategy.

Here are some facts that demonstrate why knowing how to collect emails is still a huge asset to any business:

Personal – Email is a personal way to communicate. There are no ranking systems or algorithms to take into account.
Purposeful – Anyone who subscribes to an email list is doing it for a purpose. They’re expecting something, which makes it far more likely that they’ll respond.
Targeted – Achieving relevancy with your content is simple via email. Highly targeted campaigns and list segmentation lead to more engagement.
One–on-One – Since you’re in the receiver’s private inbox, you have a one-on-one relationship with them. This makes it easier to build trust and develop a relationship with them.
High Usage – Even today, everyone uses email. Most people check their accounts multiple times per day. You don’t need to worry about your list not seeing your email.

In a world of social media dominance, old-fashioned email may seem outdated, but it remains as much of an essential part of the online world as ever. There are no competitors that threaten to supplant the humble email message.

The stats also bear this out. According to the latest statistics, email marketing has a potential 3800% ROI. No other marketing strategy can hope to compete with this form of low-cost marketing.

Additional Email Collection Information

Grasping the tactics for how to collect emails is just the beginning. There are certain parameters you need to know about emails collection.

Here are some important points to remember when starting your own campaign.

Never Buy an Email List

While it might be tempting to take a shortcut and purchase a premade email list, this is a risky move. None of those people opted into your email list. Failing to obey the principle of consent is actually illegal in many parts of the world and could land your brand in hot water.

Plus, there’s little evidence to show that purchased email lists will have any interest in your business and what it has to say.

Avoid Sending Generic Emails

List segmentation exists for a reason. Generic, impersonal emails defeat the point of that one-on-one connection.

Create highly targeted emails full of value. Categorize your list accordingly and send highly personalized emails. It takes more work but yields better results.

Prune Your List Regularly

Quantity is less important than quality. Smaller lists filled with highly engaged subscribers are always more valuable than large lists.

From a business perspective, a list containing thousands of emails is expensive to maintain. Email marketing platforms charge huge amounts for larger lists.

Keep your costs down by pruning your list. Monitor the analytics and if someone isn’t opening your emails, delete them. Data cleanliness is essential. Don’t disrupt deliverability by keeping unengaged contacts on your list.

Allow People to Opt-Out

Don’t hide the unsubscribe button. Leaving your list should be as easy as joining it. Not only are you legally required to stop sending communications when someone unsubscribes, but it’s also in your best interests.

There’s no purpose in trying to make leaving your list difficult. If someone no longer wants to hear from you, it’s better for both sides if you remove them.

Keep an Eye on Your Demographics

There’s a huge fixation on creating huge lists. Size doesn’t matter, as already mentioned. Maintain an image of your ideal subscriber in mind. Follow the data and don’t add someone who doesn’t fit your product or service market.

It’s considered best practice to refer back to your ideal customer often but apply the same principle to your email list.

Conclusion

Reaching your prospects may feel like an impossible task, but there are ways of making the process pain-free.

RocketReach specializes in helping you reach everyone from early-growth startups to CEOs of major global conglomerates. Connect with the right decision-makers quickly with the help of the world’s most accurate database of email collection.