8 Tactics to Follow to Build Up Your Email List When Starting a Business

Building an email list is one of the most effective ways to connect with your audience on a deeper level, nurture leads, and drive sales. When you start a business, you need to have a strong email list to ensure long-term success.

Your email list is responsible for the number of people interested in your product and service.

In this article, we’ll dive deeper into learning more about which tactics to follow to build your email list when starting a business.

1. Create a high-value lead magnet

A high-value lead magnet is one of the greatest ways to attract potential customers and build a strong email list. Therefore, here are our tips on how you can create an irresistible lead magnet for your business:

1. Identify the pain points of your target audience: What are their biggest challenges? What solutions are they actively searching for? How can your product or service help them?
2. Choose the right lead magnet format: Choose a format that aligns with your expertise and audience preferences. This involves eBooks, guides, checklists & cheat sheets, templates, webinars, case studies, and reports. One good example is offering a “14-day email marketing template pack” as a lead magnet.
3. Create actionable content: Above all, it’s important to make your lead magnet easy to consume. Make it actionable, such as giving steps your audience can immediately implement. Next, make it visually appealing by using easy-to-read formats and a clean design. Last but not least, make sure it’s premium and exclusive.

A high-value lead magnet is a game-changer for building up your email list and converting leads into customers. By addressing key problems, choosing the right format, and optimizing your promotion strategy, you can easily attract and retain high-quality leads for your new business.

2. Optimize your website with signup forms

Signup forms are a powerful tool for capturing leads, growing your email list, and converting visitors to customers. However, in order to be effective, you need to strategically place and optimize your user experience. Here’s how you can manage to do so:

1. Place your sign-up forms strategically: The area where you place your sign-up forms plays a key role in conversion rates. The best area to do so is in the header or hero section to make sure users see it without scrolling. Also, you can consider placing them in blog posts to capture engaged readers and even dedicated landing pages.
2. Offer a clear value proposition: Users will sign up when they see immediate benefits. Highlight the benefits such as “Get weekly growth tips & exclusive templates” and use action-oriented CTAs.
3. Conduct A/B testing: Test different headlines & CTAs to see which one works best, and try various designs & colors. Make sure that you optimize them for form length such as test one-field vs multi-field forms.
4. Follow up with emails: Send out a welcome email right after signing up to show appreciation and segment your email list based on user interests.

Sign-up forms are crucial when it comes to attracting users and high-converting signup forms can easily boost lead generation and drive business growth.

3. Leverage social media channels

Social media channels are great ways to redirect traffic to your email list. Above all, it’s best to focus on platforms where your target audience is most active, such as:

1. LinkedIn: Best for B2B, thought leadership, and professional networking.
2. X (formerly Twitter): Great for industry news, customer support, and engaging in SaaS conversations.
3. Facebook: Useful for community building, paid ads, and long-form content.
4. Instagram & TikTok: Ideal for visual content, product tutorials, and brand storytelling.
5. YouTube: Best for in-depth tutorials, product demos, and customer testimonials.

Social media is all about interacting with users and not just broadcasting content. Therefore, if you want more traffic to be redirected to your email list, you should respond to comments & DMs, so this means you’re engaging with your audience in real-time.

4. Offer exclusive content

Providing exclusive content is an excellent way to attract leads, retain customers, and boost brand loyalty. First and foremost, your exclusive content should provide high value to your audience and align with their interests. For example:

1. Premium eBooks & White papers: In-depth guides or industry reports.
2. Exclusive Webinars & Live Q&As: Offer expert insights and real-time engagement.
3. Members-only newsletters: Share advanced tips, case studies, or industry trends.
4. Early access to features: Allows subscribers to test new tools before they are publicly released.
5. Private communities & groups: VIP Slack or Facebook groups that you can use for discussions.
6. Templates, Checklists, & Swiper files: You can provide ready-to-use resources.

For example, you can offer premium eBooks in exchange for email signups to drive up your leads. You’ll see many websites like HubSpot doing this.

5. Create persuasive CTAs on your landing pages

CTAs are the backbone of successful conversions and the whole key here is to make sure everything is visible. You don’t want to place your CTAs in areas where people will barely see them. This is definitely not a good practice and the good news is that you can drive traffic from them in many different ways.

The whole idea of creating persuasive CTAs on your landing pages is to make sure you are using action-oriented language such as strong verbs and creating a case of urgency. For example: “Download”, “Start”, “Claim”, “Try”, “ Limited”, “Now”, “Today”.

Other than that, when writing your CTA, you need to highlight the benefits involved. For example: “Start your 14-day free trial- No Credit Card Needed”.

After you’re done highlighting your benefits, it’s now time to make sure you are using contrasting colors, making your button pop against the background, and ensuring your CTA is easy to see on all devices.

6. Run giveaways and referral campaigns

Giveaways are always an excellent way to make participants refer their friends to join the giveaway. Also, they are great for growing your audience, increasing brand awareness, and driving conversions.

Giveaways should clarify what you are offering, if this reward is valuable enough to motivate participation and they must be relevant to your brand. Here are few popular types of giveaway and referral campaign:

1. Discounts: Everybody loves discounts so you won’t be doing anything wrong offering them.
2. Exclusive access or upgrades: Premium content, and early access to new features.
3. Cash rewards: Works well for financial and subscription-based services.
4. Free product or subscription: Encourages users to try your product risk-free.
5. Gift cards or partnered giveaways: Appeals to a wider audience.

Here’s a good example we came up with: “Produkto offers a free 30-day trial of their AI branding tools”.

Giveaways can be encouraged by spreading the word on social media channels. You can encourage users to like, comment & share contests, tag a friend, and even use email sign-up contests which will directly contribute to growing your subscribers list.

7. Collaborate with influencers and partners

Influencer marketing is one effective way to increase brand awareness, build trust, and drive sales. By partnering with influencers who align with your niche, you can easily get more email sign-ups. First and foremost, you need to identify which influencers you want to work with:

1. Nano-influencers (1K-10K followers): Have highly engaged and niche communities.
2. Micro-influencers (10K-100K followers): Great for targeted and cost-effective promotions.
3. Macro-influencers (100K-1M followers): Strong brand awareness with a larger reach.
4. Mega-influencers (1M+ followers): Best for global campaigns and mass exposure.

There are different influencer partnerships you can pick. For example, if you are doing giveaways, it’s best to use them for that reason and partner with them to boost engagement.

8. Host webinars

Webinars are powerful ways to educate, engage, and convert your audience while building brand authority. Regardless of whether you are launching a product, offering coaching sessions, or sharing industry insights, hosting a webinar can drive leads and sales.

You can host different webinars. Here are the most popular forms:

1. Live Q&A Sessions: Engage with attendees in real-time.
2. Panel discussions: Invite industry experts for credibility.
3. Workshops & Tutorials: Provides hands-on learning.
4. Case study webinars: Showcases customer success stories.
5. Product demos: Highlight key features and benefits.

For example: HubSpot runs live and on-demand webinars to educate users on inbound marketing.

Building a strong email list is essential for your business success

Building a strong email list is essential for the success of your business, helping you nurture leads, boost engagement, and drive conversions. By implementing these eight tactics, you can optimize your website with signup forms, create high-value lead magnets, and do much more that will help grow your audience and turn subscribers into loyal customers.

Consistency is key. It’s always a good idea to test and refine your strategies to understand what resonates best with your audience. As your email list grows, your opportunities will follow and scale your business effectively.