111 Highly Effective Email List Building Techniques

Why Email List Building?

Email Marketing is a low-cost high impact way of marketing to audience at large. We are all flooded with promotional emails on a daily basis. Some talk about ‘how to lose weight in 10 days’ and some promote their products and services and ask for our email ids beneath the pop up box. Whether you are running an e-commerce store, a blog or a services website, email is a great way to stay in touch with your current customers and one of the effective ways to convert prospect to a full-time client. And, in order to run an effective email marketing campaign you need an accurate and updated email list. Once the customer’s’ email id reaches our database, it creates a huge network of prospects and leads, which is a great source of revenue by itself.

Some Mind Boggling Statistics:

As of 2016, there are close to 4.35 billion email accounts with the figures expected to reach 5.60 billion by the year 2019. 247 billion emails are sent on a daily basis! This equates to one email sent after every 0.00000035 seconds. Nearly 61% of people preferred to receive promotional emails weekly, and 28% of them want them even more frequently. 55% of organizations generate more than 10% of sales through their dynamic email marketing tactics. The above figures are a testimony that email marketing has gigantic outreach which will never fade away. At least not in the near future! The bigger your email list is, the more your reach will be. And increasing the email frequency will get you more customers. But there is a catch. How to build an email list without subscribers? Well…that’s what this blog post is all about. Email is said to be one of the top converting channels for most businesses. “Email list building is the lifeblood of any online business. If you focus on how to build your list early, you’ll set yourself up for success in the future,” says Chris Badgett.

So without wasting any further time, let’s move on to those techniques that will help you understand email list building fundamentals.

1. Create Unique Email Content:

There are plenty of forms to create engaging content like podcasts, webinars etc. but pertaining to emails, I’d say cleverly put images and info-graphics steal the show. You content needs to be attractive and attention grabbing for people to stay subscribed and forward your emails to their colleagues, friends and family that aren’t already on your email list. . For example, ‘Attend our webinar and get lessons on traffic building to convert your Ecommerce store into a profit-making powerhouse’ OR ‘Become a trained psychologist in just 8 months by downloading our online course’. If you want people to subscribe to your newsletters/e-books/downloadable guides/webinars you need to make sure you’re mentioning all benefits and incentives of the particular good/service in that small pop-up box.

2. Encourage Your Current Subscribers to share and Forward Your Email:

You can use this tactic by including social sharing buttons and an ‘Email to a Friend’ CTA button in your marketing emails. It’s an amazing way to gain access to brand new networks, friends and colleagues who might sign up for your services and add up to your increasing list of subscribers. Believe it or not, asking your current subscribers to forward the email to their friends/colleagues etc is an effective way to build your email list.

3. Offer Them Special Treatment:

We humans just love special treatment! Don’t we? You can effectively take advantage of this human need by offering visitors early access to your products/services or limited-offer promotions in return for subscribing. “Offer something to your readers that they can only get access to as an email subscriber”, says Adam Connell in The 5 Pillars of Rapid Email List Growth. But focus on the barriers of taking advantages of the treatment too.Michael from copytactics aptly describes how his offer of a ticket to las vegas drone show didn’t do as good to get subscribers as his offer of a free drone. “One of the main reasons our latest one did so well is because literally anyone in our audience could take advantage of the prize” he says. Another evergreen way to build a robust email list is through offering a popup content upgrade, as suggested with great visuals by Robbie Richards.

4. Upgrade for Mobile:

Not optimizing for mobile subscribers is one the common mistakes email marketers make. If your mailer is not compatible for mobile, you could be missing out on nearly 35% of your market! According to a press release by Google, nearly 75% of Gmail’s 1 billion users access their accounts on mobile devices. “If your emails aren’t optimized for viewing on these devices, you’re potentially missing out on a huge number of clicks” says Tim from prontomarketing. However, customization for mobile devices have to be done but in a more informed and sensible way. Because many-a-times, your popups and opt-in forms don’t get optimized along with the texts and images.

5. Express your Gratitude to New Subscribers:

“The “Thank You” page is the most underestimated page in your entire site”, says Aman from emailfield.com The moment a visitor submits the sign-up form, display a ‘Thank You’ page making it clear how much you value and respect the subscriber’s willingness to hand over his or her email address. This is also the time to inform visitors that their subscription was successful and to reinforce the advantages of signing up. Most importantly, this is the time to direct subscribers to check their inbox for their confirmation email.

