How to Build an Email List from Scratch (A Step-By-Step Guide)

To get your online store or landing page promotion in front of an audience, set up your advertisement campaign. Most people will not find you by chance. Despite what the Field of Dreams may have led Kevin Costner fans to believe, the phrase “if you build it, they will come” does not apply to online marketing. The next step of the game, and the most effective way to grow your online business, is to build an email list of interested prospects.

This task can seem daunting, especially if you start with no one in your database. It is possible to get a large number of subscribers in a shorter time frame than years. If you want to grow your email list quickly, here are some easy steps to follow.

Email is not dead, despite what some people say. It is still one of the best ways to reach customers online, especially for small businesses. It has been shown that this marketing channel provides some of the best returns on investment compared to other marketing channels.

Email is an effective marketing tool because it is relatively inexpensive, easy to use, and can reach a large audience. It’s straightforward, predictable, affordable, and easy to use. By sending regular emails, you can develop relationships with your customers that will encourage them to do repeat business with you.

But first—you need to start building that email list. So let’s get started.

What Is an Email List?

An email list is a collection of individual email addresses that you have permission to send email marketing campaigns, generally stored within an email service provider. An email list can provide you with a group of people who have given you permission to contact them via email, allowing you to send marketing content, special offers, and other information directly to their inboxes.

Users may choose to opt into an e-commerce email list for several reasons, including but not limited to:

Learning more about a company;
Receiving relevant offers;
Getting updates about product launches;
Claiming a discount code;
Getting access to a lead magnet;
And more.

What are the benefits for e-commerce marketers of having users sign up for their email list?

Why Build an Email List?

Is it because everybody’s doing it?

The answer is both yes and no—for at least two reasons:

Not everybody is doing it right.
If everybody’s doing the same thing, you need to do something else to stand out.

The most important reason to build an email list is that not everyone who visits your site is ready to buy from you.

Prospects occupy different positions in the buyer’s journey. Some people are already familiar with your products, while others only learned about your company today.

You can use your well-segmented email list of high-quality leads to persuade prospects at each stage of your sales funnel.

Additionally, you can create more space to turn subscribers into buyers and buyers into regular customers.

There are many ways to do this wrong, but only a few ways to do it right. And that’s what we’re covering in the next chapter.

5 Steps to Build Your Email List from Scratch

Step 1. Get an Email Marketing Tool

Before you can create a list of subscribers, you need to sign up for an email marketing service, like ActiveCampaign, Campaign Monitor, or Mailchimp. There are many software programs available that can help you build and send emails to your customers as well as collect and organize your email list. These tools have low initial costs and offer free plans or trials to get started.

After you select a tool, you should learn how to use it. What are some of the first steps you’ll want to take when using a new platform?

Create Your First List(s) – You can organize the emails you collect into groups called “lists.” To start out, you may want to create a “Master” list where you can put all email addresses, a “Customers” list for people who have already bought from you, and a “Prospects” list for people who have shown interest but haven’t yet made a purchase.
Import Any Existing Contacts – If you already have some emails that you want to add to your new database, now would be the time to do so. You can set up your existing email contacts in a spreadsheet to import them all in one go. Remember, these are folks who need to have expressly agreed to receive emails from you per privacy laws.

Step 2. Create an Offer You Can Exchange for Email Addresses

Now that you have a tool to collect email addresses, you need to figure out how to convince prospective customers to give you their emails. This is the most important part of the process.

The standard way to do this is to have a “Subscribe” button on your website’s homepage or blog and have visitors enter their email addresses. Ever filled out one of those things just for fun? No, thank you. Most visitors are not interested in giving up their email addresses for no reason.

An email address is a way for someone to be contacted privately. Most people will be more careful about which website they choose to type out their personal information on. The only way to get what you want is to offer something of value in return.

Think about what you can offer potential customers that will make them want to sign up for your email list. Developing the right strategy will help you build an email list quicker in the future.

Step 3. Build a Landing Page, Popup, or Sticky Bar to Collect Emails

After you have collected a few emails, you will need to create a landing page or popup to continue collecting emails for your list. The spaces where you present your offer and request that customers give you their contact information will be crucial.

