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Building Your Foundation: Email List Builder and Its Impact

Email List Builder

Building email lists has a lot of benefits for your business; they serve as a direct and personalized channel for communication with your potential and current customers. They enable you to engage and retain your audience, allowing you to build long-term relationships and improve customer loyalty.

Owning and maintaining your own email list also gives you control over valuable customer data, which is something you miss out on when you use social media platforms. This ensures a degree of autonomy in your marketing efforts.

There are many other benefits to email lists we want to cover before we discuss what an email list builder is, and how you can use one. We’re also going to recommend effective methods of building a high-quality subscriber base.

And before we wrap up this topic, we’re going to show you how you can nitro-boost your lead magnet game to grow your email lists!


Table of Contents


The Importance of Building Email Lists

Let’s look at the key benefits of building an email list for your business.

  • It’s affordable: Social media platforms are getting expensive, and running an ad campaign can cause a serious dent in your marketing budget. In comparison, having your own database of interested customers and sending regular emails to your email list is much more budget-friendly!
  • Personalization: You can’t personalize online ads, and Facebook posts the way you can personalize an email. You can even create automated sequences to continue to engage with customers using event or time-based triggers.
  • Customer data is valuable: If you grow an email list yourself, you will appreciate how valuable it is for your business. You won’t be at the mercy of a third-party platform — this email list is yours!
  • Customer retention: Email marketing is not just for acquiring new customers but also for retaining existing ones. You can segment your lists and send content to keep your current customers engaged, which can lead to repeated sales and brand loyalty.
  • Data insights: Your email list provides valuable data about your audience’s preferences, behaviors, and demographics. This data can inform not only your email marketing strategies but also your overall marketing and business decisions.
  • Compliance: Building and maintaining an email list ensures you are complying with email marketing regulations, such as CAN-SPAM or GDPR, by obtaining explicit consent from subscribers and giving them the ability to opt out at any time.

As you can see, email lists are more than useful and represent the single most valuable asset your email marketing business owns. Without a viable email list, your efforts will be futile, so building one is an essential step in the right direction.

Before we dive into what an email list builder is, let’s understand what NOT to do when building an email list.


Never Use Shortcuts to Build Email Lists!

If you’re thinking: “Hey, there are so many sellers out there offering ready-made email lists, can’t I just buy one of those? It’s a headstart, and I can avoid the expense/effort of building my own email list.”

No judgment here — everyone loves a good shortcut. Not all shortcuts are good, though!

We’re going to list all the reasons why you should NEVER buy an email list:

  1. Your sender reputation will take a hit: If you’re cold-emailing subscribers from a list you bought online, it can result in a lot of spam complaints. A combination of spam reports, unsubscribe requests, and unopened emails can catch the attention of ESPs, who will then assign you a poor sender score, bringing down your email sender reputation. This increases the likelihood of your emails getting caught by the spam filter in the future.
  2. Low-quality customers: Communicating with a customer who may not be looking for your product or service at all results in poor engagement and poorer conversions. If you mail thousands of uninterested people, that’s also a waste of your email marketing budget.
  3. You could get blacklisted: If some of your recipients decide to report you to privacy regulation agencies, there might be legal repercussions. You should be aware that the authorities enforcing GDPR in Europe and the CAN-SPAM Act in the US are diligent. Additionally, both Gmail and Yahoo are turning up the heat on spammers!
  4. Your brand gets tarnished: In the long run, you will severely damage your brand image by sending out irrelevant emails to people on a list you purchased online. You will lose the trust of potential buyers, and your company may never fully recover.
  5. Your ESP could remove you from their platform: By indulging in shady emailing practices, you also affect the reputation of the ESP you work with. With enough complaints, you will be swiftly booted off the platform. For example, at Campaign Refinery, we do NOT allow cold emailing, and that’s not all — we only accept validated email lists. Elite rules bring us elite results!

All of these are great reasons to avoid buying email lists online, even if they’re allegedly opted-in. Organic is the only way to go! But is using an email list builder a good way to go about it? Let’s take a look!


What Is an Email List Builder?

An email list builder is a tool or software that you can use to create a list of email addresses for marketing purposes. These tools include features like opt-in forms, pop-ups, landing pages, and lead magnets to capture the contact information of individuals who have shown interest in a company’s products or services.

