Why You Should Start Building an Email List Right Away in 2024

Are you putting off building an email list on your website and need some motivation? The benefits of building an email list are too great to ignore. An email list can have a mind-blowing impact on your website’s traffic and revenue. Don’t wait.

In this article, we’ll share the top reasons why this is the year you should start building an email list right away.

What Exactly Is an Email List?

An email list is simply a list of emails that your website has collected. This mailing list is used to send out emails.

In other words, you can use your email list to send out new blog posts, business announcements, and to sell your products or services.

Should You Buy an Email List?

It may seem tempting, but buying an email list is never a good idea.

People will probably mark your email as spam if they didn’t sign up for your list. Plus, it’s not always likely they’re interested in your products if they’ve never been to your website.

It’s not only legal but also ethical to only send emails to people who actually agreed to get emails from you.

In the end, you rarely get what you pay for when you buy an email list.

Benefits of Building an Email List

So, a lot of business owners and bloggers who are just starting out don’t realize how important an email list actually is.

The power of email lists is in the numbers. According to OptinMonster, email marketing sees a 4300% average return on investment (ROI) for businesses in the US.

To get started creating a simple form and email list right away, read our tutorial on how to create a simple contact form in WordPress.

Here are some other strong reasons why building an email list is so important:

Let’s take a closer look into each of these benefits of building an email list.

1. You’ll Easily Get Messages to Customers

According to Radicati Group, the estimated number of email users has reached over 4.25 billion. That’s more than half of the planet.

In addition, studies show at least 91% of consumers check their email at least once a day. You can go days without checking your social media. These numbers are part of why building an email list is a no-brainer for smart businesses.

When you send an email, your words are delivered directly to someone’s inbox.

However, due to the nature of social media, your customer is much more likely to miss your update in their feed.

This shows why email lists are important and much more effective at getting your message in front of your customer than social media.

2. Get Visitors to Return

It’s a scary but true fact:

More than 70% of people leaving your website never return. For proof, just take a look at your Google Analytics and check out the percentage of new vs returning visitors.

And your visitors are valuable. Out of all the websites in the world, they’ve ended up on yours.

What you don’t want is miss the chance to turn a casual web surfer into an avid fan who visits your site all the time.

People are much more likely to come back to your website when they see an email in their inbox from you. Invite them back with another great post, a well-written announcement, or a special sale.

3. Email Is Personal

Don’t you feel more interested in an email that starts by using your name?

Consumers love this.

Personalization helps your email marketing go from average to great. Don’t lose revenue by ignoring personalization. Check out our sister site’s article with eCommerce personalization examples to help lift your sales.

Of course, you can personalize your messages to your email list with email marketing services like Constant Contact and Drip.

In addition, email is very direct. Every person on your list gets an email the same way they get a piece of mail. It’s so different from seeing a message in a newsfeed as they scroll by.

Also, just the act of receiving an email is personal. For example, people get emails from your business in the very same inbox they get emails from their parents.

4. Huge Companies Love Email Lists

Take a lesson from the digital marketing playbook of the biggest brands in the world. They spend tons of money on campaigns just to get people to sign up for their email list.

For example, just think about the last website you visited to buy things like clothes, shoes or jewelry. Chances are, they asked for your email.

These big brands are smart to use social media to build an email list on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others. They focus so much energy on building their email lists because they’ve seen amazing results.

They know that email lists are super valuable and building an email list helps boost sales. Big name companies understand that email lists are fantastic long-term investments that have high returns for low costs.

Even the social media companies themselves know how important it is to send messages to their email lists:

5. You Own Your Email List

Except for your website, your email list is the only thing you have control over when it comes to your online business.

For instance, you may have thousands of followers on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, but those followers actually belong to those companies.

However, one of the biggest benefits of building an email list is that your list is all yours.

Of course, you can’t control when a social media platform changes its policies. Those changes can influence your campaigns. Getting complete control over your subscriber list and focusing on building your email list is a smart business move.

6. You’ll Make More Money

Imagine that each one of your website visitors is a lead. Doesn’t it make sense to ask for their info so you can follow-up with them?

You already know they’re interested in your niche since they’re on your site.

Because of this, subscribers are much more likely to become buyers. Since these people joined your email list from your site, you know they’re already very interested in what you’re offering.

Your subscribers put in the work to hear from you!