6. Conduct Webinars:

“Webinars grab people’s attention, and the audience can ask questions. At the end of the webinar, people can take immediate action and buy your product—if you provide the call-to-action” says Marc guberti. Webinars are a highly effective way to obtain email addresses as well as other lead information, By conducting webinars, you may not only acquire a bunch of contacts, but also get a substantial amount of high quality leads. These leads are also signing up to spend an hour with you, so the chance to create and build networks is huge! Another great technique is to co-host a webinar with a fellow colleague or business partner to gain access to their contacts. “We all respond to different modalities. That’s why it’s important that you provide multiple opportunities for your target audience,” says Amy. Webinar is a great way to add subscribers to a list quickly. Join.me is an awesome conference call tool and will let you run your webinars smoothly and seamlessly.

7. Renew your Stale Email List:

Do you have a list that might be outdated? Create an interactive opt-in message and send it to your old list encouraging contacts who wish to re-opt- in and promising to delete all contacts who don’t respond. Though it might seem contradictory to remove subscribers from your email list in order to grow them, emailing only engaged contacts could improve your deliverability and visibility.

8. Make It Easy to Subscribe:

“Your content is only as good as your ability to capture an audience’s attention”. And once you have your audience’s attention, make it a smooth sail to subscribe. Starting with the confirmation email if you’re using double opt-in (ideally you should be) and then make the option available just about every time you interact with a subscriber. This means having an Unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email you send in addition to including an Unsubscribe function as part of subscriber accounts or preferences. This would give the subscriber an option for easy exit.

9. Make It ‘Difficult’ to Unsubscribe:

At the same time that you make it easy to subscribe, you should make it “difficult” to unsubscribe by giving your subscribers every reason not to. This means keeping them occupied and feeling rewarded and appreciated by constant interaction.

10. Guarantee Privacy:

If you collect personal information on your website, make sure you have a policy that tells people what you do with that information. Between a solid policy and an email service, you should gain your visitors trust. Speaking of assurances, the Thank You page is also the place to guarantee subscribers of your commitment to their privacy. If you have a privacy policy (I sure hope you do), include a link to it. It would reiterate the fact that you respect people’s privacies.

11. Using Hellobar:

You can use hello bars to collect emails, direct customers to some other desired webpage, let them know about a running offer. Applications are endless (well, not really. That’s broadly all that you can do).

12. Negative intent popups:

Negative intent popups are so effective, almost all marketers have started to use them. The reason for their immense success is that the negative CTA feel so personal and detrimental that most people just refuse to click on that. Here is an example for you: The reason for their immense success is that the negative CTA feel so personal and detrimental that most people just refuse to click on that.

13. Progress bar popup:

This tool exploits the zeigarnik effect. The above principle suggests that people remember the incomplete or unfinished tasks the most. You put a half buffered progress bar in the face of the customer and ask him to follow just one more step to finish the unfinished business, be it anything like downloading an ebook, signing up for a webinar etc. Here is an example for you:

14. Action oriented pop up:

These pop ups eliminate any uncertainty whatsoever that the visitor might have because it is as clear as it can get. Check out this example: Make sure the language of the embedded CTA matches with the offer.

15. Footer opt in:

A footer opt in form can be placed at the bottom of either your website’s blog posts or the home-screen.

16. Sidebar form:

A sidebar form can be integrated in your website’s blog posts or on the homepage itself. Sidebar form is commonly regarded as the most looked part of a page.

17. Welcome gate opt in:

A full screen welcome gate opt in that appears on the screen as a visitor lands on your website helps build list tremendously.

18. Scroll box installation:

Scroll box is a type of opt in form that appears on the screen gently from a corner when the visitor has scrolled enough. Its appearance is smoother than a pop up box while being equally, if not more, attention grabbing.

19. Feature box:

Feature box sits on top of the screen in the place of a header and has a lead magnet integrated for the visitor as an offer. This is usually put because it is less annoying than an exit intent pop up opt in form.

20. Content upgrade:

As per most of the successful email marketers, a blog post should always be coupled with a content upgrade. A content upgrade is an additional or parallel piece of information that gets sent to the visitors email address once he feeds in his email id.

21. Restricted content:

Giving a preview to the visitor of the content on offer and then asking him to give their email ID works well. One of the reasons for this is totally psychological. When a visitor sees that a piece of content is restricted or is only accessible to the members, it creates a desire to see the content no matter what. Most visitors go as far as paying to get access to restricted content, let alone the simple task of handing over their email address. If you have created a piece of content you think is valuable, you can restrict the access. Only the visitors who feed in their email address can have the access to it. But keep in mind that the content the visitor gets access to after handing over his email id is worth his efforts otherwise you run the risk of losing credibility.

22. Offering Ebook:

One of the many lead magnets that you can use to get the email of your visitor. Ebooks are easy to create but more importantly they appear very valuable, sometimes even more valuable than the content it keeps.

23. Offering Checklist:

A checklist is a lead magnet that is comparatively easier to create. They are highly sought after because of their compactness and practicality. It is usually offered in the blog posts as content upgrade.

