Email is still king. Best methods for building an email list

Social media has an alluring appeal because it seems like EVERYBODY is on some form of social media these days. However, email marketing should not be overlooked. There are 4 billion email accounts world wide and that number continues to grow. Meanwhile, organic reach on Facebook is plummeting, currently at 6%. Click through rates are even lower. Email open rates are around 30% with click through rates of 3% or higher.

The campaign monitor created a 2-part formula to build an email marketing list. That formula is:
A valuable incentive + simple subscribe opportunities = large email list

Valuable incentives include great content, discounts and offers, early access & exclusive promotions, giveaways & contents. To ensure great content, use extensive research if you are writing blogs or other informative materials, telling a story (which can increase engagement by 300%), and making things visual. For discounts and offers, first order discounts and free or express shipping upgrade are great ways to entice sign-ups. Early access to new products or special discounts and promotions are also great incentives.

Simple subscribe opportunities exist through social bars, which essentially sits over the top of content you’ve shared via your social media channels and promotes signing up to your email list, popups, Facebook subscribe forms,  Twitter lead generation cards (a link that allows you to gather new customer email addresses directly within a Tweet), a feature box (call to action section on the homepage), subscribe landing page, subscribe tickbox on signup and checkout forms, or a slider.

Finally, the document shares a few tools to be used to build the email list. They include SumoMe, Zapier, Hello Bar, etc.

The most difficult part of email marketing is to create great content and subject lines that will stand out from other emails. Many have separate email accounts for their shopping emails. This means that your email is competing with a host of other retailer and brands in the inbox. Competition is fierce and there is always a discount.

Source: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/guides/build-email-list/