Email marketing is one of the oldest yet most effective techniques of reaching out to people with a significant ROI rate. One of the reasons why people still consider email marketing and recommend it to everyone.
If you are starting your online business or are looking to make freelancing your side hustle, you must be looking to build an email list. Well, you are at the right place because here we have included everything you need to know and do in order to build the perfect email list that can help you reach out to the right audience.
Know Why You Want to Build an Email List
Depending on what you do, you will have a different reason why you wish to build an email list. For an online store, the reason will be to reach out to potential or existing customers, for a freelancer, it might be to offer services, for a blogger the reason would be to reach out to their audience and let them know whenever there is a new blog uploaded on the website. Find your reason why you need to reach out to an audience and this will help you in the next steps.

Give Incentives (Freebies)
Now that you know why you are creating an email list, you have to design an incentive that your target audience might require. This incentive will be a bait or a free product that your target market will find beneficial and consider giving you their email address.
If you simply design a pop-up on your website that asks for someone’s email address, the reader may not sign in because they know you are going to spam them. But if you offer them, say, a free ebook that includes information that is useful for them, they will consider signing in.
Pro Tip
Your freebie should be aligned with your services so that you can put a CTA in that freebie and get them to become your customer.
Build a Landing Page About Your Freebie
A landing page will be important for you to basically let your audience know what you are offering in the freebie. They need to know what they are getting to actually get the freebie. Nobody is going to sign up for a freebie that they are not sure about.
Create a good landing page that lets the reader know what you are covering in the freebie and how it is going to benefit them. Make pointers that are customer-centric and focus precisely on the reader’s benefits.
You can create this landing page on your own website or you can create one in an email marketing tool that you will be getting. This takes me to the next point.
Invest in an Email Marketing Tool
You need to invest in a good email marketing tool. Since you will be sending emails to hundreds of people and that too frequently (i am hoping at least twice a month), sending it individually to everyone might not be the right option.
Even if you are just starting out and have no subscribers for now, using the free version but still investing in an email marketing tool is highly recommended. With email marketing tools you get everything sorted out. From the landing page to newsletter templates and the data analysis of how your emails are doing, everything shall be accessible to you.
Promote Your Freebie
Now that you have everything sorted out and you have created a freebie that is ready to be sent to your subscribers, it’s time to let people know that you have a freebie in store for them.
- You can promote your freebie on your website, create pop-up messages, promote it on social media platforms, and even personally send it to your friends and family if you want.
- What you can also do is add the freebie link to your email signature and every time you send an email to someone, they will get the link to your freebie which they can then consider subscribing to.
- Another effective way to create a CTA that will work in your favour would be to add the link or exit pop-up message on your about us page on your website. People who usually consider checking the about us page of a website are interested in your services and getting a freebie is one offer that they will most likely take advantage of, giving you the opportunity to expand your email list.

Parting Words
That’s it. You have everything ready, now you just have to wait for people to sign in and get access to your freebie. After that, you will be sending them newsletters that will let them know how and why your products and services are beneficial for them.
In order to use this email list efficiently in your favour to grow your business, you need to learn email marketing so that you are clear with the basics of email marketing. You can take this email marketing services course and start learning. The course will introduce you to email marketing and prepare you to write emails that will significantly grow your business.