24. Offering Market research:

Another lead magnet usually used by b2b establishments and marketers is market research papers. Nothing can establish you as an influencer in your niche market if you are in b2b setting as well research papers can do.

25. Free trial softwares:

If you offer a free trial of your software or any other service you offer for that matter, make it mandatory for a visitor to feed in his email address before the download activity begins.

26. At checkout:

For an e-commerce website, a mandatory email sign up at the time of checkout is probably the best way to collect leads. Amazon’s one step checkout is the best example.

27. Spreadsheets:

It is probably the cheapest to create out of all the lead magnets. No designing is required neither the need to convert it into a different format.

28. Survey or quiz:

A fun quiz or survey is another fun lead magnet. The email address of the participant can be taken after the completion of the quiz so as to send the result of the quiz straight to his email account. The nature if the quiz has to be decided by you as per the image of your business. But since we are talking about surveys or quiz, its generally assumed that b2c establishments or whacky websites use them. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Have a look below…

29. Courses designed for email:

A course designed specifically to be deployed via emails. Such course is broken down in small pieces and sent periodically, say weekly or every fortnight. People look forward to such content and happily sign up for them.

30. Cheat sheet:

Cheat-sheets are ultra short lead magnets that most often are about a very specific topic. If you are offering such cheat-sheets in the opt in box, make sure that it evokes curiosity. Either blur the text or give just a sneak peak.

31. Toolkits:

Most businesses can assemble a toolkit to be offered in exchange for the visitors contact information.

32. A video demo:

If you have an audio visual content as an offer but it is paid, you can let the visitor have a sneak peak in exchange for email. A demo clip of the video can be gated to obtain the email.

33. Custom designed form:

Using a custom designed form in the header or footer works well. Adding your photo in the form works as a trust builder and also as a branding tool.

34. Use short copy:

With fleeting attention span of the reader, you don’t want to force him into reading through piles of copy before arriving at the offer. Use less words to arrive at the point. Replace words with picture if you can for a more impactful interaction. Check out this from Dropbox….

35. Using color contrast to highlight CTA button:

You want your CTA button to stand out from all the words and pictures. Try out every possible contrasting color combination to make it harder for the visitor to miss it. Take this landing page as example. Notice how the whole background is green, the button is colored orange and it just sticks out from the rest of the elements…

36. Brand specific logo:

Even if people can’t seem to remember the brand name sometimes, however one thing they never forget is a brand specific logo. Take this for instance…

37. Simplify page design:

Cluttering the page with lots of graphics and carousals is a recipe for disaster. You might think that it will impress the visitor which it may. But out of all the hotchpotch the true purpose of the page gets lost. All the design elements take the attention of the visitor away from the main proposition. Such terrible landing page…

38. Client testimonials:

People seldom believe when you praise your own self. After all , in the virtual world of internet, who isnt an expert! You can find a guru in just about every nook and cranny shouting on his website about how superior his product or service. Because of this, most people have developed thick skins.

Have a look…

39. Case studies:

Case studies are one notch up than the customer testimonials. Part of the reason is because while getting a one liner testimonial seems easier, writing down the whole case study about the client with his approval is a slightly tough nut. For instance….

40. Social media shares:

Social media share buttons that show the real time share statistics is a bit risky gamble. Unless you have a strong social media following and shares in not less than hundreds, putting on social share buttons with share stats can backfire.

41. Number of downloads:

Another great social proof tool that can be coupled with any kind of downloadable lead magnet is the total number of downloads so fat. But again if the number is not even in moderate thousands, it can backfire. Try incorporating the number right above the sign up form.

42. Number of users:

How many users have benefited by the deal you are throwing? Mention that specific number. This social proofing tool requires solid number as it directly correlates to your number of customers. If you are a fresh incorporation, avoid it if the number of users is not significantly large.

43. Trust seals:

These are well known symbols that assure people that their personal information is safe. The best way to incorporate them in your landing page is via a/b testing. Optimizing About Me page for conversions.

44. Tell a story:

“You have to sell through emotions and justify with logic” says legendary copywriter. The visitor who checks out your about me wants to know more about you. Don’t squander this chance to emotionally entice him. Your about me section should tell a story. Don’t squander this chance to emotionally entice him. Your about me section should tell a story.

45. Social proof:

Let your reader know how many corporations you have worked with, the number of satisfied customers you have had or how many people you have helped. Just keep the conversation fun and not bragging.

46. Facebook landing page:

Putting a landing page on your facebook page can shoot up the average number of leads you get every month. Since your landing page is on facebook, a trust factor is already established. Also, since the visitor doesn’t have to be redirected to another webpage to register, the whole process becomes easier.