Here are some key aspects of list builders:

  • Data collection: Email list builders primarily help collect email addresses from various sources. This includes website sign-up forms, social media, and other lead-generation activities.
  • Automation: Automation is a crucial feature of list builders. It allows you to set up automated email sequences, trigger emails based on subscriber behavior (like abandoned cart emails), and schedule email campaigns in advance.
  • Email segmentation: Many email list-building tools offer methods to segment your email list into separate groups based on different criteria, such as demographics, purchase history, or engagement levels.
  • Analytics: Email list makers also offer analytical tools that allow you to track the performance of your email campaigns. You can monitor open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and other metrics to assess the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts.
  • Software integration: Email list builders often integrate with other marketing tools and customer relationship management (CRM) systems to streamline your marketing efforts and data management.

Before you pick a third-party tool to build your list, analyze your specific needs, the expected size of your email list, and what features you need to achieve your marketing goals. Depending on the tool, you can expect to spend anywhere between $15 to $250 a month. Different tools offer different value propositions — while some allow you to add and email unlimited subscribers, some cap the amount of contacts you can email in the basic plan. Similarly, some tools charge for the pageviews they give you, offering between 25,000 to 100,000 pageviews a month. Many vendors also offer custom pricing options.


List building is a crucial aspect of email marketing, and there are different types of list builder tools available to help you collect, manage, and grow your email lists.

Here are some of the popular types of email list builders:

ToolFunction
Opt-in forms on your websiteThese forms allow interested customers to sign up conveniently. Different tools allow you to customize the form in different visual formats and even target user actions.
Landing pageCreating a custom landing page with built-in forms is a great way to capture data on potential customers. 
Exit-intent popupsThese tools display a popup when a visitor is about to leave your site, encouraging them to subscribe.
Lead magnetsThis is a great way to acquire customers! You can offer lead magnets like eBooks, case studies, or even exclusive videos to readers in exchange for their email addresses.
Referral and affiliate programsSome tools let you create a referral program and encourage customers to refer others in exchange for rewards.
Contests and signups on social mediaThis tool helps you run contests and promotions on social media platforms using email signups.
CRM softwareMany CRM tools, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho, offer list-building capabilities and contact management.
Types of email list builders

When choosing list-building tools, consider your specific needs, budget, and the compatibility of the tool with your email marketing platform.


Growing Your Email Lists Organically

Building an email list is a critical aspect of email marketing, and there are several effective strategies to do so.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on the best way to grow your email list:

  1. Create great content: Before you start collecting email addresses, make sure you have valuable content to offer your audience. Ensure your content is something you would enjoy reading yourself!
  2. Choose a good email platform: Select a reputable email marketing platform that will help build your list. At Campaign Refinery, besides accessing excellent features and tools, our clients also enjoy the benefits of excellent sender reputation and market-dominating deliverability rates. This combined with automated list cleaning, which gets rid of all invalid emails, spam traps, and dormant email IDs, our clients have seen their email lists flourish!
  3. Optimize your website for conversions: Place sign-up forms prominently on your website, including landing pages, blog posts, and the homepage. Don’t be shy to use eye-catching CTA buttons and compelling copy — and remember to always confirm their opt-ins!
  4. Write amazing CTAs: This tip is the key to success. Give your readers a strong reason to sign up with you.
  5. Incentivize: Encourage people to join your email list by offering exclusive discounts, free guides, or access to resources. Hosting contests and giveaways is also a great way to collect email addresses.
  6. Use pop-up forms sparingly: Pop-up forms can effectively capture email addresses, but they can also be annoying if overused. Use them strategically and set them to appear after a specific user interaction or time on the website.
  7. Create high-value lead magnets: Develop high-quality lead magnets like eBooks, whitepapers, or exclusive video content that requires users to enter their email addresses for access.
  8. Optimize your email campaigns: Once you have subscribers, ensure your email campaigns are engaging and valuable. Consistently provide content that meets subscribers’ expectations and needs, and use segmentation to send targeted emails.
  9. Analysis: Constantly study your campaign metrics to see what works and what doesn’t. Email marketing is a constant learning process, so keep tweaking your methodologies!

Remember, building a high-quality email list takes time and ongoing effort. It’s important to focus on providing value to your subscribers, as this will result in a more engaged and responsive email list over time.


Lead Magnets: The Secret to Building Lists Quickly

Lead magnets are an effective method for building high-quality email lists because they offer something valuable to potential subscribers in exchange for their contact information.

Now, what if we told you there was a way to drive 800% more clicks to your lead magnet? We’ve been in the business long enough to know how subscribers think, and we want to share all our learnings with you through the Lead Magnet Multiplier course, which comes with a price tag of:

$0. No kidding!

There is one condition, though. You must complete the 4 mini-courses in 7 days if you want to retain access to the Lead Magnet Multiplier program. If you ask us, it won’t even take you that long to finish, once you dive into the course!

Apply here to sign up for the Lead Magnet Multiplier course.

See you on our list!

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