Can B2B Strategies for businesses survive without email marketing? They can. Yet, they would struggle a lot. Email marketing is (and literally everyone talks about this fact) one of the most effective methods in terms of ROI. It is a way to engage with the customers, build relationships and offer services.
However, what is email marketing without a proper email list? A waste of time and effort. That’s why building an email marketing list is a necessity, and the better you do it from the beginning, the more possibilities for growth you would have.
In this article, you will read how to grow an email list and what elements are worth paying attention to.
How to Build an Email List From Scratch
The accumulation of email addresses requires the business to attract customer’s attention or do proper research. In the B2B sector, building email lists contemplates that a company has a platform to engage with the audience and ask for emails. It may be a landing page, blog, social media account or promotion ad. Usually, email list generation is concerned with one or a combination of them.
A marketer offers the value or insight as a lead magnet and asks customers to share their email to get this valuable piece. That’s the most common principle behind email list-building strategies. Yet, it requires excellent content or expertise, as well as time to set it right.
Beware: Buy No Lists
That’s why some people make the biggest mistake in B2B business – buy email lists. In the best case, a company would harm its email domain rating. In the worst scenario, such a purchase can cost your business reputation and brand image. As a result, buying the lists is ethnically and economically wrong, supporting illegal and unsustainable operations.
So, for the most part, to get the email list, you will need a place to interact with the audience and the things to offer to them. As far as they are interested, you can get their email.
B2B Strategies: What Are the Best Practices for Email Building
B2B relations contemplate that the marketers develop connections before making an offer. In this regard, the best practices are about sharing value and satisfying the need of the prospect. It is the reason why the best options focus on how information is provided or what can be interesting to the audience.
However, there are also effective methods related to databases and places where your target audience works. I will cover the three email list building strategies that proved to work.
Power of Pop-up: Time, Relevancy and Call-to-action
The most straightforward way to approach email list building is via a sign-up form on your landing page. Right, the block with some information and encouragement to sign up pops up. This pop-up technique for email list generation involves the right timing and relevant lead magnet. Pop-up appears when you say so and depends on the content.
Time: You can apply a timed pop-up that will be shown after a specific time.
For instance, a pop-up asking for an email may appear when you enter the website. In such a case, some may consider it too pushy, even though the style and appropriateness of the message affect the level of annoyance. Others work great when leads exit the websites and are far less intrusive.
Lead Magnet: The lead magnet is concerned with appealing to the customer to the degree that they would share their email. Be sure to do solid research, investigating the needs and problems of your prospects. Based on it, you can develop a lead magnet offering value for and developing the interest of potential clients.
Relevancy: The pop-up as well can appear when you finish reading the article or the piece you found on their blog. As the prospects know that your content is excellent, they are likely to sign up for the news.
Yet, make sure that the things you share are helpful first. The pop-up should reflect the interest of the prospect. If the prospect visits the website searching for B2B tricks, offering them a B2B email marketing guide can be a way to persuade them to sign up. If you want a quality b2b leads database, it is a way to establish a deep connection.
Call-to-action: The call to action (CTA) is what invites the prospect to proceed with the offer. Thus, it is necessary to pay attention to the message and information, their design and style.
Using Social Media for Building Lists
If you have a B2B business, you are likely to use LinkedIn for engaging with prospects. Moreover, you can use it for getting emails from them. How? Because prospecting on LinkedIn starts with sharing expertise, building email lists requires sharing content and making connections.
For this purpose, you should start a conversation and share insights for better networking. The latter provides you with new connections. In its turn, connections grant access to the info on their pages. Then, a marketer can manually go to each page and find the email, downloading information.
At the same time, there is another way. One can create the ad with CTA to exchange email for the report or the webinar. As LinkedIn has its own advertising platform, it can distribute your message using an advanced targeting approach. When using such email list-building strategies, you may think of CTA design and the message. For instance, inserting a picture next to a CTA block increases engagement, as the numbers for conversion-related pop-ups with pics are usually higher.
Scraping Information from Company Websites
The finding of an email usually requires research. It is applied both to getting information from LinkedIn and websites. In B2B marketing, you can look for emails on the company websites. As you target decision-makers, the info on the management team is what you would be looking for. For this, a marketer would require some advanced tactics in searching and communication skills to produce cold outreach properly.
Also, it might be a complex and tedious process, picking the right persons or writing to the departments’ emails. In this regard, one can use an automated scraper or an email finder tool like GetProspect offers. Notably, such devices also would help extract emails from social media and achieve good email deliverability. Nonetheless, remember that the whole process depends on the connections the marketer has.
Growth Phase: How to Get More Emails for Your Business
As far as building an email marketing list is a constant process, it is better for marketers to see unconventional ways for improving their list and find more emails. Some of the email list building tactics contemplate engagement with the existing subscribers; others are based on using particular lead magnets.
Organize events and promote them
One of the best ways to attract potential customers in b2b is to organize an event. They may refer to the lecture, webinar or online conference with a guest. Each of them, if sharing expertise or some valuable tips, would be attractive for the potential clients.
Organizing the video stream or Zoom conference does not require a lot of effort while making it free would attract some prospects. Their registration for the webinar would mean another email in your list.
Ask subscribers to forward your emails
It is another technique that seems to work when you have a pool of emails from loyal specialists. This strategy has principles of networking and referral at its core. If you have established a strong bond with your audience, they trust you and, thus, can recommend you to their colleagues.
Just pay attention to the content, offer advice and integrate a CTA to sign for your newsletters within emails. If the message is convincing enough, word of mouth will play its part, contributing to email list generation.
Offer a free tool that works as a lead magnet
The sign-up process does not necessarily require the content to share. For instance, you operate as a recruiting service. Create a comprehensive form or test for the prospects to identify the area to improve their recruiting. If the free tool only asks to subscribe to get the free consultation, prospects will subscribe. However, consider that the message should be appealing, pleasing, and clear.
Promotions and Contests
The owners of small businesses or entrepreneurs may have a lack of funds at the beginning of their path to success. If they are your target audience, develop a contest or promo, where the reward is the free strategy. Your leads can apply for it with the email. For sure, you will need to offer them service or product for free. Simultaneously, you will likely get many emails if your product seems great.
Make partnerships and joint campaigns
How to grow an email list with this approach? You can create joint campaigns with businesses that target your audience. For instance, LinkedHelper and Snovio made some integrations of their products and referred to each other in their email marketing. The same may apply to you.
Suppose you find a firm that offers a service that will contribute to yours in terms of operation, collaborate with it. There is an opportunity to provide an added value. The chances are that the prospects of your partner company would subscribe to your newsletters or share email. It will grow your base, and you will start engaging with them.
Summing Up
Any b2b Strategies for an email list campaign require some research. If you develop a pop-up and attract prospects via a website, you should explore the needs and issues of the customers. Having social media as a tool for email list building requires a manual search for information as well as offering expertise. Lastly, extracting emails from corporate emails can be the most time-consuming process.
It is impossible to build an email list without an excellent lead magnet, the right call to action, or proper research. However, there are enough tools that can help extract this data. Once you have your pool, you can apply more creative email list-building tactics to foster further growth.