47. Landing page on guest posts:

Guest posting is a great link building activity and can also establish you as the authority in your niche. Although you cant really put a whole opt in box in the author bio at the bottom of the guest post, however you can put a link in the author bio that redirects the reader to your landing page.

48. Coming soon landing page:

The sooner you start collecting your potential customers emails, the better. It not only acts as a market validation for you, but also gives you the advantage of having a great list that you can start contacting as soon as the product gets launched.

49. Hub page:

A hub page is a collection of all the resources that you have made available to the visitors. It includes all your lead magnets, tools, marketing reports etc. When you create a hub page, you link it to the landing page so that navigation becomes quicker and effortless. What it essentially does is that it propels the visitor to click on at least one lead magnet that appeal to him.

50. Headlines for landing pages

Headline is the most important part of the landing page copy. If the headline is weak, nothing can be done to convert the visitor because he won’t read any further and no matter how juicy your offer is, if the reader is not even getting to know it, there is no question about conversion. So here are few solid tips to work upon your landing page headlines.

51. Clear headline:

The headlines must convey exactly what is being offered. There shouldn’t be no scope for ambiguity. A confused visitor is not a converting visitor.

52. Relevant headlines:

The headline has to be relevant to the rest of the body of the copy in some way or the other. Clickbaits are highly discouraged.

53. Empathising headlines:

Empathising means feeling the emotions of the visitor. If your offer solves a problem of the visitor, which it most certainly should, you have your visitor hooked. Even a benefit can be included in the headline. Just shy away from mentioning features. (A non empathising headline example image)

Types of headlines

There are few standard types of headlines which have proven to bring maximum visitor traction. Try and build your headlines on their structure.

1. To the point headline:

Nothing witty, nothing humorous. This type of headline directly describes your offer in plain simple terms. These type of headlines work best when you have to be brief or if your target audience don’t care about your cleverness. It is recommended to check your buyer persona.

2. How to headline:

This headline attempts to answer the question that relates to the problem of the visitor. These are simple and highly lucrative.

3. Numbered headline:

Numbered headlines are such a breeze to read and visualise. When you provide a number to the visitor, he knows what’s in the store for him. A numbered headline is appealing to the visitor for two reasons. One, he knows exactly how long it would take him to read the material. And second, he comes to know whether it’d be worth reading or not.

4. Action headline:

This type of headline is commanding in nature. It tells the visitor the course of action that is expected from him to be taken.

54. Optimizing landing page copy body.

1. Using customer testimonials:

Use testimonials like there is no tomorrow. There is no better persuading copy than somebody else praising your brand or product instead of you blowing your own trumpet. Shortlist the top 5 testimonials that you have from strong clients and put them in vertical order. If placing horizontally, put the most attractive one on the extreme left because our reading habits are developed as such that we focus most on the extreme left.

2. Benefit, not the feature:

Nobody cares about the features of your product, so ditch them completely unless you are in a b2b industry. Understand that b2c is all about benefit and emotions so direct all the focus on that.

3. Simple short sentences:

Brevity is your buddy. Our attention span is so short that most of the legendary copywriters refrain from using paragraph. Joe Sugarman used to write one liner sentences as the copy body. Whenever you feel that your copy is getting boring or lengthy, stop for a minute and think about your buyer’s personal. How technically sound is he? Does your copy offer him an answer that he’d understand in one glance.

4. No mechanical writing style:

Write your copy in active voice. Why? Because thats what we all use in our day to day conversations. Youll never here anybody say ” 2500 new subscribers are collected by me being more humanly” Try this “I collected 2500 new subscribers when I wrote like a human being”.

5. Use numbers:

Using numbers make your copy more specific. And more specificity directly correlates to increased credibility. When you say that your copy generated 25.7% greater audience engagement, you sound more credible than saying that your copy kicked arse. Hence, put as much relevant stats to back up your claims.

6. Include a call to action:

A call to action can be anything. It can be a call to download the lead magnet, or to register for a webinar, or to sign up for the newsletters. But if there is no call to action, then a landing page has lost its purpose. It can even be to just redirect the visitor on another page. But a strong call to action should be there.

55. A/B testing the copy:

Your conversions depend upon the performance of your copy. And no copy is perfect. The perfect copy is one that elicits the most engagement from the audience. That’s why it’s essential that a sound copy is tested both for words and for images. But refrain from testing both together. That way you woudn’t be able to judge whether it was the words or the images or the positioning of both that generated or failed to generate results.

56. Collect Emails of all those who enquire:

There is another way to renew your stale email list: collecting emails addresses of all those who call or drop in to enquire about your message through whichever means. “You should also collect emails from every prospect who calls in to your business. One smart way to do this is to incentivize your receptionist to make sure she collects email addresses from new callers”.