Also, since the average ROI on email marketing is 4300%, it ends up being incredibly inexpensive.

7. Email Builds Trust

Sending emails to your customer builds trust between you and them.

When people read an email from you, they do it in the privacy of their inbox. It’s not a message displayed publicly on a billboard or a social media timeline.

It’s a more intimate way to communicate.

Because email lists let customers feel like they’re part of a private conversation, they can ask you questions confidently by replying to your message. This helps build trust and a connection.

How Do I Grow My Email List?

There are tons of ways to grow your email list. Some of the most popular ways include:

• Lead Magnets. A lead magnet is an incentive you offer your visitors in exchange for their email address. This could be a free PDF, an eBook, a report, and more.
• Giveaways. Ask for someone’s email address as an entry. You can give them extra entries when they share your giveaway on social media.
• Create A Poll. Get your visitors engaged and ask for their email in the process. WPForms lets you easily create engaging content with our Surveys and Polls Addon. To start setting up polls on your website, read our guide on good poll questions to ask on your forms for better feedback.
• Offer a Coupon. An excellent option if you’re an eCommerce business. Not to mention coupons are a popular example of a lead magnet.
• Make a Custom Form. When you make a custom form, you’ll get a lot more useful information about your subscribers. Check out our guide to making a SendFox WordPress form to see how easy it is to add fields to a standard subscription form.
• Use a Good Theme. When your website looks good and offers a great user experience, people will be more willing to stick around and return. Make sure to check out the best WordPress themes for small business and the best minimalist WordPress themes.
• Use a Popup Email Optin Form. A popup is a great way to grow your list quickly. See this list of the best WordPress popup plugins to get started.

Which ways you choose to grow your email list will depend on the type of business you have.

Lead magnets are popular because they can be used for almost anything. Ready to get more email subscribers and build a massive email list? Check out this great guide on effective lead magnets to grow your email list on our sister site.

How Do I Choose the Best Email Marketing Service?

A lot of people ask how big should my email list be. Some believe that the bigger, the better.

However, while you want to focus on list building and grow your list to as many people as possible, your email list’s engagement is much more important. That’s why having a great email marketing service is so important.

There are a lot of awesome email marketing providers. Since it’s a competitive field, a lot of them offer great features for low-cost.

Two of our favorites that we’ve used and recommend are:

Constant Constant

Constant Contact is easily the very best email marketing service provider for all sizes of websites and businesses. They’re one of the largest email marketing services in the world for good reason. You can:

• Manage Your Subscribers
• Send and Track Emails
• View Analytics
• Split Test Campaigns
• Target Subscribers
• Connect to WPForms

Constant Contact is great because it’s free to try. You can setup your email list and start getting email addresses during your trial. By the end of the free period, your list will already be paying for itself.

It’s optional to pay after the trial period, so setup and start building your email list with Constant Contact today.

Drip

Drip is a fantastic email marketing service provider. It lets you:

• Manage Your Subscribers
• Send and Track Emails
• View Detailed Reports
• Target Subscribers
• Setup Shareable Workflows and Email Automation
• Integrate with WPForms

Not to mention, Drip lets you setup and start building an email list with a free plan that holds up to 100 emails. It’s a popular choice for many website owners. You can start building your email list with Drip right away.

Both Constant Contact and Drip work with WPForms. Get started setting up a simple contact form right now to see how it works.

What About Free Email Marketing Services?

We always recommend using a professional email marketing service like Constant Contact or Drip over free ones. It’s true that they cost money, but above all they’re an investment in your business with big returns.

In addition, here are some of the downsides of using some free platforms:

• You can’t target specific subscribers by interests or demographics.
• There’s no reporting so you can’t tell which percentage of subscribers opened your email and visited your site.
• There’s little email customization.
• If you try to move to a paid service, your users will have to re-confirm. Many won’t, so you’ll lose subscribers.
• You can’t run A/B split tests to see which subject line and offers work best for your users.

In conclusion, it’s just a smart move to use a professional email marketing service like Constant Contact or Drip if you’re a small business or entrepreneur.

For more options, see our roundup of the best email marketing services.

And there you have it! You now know why building an email list right away is so important for your website and business. You can easily get visitors to keeping coming back to your site and grow your revenue.

Next, Learn About Online Form Statistics

If you’re looking to grow your small business online, be sure to check out these unbelievable online form statistics and facts that can help you get the results you want.

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