Growing your network is essential for running a successful business, and while you may think the best way to do that is through LinkedIn and social media sites, there’s always a risk of your followers or connections, or even your account, suddenly vanishing one day. But, fret not, there’s always a better way to grow your network and make sure your business reaches enough prospects.
Social Media Networking isn’t Ideal for Business
It’s easy to get caught up in just how many connections you may have on LinkedIn, followers on X or Instagram, or even subscribers on YouTube, but sadly, the truth of the matter is, while you may have thousands upon thousands of social media connections or followers, they don’t always translate to customers or buyers. For one, you can never have enough contact details for your followers on social media to properly turn them into prospects.
For example, you’ve probably spent countless hours gathering a large number of connections on LinkedIn, attending networking meetings, trying to remember people’s names to send them a connect request later, and researching heaps of people to connect with them. Now, let’s imagine one day, lady luck isn’t in your favour and LinkedIn shuts your account, or you get hacked, or lose your information somehow. In the blink of an eye, now the pool of prospects you have built up is gone. Luckily, there’s an easy remedy for this, and it just so happens to be the oldest trick in the modern marketing book: email marketing lists!
Email Marketing is the Way to Go For Advertising Your Business
The roots of email marketing have been around for as long as merchants have been trading goods. The concept is simple: send people something that tells them about what you can do for them or what product they can buy. Over a thousand years ago, they used hand-bills and tacked-up notices, a few hundred years ago, it was sending out flyers and cards, before the days of the internet, it was advertising through mail, and since the dawn of the internet, these ideas carried over to email marketing lists.
The beauty of email marketing is that those contacts you have are there for the long term. Unlike LinkedIn, you can directly involve those people and shamelessly market to them in a way that feels more organic and natural. So, the first step you want to do is export all your contacts, whether from LinkedIn, X, Instagram, or the like and get them on a spreadsheet or computer to start building your list.
How Do I Build My Email Marketing List?
- Segment Your Email List
There’s nothing harder than trying to communicate with a large blob of people in one list. This is why you need to segment your email marketing list members into different categories based on business type, how often they open your emails, priority, etc. Thankfully, there are tools that can help with this like eWeber, Mailchimp, and HubSpot. These tools can help you relay different messages to different categories of prospects, as sending everyone the same message all the time isn’t ideal for getting the best bang for your buck when it comes to your email list. - Resend to Non-opens
There’s nothing more frustrating than having your text left on read, but the business version of that is your marketing email not getting opened. Now, you can’t take it personally and most of the time, it’s not about the quality of your emails, but the number one reason people don’t open emails is that they get a TON of them every day.
So, what do you do? Just send it again! It’s a sacrilege to double-text someone who doesn’t respond to you, but in the world of marketing, there’s no shame in double-emailing. Again, using eWeber, Mailchimp, or Hubspot, you can create an on-the-fly segment to resend an email to people who haven’t opened the first version you sent out. A good trick is to also slightly change it so it doesn’t appear identical. Sometimes, the subject line just isn’t catchy enough and this is especially important for mail software like Gmail that stacks up emails, so changing the subject line is a good indicator that “Hey, this is a totally different email!” - Survey Your People
You have to know your customers, and if you’re targeting a specific group of people, then it’s paramount that you get to know them a little bit better. Luckily, surveys don’t just work on the street, but in emails too. Asking questions and getting answers has been, and will always be the very backbone of marketing, and there’s nothing easier than using surveys to get as many answers to your questions as possible. Use your surveys to figure out what informs your potential customers’ buying habits, what they look for in a product or service, or simply what’s missing that they need. You can even supercharge those survey results by sending your surveys to the people that you know open your emails. How do you know that? Look at your stats! - Give People Exclusives
Members of something will always want to feel special, and that’s no different for your email marketing list. Have some special treats and rewards that are for their eyes only, and you have to make sure people outside of your mailing list can’t get it. This can include early access, special services, exclusive products, coupons, codes, etc. Make your mailing list members feel loved and they will want to continue receiving your emails.
How Do I Get People on My Mailing List?
There are several ways to directly get people on your mailing list. The most authentic way is to message and ask them directly. This can be done through LinkedIn or any social media platform. It may seem like a ton of work contacting this many people individually, but their value on your email list will far exceed their value as a follower, connect, or a subscriber. The truth is, they are more guaranteed to read your stuff in their email than they will as a follower reading your posts whilst endlessly scrolling through thousands of posts.
A slightly trickier but just as effective method of getting people on your mailing list is through lead magnets. A lead magnet can be something as simple as a free sample or as challenging as a competition. You would be surprised just how many people will give up their email addresses if they know they are entering a competition for something valuable. Here at Yeseo, we have run several successful competitions that garnered a lot of leads over the years.
For example, we took one local business’s marketing list from around 1,000 people up to 25,000 people, mostly through competitions. At first, we gave away big rewards like holidays, but people seem to think a big prize is more likely to be a scam. So, we started giving out smaller rewards like 3D-printed models, adding 3,500-4,000 new people to the email list, and now we run those competitions three to four times a year.
Now, the trick to competition rewards is giving your audience something that they truly would want. If you’re in the food gadget business, then you want to give away an actual kitchen tool like a knife or kitchen set because that’s the niche you’re after and the category of people you’re selling to. On the other hand, if you make your reward too broad, your competition may end up on competition websites where thousands of people go and an infinitesimally small percentage of them could become a client or customer.
Takeaway
Overall, while social media marketing may seem like all the talk these days, it’s best to get people off your platforms and into your email list. At the end of the day, your prospects have far greater value reading your advertising emails than being another number in your follower or subscriber list. Once your network is on your email list, it’s as easy as pie to divide them, survey them, and lure them in with prizes, exclusives, and rewards.
Last Updated on December 20, 2024