57. Commenting on popular blogs:

Commenting on the blogs of the influencers helps in relationship building. This can prove immensely beneficial in the long run. Most influencers put lots of efforts to put together a great piece of content hence they appreciate more when you show that you care in the comments section. It’s relatively much easier to get noticed by the influencers in the comments as compared to a personal email which seldom get responded to. A quick tip to stand out from other commenters is to invest less in flattery and more in value addition. Add to the knowledge supplied in the post. Indulge in meaningful discussions, or pose logical questions.

58. Podcasts:

There are two ways to promote content through podcast. Either associate with an influencer’s podcast, or create your own. Audio podcasts have become a thing of the past. Videos are the name of the game. Create a youtube channel and start posting podcasts on the topic that you are most fluent with.

59. Exchanging lead magnets:

Find the influencers who are in the same industry as you are and make a list of them. Now pitch them about exchanging lead magnets. How it works is that you share their lead magnets with your list and they share your content with their list. There are enormous benefits of doing this. The most prominent benefit is that your content get exposed to hoards of fresh people who are interested in your product. The same goes for the competitor. Both of you end up widening your circles of influence. Its basically free publicity.

60. Join webinars:

Make a list of all the influencers in your parallel domain i.e. the ones who are not your direct competitors but those who offer ancillary products that go hand in hand with yours. Offer them to have you as a part of their webinars where you’d put few good words about their product and add value in the discussion in exchange for nothing. Yes, you read it right. Absolutely nothing. You won’t even promote your product. What’s the point of doing the webinar then, you might ask. It’s done just to put your name out there before their audience. Once they know you, they’ll organically find you and your content and your product.

61. Color schemes tips for landing page:

Gender specific color schemes: The industries that target women see blue, purple and green as the most appealing color to them while the least appealing colors can be orange brown and gray.

1. Women specific website images.

Businesses that offer men specific products or services mostly use black, blue and green for the reason that they offer maximum psychological engagement. However the colors to shy away from are purple, brown and orange.

2. Men specific website images.

3. Age specific color schemes:

If your business caters to youth and kids, the most preferred colors to be used can be the ones that elicit warmth and energy. Fews examples for such colors can be red, orange, pink and yellow. If your industry caters to the adults, prefer cool and soothing colors such as blue and shades of red. The hue that comes out on top is blue. When in doubt, make use of this one.

4. Emotion specific schemes:

Let us discuss the psychological effects of each individual hue. Red : evokes feelings of passion. On the other hand, it also creates feelings of anger and danger. Not only that but it also triggers appetite. Orange: it is associated with happiness and liveliness. Its a very energetic color that draws attention easily. Yellow: this hue correlates with hope and positivity. It is advised to use this in moderation as excess yellow cause irritation to the eyes Green: thats the color of your dollar bill. It correlates to prosperity and growth Blue: when in doubt use blue. Its a color prefered by professionals as it indicates security and trust. Also it is the most favored hue by many. You’ll see many logos designed with blue Purple: this color is associated with the emotions such as prosperity, creativity and richness. Many of its taints show luxury. Image optimisation for landing pages

62. Checking image and page performance:

Check for image and page performance. The slower your image and page loads, the greater will be the number of visitors who will bail out of your page without looking at the offer. It is detrimental because if this happens, almost all your efforts put into the headline, body copy and lead magnet goes down the drain. With Google’s Free PageSpeed Insights Tool, you can find out the amount of time your page takes to load. If it comes as more than required, we know that we have to start working on the load time.

63. Image dimensions:

Most people upload images with exorbitant dimensions like 2000×2000. Its not only disastrous for the loading time for the page but also the performance of the page in real-time. Some people upload images with above mentioned dimensions and use html to drive down the size. The limitation with this approach is that the page is still loading with the same size of the image taking exactly the same time. Your images do not need to be having pixels more than 1000 anytime as most websites are only 900-1200 pixels wide on a screen.

64. Image optimization for social media:

Your uploaded image should be compatible with the major social media platforms. Infographic: Standard image pixels for social media sharing Facebook: images greater than 600×315 Twitter: images greater than 60×60 Linkedin: images less than or equal to 180×110

65. Setting image alts:

Almost all content management systems allow alt text to be set for images. One of the benefits of doing that is SEO optimisation. Web crawlers interpret the text and allow you to rank higher. Refrain from stuffing alt text with irrelevant keywords and put only image relevant text. Also, search engines are not concerned with words beyond 16 words so it doesnt matter how many words you stuff as alt text.