Landing pages are great if you have a juicy offer that needs some explanation (like a free resource).
Popups are perfect for short and to-the-point offers (like discounts or coupons).
Sticky bars are good for adding onto the top or bottom parts of your existing storefront or website for quick offers (again, think discounts, coupons, newsletters).

You can easily create a landing page or popup using Unbounce. You don’t have to know HTML or CSS to use our lead-generation templates. Just customize the template using our drag-and-drop builder to match your brand and offer.

Step 4. Advertise Your Email-Gated Offer

Now all you need to do is bring visitors to your offer. There are a few different ways to set up an offer, depending on what type of offer you want to set up…

If you are already receiving a lot of web traffic, you can set up a popup or sticky bar to help draw attention to your promotion. You can set Unbounce to show up on any high-traffic page of your website, including your homepage.

Step 5. Start Sending Regular Emails to Your List

Once you start promoting your offer, you should start receiving emails from people who are interested. You don’t need to wait to reach a specific number of subscribers before you start sending emails. Having a personal relationship with your initial subscribers and getting feedback from them on what types of emails they would like to see from your brand is a better approach. Developing an email strategy that your audience will respond to as it grows is essential.

You should set up automatic email nurturing for new subscribers and promotional emails on a regular basis. It is more likely that your list will be active and engaged if you are consistent.

List Building Best Practices

In the previous section, we talked about the importance of building an email list, as well as 15 ways you can go about doing so today.

This chapter contains five list-building practices that will allow you to get more subscribers and higher conversions.

1. Segmentation Strategies for E-Commerce

i. Get More Information from Visitors with Multistep Campaigns

It’s a challenge many marketers face…

There is more to gaining visitors than just their names and email addresses.

You are aware that more input fields mean fewer conversions.

One way to increase the amount of visitor information you collect without adversely affecting conversions is to use a “Multistep Popup.”

Here’s how it works:

You start by asking for a website visitor’s basic information, such as their name and email address.

After the visitor enters their details, you can ask follow-up questions about their gender, interest(s), age, and more, to get more information about them.

ESPs still capture the names and email addresses of those who exit on the following step(s).

Pretty clever, eh?

ii. Pre-Segment New Subscribers Based on Website Behavior

You can personalize your popups for visitors who view certain product categories.

If you, for example, sell both men’s and women’s clothing, you can create two campaigns, each targeting a different gender.

One for men And one for women

You can even add a hidden field to each campaign to send the gender to your email service provider (ESP) without having to ask visitors for it.

2. Targeting Rules to Capture the Right Visitors With Relevant Information

i. Use Geo-Targeting for Custom On-Site Messages

Tailor your popup message to each individual visitor to increase the likelihood of them providing their email address.

. Geo-targeting allows you to target visitors from a specific geographical area using a very specific message.

ii. Customize for Mobile Users

Many marketers are avoiding collecting email addresses on mobile devices because they are afraid that Google will penalize them for hurting the user experience.

If you use mobile popups correctly, you don’t need to worry.

The goal, with mobile users, is to create device-specific email popups, including:

Fewer input fields;
Removing images;
Reducing font size; and
Creating a compelling teaser. (More on that shortly.)

You need to make sure that each line of text is important enough to be included on the form since there is limited space.

3. Split Test for Higher Conversion Rates

You know the importance of testing your advertising efforts.

So it is not surprising that you need to test your popups.

But what should you test?

It is important for marketers to test colors, incentives, headlines, and timing.

4. Designing a Stunning, High-Converting Popup

i. Match Your Popup with Your Site’s Design

If you’re using popups to collect email addresses on your website, you’ll want to make sure they match the overall design of your site.

A great way to find colors for your popup is to use a color palette like Adobe Color.

Upload a screenshot of your website or the page you want to add a popup to in order to discover which colors appear in the screenshot. You can use the colors that go well with your site’s design in your popup.

ii. Experiment with New Shapes to Capture Attention

Did you know that the content of a popup does not have to be restricted to the box?

Try out different shapes to make your popups stand out more and grab people’s attention. If you want your popups to be noticed, make them unique.

Luckily, creating rectangular popups is just as easy as creating square popups. After creating images in various shapes, add them as floating images to your popup.

This popup design showcases more product images by having them in different shapes around the edges, without covering any of the copy.

When you have your customers’ email addresses, you can keep them updated on your latest products, landing page promos, and store news.