66. Advertising campaign for landing pages:

Well designed ad campaign for landing pages will get you some much sought after traffic. Start by writing a test ad campaign. Write the body copy and insert images relevant to the lead magnet that you are offering. The lead magnet will work as bait for the reader. Another thing to do is to insert a tracking pixel on your landing page to keep a track of how many times it was opened. Next is to run the campaign on the platform that it was designed for. One very important thing to remember is to kill the campaigns that fail to generate the desired results and design another one.

67. Redirecting traffic from blog:

Your blog has ample of content and an already existent stream of traffic. Why not utilize that? Place the links of your landing pages in the blog posts that seem to have been doing great and enjoy free organic traffic to your post.

Promoting landing page on social media:

68. Pinning landing page in twitter account:

Twitter allows you to pin one of your tweets on top of all other tweets, regardless of how old it is. Pin one of your tweets on top of your profile with a link to your landing page. This way all the visitors who visit your profile will see the tweet and hopefully click the link in the tweet, if the tweet is couple with a brief catchy copy or picture.

69. Posting landing page on social media daily:

Your social media audience is significant regardless of its size. When you post your landing page, remember that some of them are going to click on the link and visit the page no matter what. One thing to keep in mind is not to bombard your pages with only the links of landing pages. Share valuable content everyday and once in a day, share the landing page. You wont even irk the audience and still get the job done.

70. Landing page link as post scriptum:

Surprisingly, not many people utilise a well written P.S. to promote their landing page. And due to this, they miss out on a great opportunity to organically promote their landing page. Include the link of your landing page as a post scriptum. P.S. are not only read carefully, they are also as important as headlines.

71. Re-targeting visitors:

The visitors who have visited your content page but havent reached the thank you page need to be retargeted. Have you ever seen the ad of a product that you just visited the website of appear again and again on the websites you are visiting even after closing the initial website. Youll see such ads mostly on the right hand side of many blogs and websites such as youtube aka banner ads. You place a retargeting pixel on the landing page. When the visitor visits your page, he is recognised as the audience and cookie gets saved to his system. And as they visit other websites, your ad gets shown on the banner space of those websites.

72. Best content type to attract visitors:

You bundle your lead magnets with the content. A visitor visits your site only through the type of content that you have created. The web is filled to the brim with content. How are you going to attract the customer with yours? By creating the type of content that is most appealing to the visitor. And what exactly are they?

• Info-graphics:

Info-graphics were once sureshot way to get viral. But its importance has not died down. People love info-graphic because of its quality of being brief, to the point, and easy to read. Creating info-graphics need the services of a good graphic designer, which sometimes can be expensive. Hence evaluate how much you are willing to spend on these and go for it.

• Memes:

Memes are so popular because of their property of evoking light hearted humour. Everyone wants to share something with their network that squeezes a couple of chuckles out during a heavy day. Now these are not supposed to be posted on your official blog independently. They can be integrated in a textual post or can be independently shared on micro-blogging sites such as twitter or linkedin.

• Videos:

The world of videos is vast. There are so many kinds of videos that you can create. There can be explainer videos, touring videos, opinionated videos, review videos, the list is really long. To say the least, a video can be created of anything that can be presented in a textual format. The reason the videos work is because they present the information in a succinct manner while not demanding much of the viewers attention.

• Guides:

A well constructed guide require an expert with an in depth knowledge about the topic he is covering. So if you think that you are an expert in your niche, you should really go for them. People on the web are hungry to learn things from experts. Just make sure that the videos are not longer than 2-3 minutes as they are the once that get clicked the most.

73. Book reviews:

Almost every niche has its share of books. Doing a book review establishes you as the thought leader in your domain. A good book review should consist of

• An introduction of the concept
• An introduction of the author
• A summary of the contents of the book
• Key takeaway
• The good, the bad and the frills
• Conclusion or recommendation

74. Opinion posts:

Opinion posts are fundamentally different than typical blog posts because of their nature. While a typical blog post is a calculated take on a subject, an opinion post is a more intense and unfiltered version of your perception towards that same subject. The most important thing to remember here is not to be too frequent with such posts. Also, refrain from demeaning somebody through your opinions. However, mild criticism can do.

75. Product reviews:

Just like a book review, a product review is your first hand experience of the product, be it a tangible one or a service. Product review has the potential to establish you as the influencer in your industry. A sound product review includes the features of the product, your experience of using it, the good, the bad and the frills. Frills are the unnecessary features that the product can do without.

76. How-to posts:

How to posts are the most popular piece of content because they give a straight answer to a common problem that your target audience might have. In order to make great how-to posts, you’ll have to ponder over and list out the problems that your audience faces on a day to day basis. It can be common or specific in nature. Lets say you offer antivirus software products. A common problem for your audience can be infection prone usb devices when used in other systems. One how-to post for this can be… “How to protect your USB device while using in an unprotected system”.

77. Long form listicles:

Long form listicles are everywhere on internet. As a matter of fact, you are reading one right now by the name “120 email list building techniques” The secret of such immense success of long form lists is that the reader is lured to find all the answers or factors related to their query at one place. Also, creating a long form listicle is not a child’s play. You have to have a deep understanding about the subject that you are writing about otherwise you won’t be able to create one. Hence while creating a listicle one should always write as a thought leader in the respective domain.

78. Interviews:

Another very efficient way to build audience and visitors. Your domain must have influencers and thought leaders. Make a list of all of them. Now send a pitch about your agenda of interviewing them and add a couple of sample questions that they can expect to be asked. Also ask them about the kind of questions that they would be most interested to answer. By taking interview, you are not only taking a share of the influencer’s audience but also sharing your own audience with him. Hence in a way it’s like a win-win situation.

79. Participate in forums:

Participating in forums bring you in front of a varied audience that only help you garner visitors but also feedback. Reddit is one amazing forum but you have to be cautious there as other participants can downvote you for advertising. Your content promotion has to be subtle and to the point. Reddit is a universal forum. However you can find influential forum in your niche too. It just requires a quick google search.

80. Publishing ebook on amazon:

Amazon is another one of the biggest marketplaces, yet underutilised. You can publish a book on a subject on amazon and price is zilch or a little more than that and accrue a ton of visitors. Utilise the first introductory page of the ebook to embed a link to your website or landing page like below.

81. Existing content in different format:

You have a blog post that has done exceptionally well than other blogs. Why not convert it in the form of a small video to get more traction? If it is a video of yours that has done well, convert it in the form of slideshow. The benefit of repackaging is that your audience gets a new stimulus and it attracts newer audience who feels the repackaging to be more appealing.

82. Existing content in lead magnets:

Having many lead magnets never hurts. You can repackage your old blog posts, videos, slideshows and reports, ebooks in the form of lead magnets. You can embed such lead magnets with the posts which aren’t performing as great and then remarket them through your social media channels highlighting the lead magnet.

83. Social sharing made easy:

If someone finds a piece of your content easy to share, it is great for you if he could share it immediately among his social media network. Here are some ways to make your content easy to share.

84. Native social sharing buttons:

Make sure there are social sharing buttons either floating or embedded in the content feed. Having such buttons make it easy for the visitor to share the content. Without them, it would be a time consuming work that nobody would do.

85. Click-to-tweet buttons:

Such buttons make it easier for the visitor to share only an important quote or a piece of statistic with their twitter group.

86. Use high definition media:

High definition media always attracts better than words. When you choose images, make sure that they not only are in sync with your content but are high in quality. A piece of content with HD media garners more attention and gets shared.

87. Use image sharer:

Image sharer enables the visitor to share the images and graphics in your content.

88. Start a newsletter:

Starting a newsletter is a great way to engage the already existing audience while creating opportunities to attract new audience. People are always ready to read information related to their topic of interest and when you provide them that, you increase the likelihood of your newsletter being shared. If you don’t want to leave it on chances, you can always have a small CTA asking the receiver to share the newsletter.

89. Positioning your privacy policy:

Either put your privacy policy in the subscription box or place the subscription form next to the privacy policy.

90. Collaborate with other newsletter publishers:

Find out some influencers in your ancillary industry with awesome newsletter and collaborate with them. Mention their names and quotes by them in your newsletter and request them to do the same, thus leveraging each other’s audience.

91. Optimising for search engine rankings:

A high rank on the Google SERP will draw visitors to your page thereby increasing your chances to collect email addresses ultimately building your email list. In order to rank high on Google, you have to tweak content just enough so as to target all relevant and latent keywords.

92. Syndication of content:

Syndication of content is when you reach out to popular websites and forums, and pitch them to publish your old content. Old content can be anything, like blog posts, videos, slideshows etc. This is another way to reach out to a wider audience.

93. Video Syndication:

Similar to content syndication, video syndication can also help you expand your reach. You can use video submission sites besides YouTube like Vimeo etc and submit your optimized videos with a pop-up or a link to your sign up form requesting people to subscribe to your video. This will eventually lead to many new opt-ins over time.

94. Experiment with new social media platforms:

Not every social media channel is suitable for every business.You have to be on a lookout for what works best for your venture and what doesn’t. Which platform garners maximum engagement for you and which does not? It took television more than 38 years to build an audience of 50 million. Instagram did it in less than two years. Keep an eye on the new platforms coming out. You never know which one booms.

95. Join groups:

Join facebook and reddit groups to build an alliance with like minded people and for getting a straight unfiltered feedback about your content. Be an active part of a relevant group and drive traffic from there. this will help you build your own audience base.

96. Guest posting:

Guest posting drives traffic in a massive scale. List out the websites which get the kind of traffic that you’d like to channelise on your website. Now pitch the moderators of them the idea of guest posting with 20 of your most luring titles of the guest posts. Remember, The success of your blogger outreach program depends on how tactically you approach the moderators of these websites. Just remember to include a sign up form in your author byline requesting readers to subscribe to your content.

97. Offering a testimonial:

If you have a slight audience in your niche, you can pitch parallel entrepreneurs to offer a testimonial. Virtually nobody says no to a sincere testimonial. When you get featured on their websites, you enjoy their free traffic.

98. Website redesign:

A website with a premium look attracts more visitors and lowers bounce rate. A visitor friendly website evokes trust factor in the visitor. How to create visitor friendly website? Invest in a good web designer. And keep a/b testing.

99. Participating in offline events:

Every niche has offline event where the influencers come and participate with the audience and others on the similar industry. hosting meetups through meetup.com is also a method of building local audience, no matter how small. You can easily have access to email addresses of all those who express an interest to attend the event.

100. Start host blogging:

When you flip guest blogging in the other direction, you get host blogging. In host blogging, you either invite or accept invitation of other people to put posts on your blog. this gives you a great chance to collect email addresses of all those people without much effort.

101. Do a giveaway:

Who doesn’t like free stuff? When you do a giveaway, even the people who were initially not interested would jump in and participate. You can ask them to subscribe and promise that a certain number of lucky subscribers would get the giveaway award. If you liked this blog and wanted to find out how to use your new email list on a company newsletter, check out this blog by our friends at Lucidica.

102. Promote Sign ups on Social Media:

Create compelling images for Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and include opt-ins. Now Facebook even lets you have a CTA (Call to Action) on your business profile page.

103. Collect email addresses in-store:

If you have a brick and mortar store, you can collect email addresses of all those who visit your outlet regardless of whether they purchase your goods/services or not. You can then create an email campaign just for those walk-in customers to gain their trust and confidence and turn them into full-time customers.

104. Create campaigns on Facebook:

Facebook ads are an excellent way to promote your business/brand to targeted audience. While setting up campaign simply choose the objective as ‘Lead Generation’ and Facebook has its own pre-determined template or format for the ad. All you need to do is create necessary ad text, images etc and include a sign-up form with necessary fields to collect details. It’s easy to set up and also cost-effective way to generate new leads.

105. Content Upgrade Pop-ups:

Believe it or not, pop-ups work. This is how they look like. You can use them in your blogs, e-books etc. have a look here:

105. Use Referrals and turn Customers into Evangelists:

Referrals can take your email list to an altogether different level. People love sharing good things that add value to their life especially if there is an incentive for them to do so. Dropbox managed to get 4 million sign-ups in 1.5 years by adopting a simple referral program. See below:

106. Include a Subscribe link in your email signature:

Another relatively effortless way to build your email list. If you are a business owner, you knowingly or unknowingly send out number of emails everyday to your partners, clients etc for meetings, discussions, complaints etc from your official email address. Simply include a subscribe link to your email signature. You can ask everyone else in your team to replicate this and include the link in their respective signatures. This will help you grow your email list without having to do anything much.

108. Create a Viral Loop to your Opt-in pages:

This strategy entails using an upsell tactic once the person has opted-in. For instance you offer a free checklist to creating an awesome facebook marketing campaign to all those who opt-in. Now once the person has opted-in by providing their email address, you can then lead them to another page which offers them a free toolkit to creating a facebook campaign that guarantees conversions by simply including a ‘Share with Friend’ CTA. Pretty simple right?

109. Have opt-in forms ‘Above the Fold’:

Last but certainly not the least, always have opt-in forms above the fold in your content so that the user does not need to scroll further down. This improves visibility.

110. Hook Them with a Scroll Box:

Visitors often tend to overlook the sign up button that you might have on the page. But Scroll boxes are pop-ups that appear once the user has scrolled down a certain length of the content. Such pop-ups are bound to catch the user’s attention. Make it worth their while by including a strong message with a good Call To Action so they can take the desired action.

111. Optimize You YouTube Videos:

One of the most effective yet often overlooked ways to build subscribers is to optimize Youtube videos by using annotations. You can include link with a CTA. These links can either be to another related video on your playlist or to a webpage with some additional information on the topic.

Conclusion:

We have seen that list building is not just an activity but a result of cumulative efforts put in a lot of aspects, like everything mentioned above.

And I hope that after this exhaustive list, your list will proliferate like never before. Let me know what you liked out of this whole list. Is there anything that requires an additional explanation? I’d love to help you out.