Do you know that building your email list manually is far better than buying one? Purchased lists can harm your email deliverability and lead to more spam complaints.
But don’t worry; I have already covered how to build an email list for free! In fact, with just a few proven methods, you can be well on your way to growing your email list for free.
Today, I will share over 30 strategies neatly organized that will help you reach your goal in no time!
Let’s dive in and discover how you can start growing your email list today!
Table of Contents
How to Build an Email List for Free
Building an email list is simpler than you think. However, it’s not as easy as searching for one on Google and copying it into your documents. Instead, it contains only a few ways, and you’ll be well on your way.
Here, I have curated over 30 proven methods, neatly organized into 3 categories, to help you reach your goal!
How to Build an Email List for Free Using Social Media
First of all, we will explore how to build email lists for free using social media. It is very easy to grow your email list through social media.
Here are the social media strategies to build your email list—
1Use CTA
Using CTA (Call to Action) is the major weapon in building email lists. The more actionable CTA you can implement, the more email addresses you will receive.
A CTA is typically a phrase or button in a marketing message that prompts the audience to take a specific action, such as “Buy Now,” “Sign Up,” or “Learn More.”’
You must be wondering how you would implement CTA in your social media profiles! Well, Here I have listed some sections where your CTA can work successfully.
- Bio
- Profile
- Pinned Post or tweets
- Group posts etc.
Placing CTA on your social media profiles is the best location to get better clicks. For example, you can add a CTA button right after bio. Or in the most engaging pinned posts or tweets.
2Post/tweet Regularly
Regularly posting or tweeting valuable content on social media helps build trust and awareness for your brand among your audiences. This consistent presence increases brand visibility and engagement over time.
As your audience becomes more familiar with your brand, you can strategically implement CTAs in your regular posts to encourage sign-ups and grow your email list.
3Activities on LinkedIn Group
Increase your involvement in LinkedIn groups. You will find numerous communities related to your industry there. Get in and engage actively to contribute valuable insights through the discussions.
As you establish your presence and garner engagement within these groups, leverage the opportunity to introduce your lead magnet strategy. Sharing your valuable resources will entice more members to join your email list.
4Create Subscriber Only Facebook Group
Facebook groups are so powerful for marketing and for building email lists. Create a private group on Facebook and set questions for the requesters who want to join. Prompt them to provide their email addresses along with their responses.
This interactive approach fosters engagement and facilitates the growth of your email list with interested and engaged members.
5Use Instagram Story
Instagram stories have become one of the most engaging mediums for reaching audiences on social media. However, the question remains: how can Instagram stories help you grow your email list?
Well, the swipe-up feature is the answer. Using the swipe-up feature, you can ask your audience to sign up for your form and receive valuable incentives in return.
Note: The swipe-up feature excludes business accounts with 10,000 or more followers.
6Answer Question on Quora
People appreciate a quality answer on Quora, more than 3,000-word articles. In Fact, in many terms, the answers from Quora frequently rank.
So, why not grab this opportunity and make this system for growing your business email list? Adding a compelling CTA with your insightful response, you can encourage users who appreciate your answer to sign up for your email list.
This approach enhances your brand’s credibility and increases the likelihood of conversion among engaged Quora users.
7Be a Guest or Start Podcast
People are leaning towards podcasts nowadays more than ever. According to the Exploding Topics, currently, 504.9 million people listen to podcasts daily.
Using podcasts to promote your business can yield significant results in growing your email list.
Whether you’re a guest on a podcast show or host your own, you can reach a broad audience and encourage listeners to take action, potentially resulting in a substantial increase in email sign-ups.
Podcasts can establish trust and generate leads by providing valuable insights and information related to your business, making them a valuable platform for email list growth.
How to Build an Email List for Free Using Website
Website is an excellent opportunity to expand your email list. You can build individual lead-generation websites or even generate emails through newsletter landing pages.
Moreover, every campaign landing page brings more than you expect emails to your list that will wow you.
Do you want to explore more exciting ways to build an email list for free using a website? Read on,
8Create a Lead Generation Website
The primary purpose of a lead generation website is to generate leads. So, wouldn’t it be undoubtedly a great idea to grow an email list?
Obviously, yes.
Create your compelling lead generation website with all the key elements required for lead generation.
Note: With a lead generation website, you can generate your email list at 2X speed.
9Create Landing Pages
Landing pages serve as single web pages designed with a clear marketing objective. They play a crucial role in acting as lead magnets, facilitating the growth of an email list through opt-in forms where visitors willingly provide their email addresses.
Strategically implement CTAs, incentives, or persuasive triggers to captivate your audience’s interest and encourage them to join your email list.
For this instance, it’s essential to explore landing page best practices and master conversion rate optimization (CRO) techniques for creating compelling lead magnet landing pages and maximizing their effectiveness.
10Gate Your Best Content
Suppose you are successfully generating visitors through your website blog content. In that case, you can use this traffic to expand your email list. Take a look at the example below, where a website popped a form when I wanted to access their full blog.
So, I simply filled out the form, thereby subscribing to their email list to read the entire blog.
This method is highly engaging for obtaining email addresses. By offering your readers valuable content, they willingly exchange their email addresses. It’s a win-win situation: they gain access to valuable content, and you grow your email list organically.
11Leverage Exit Intent Pop-ups
OptinMonster states that exit-intent pop-ups can potentially convert 2% to 4% of visitors into sales. However, there’s a common sentiment among users that exit-intent pop-ups can be intrusive and annoying while browsing websites.
The effectiveness of these pop-ups heavily relies on the content and visuals they present. If crafted with engaging and valuable content, exit-intent pop-ups can be a powerful strategy for building your email list for free.
It’s essential to balance capturing attention and providing genuine value to ensure a positive user experience.
12Create a Homepage Sign-Up Box
A homepage is the first impression visitors have of a website. Ensure your audience gets enough engaging content or elements on your homepage to stay longer.
You can also add an engaging sign-up box right there so visitors can go through the sign-up box when they visit. And if they found it sign-up worthy, they might sign up, helping you grow your email list.
It is ascertained that the first fold section is the most viewed, so put the sign-up box there for maximum impact!
13Promote Your Gated Content
Promotion is an underestimated force in driving engagement. Your website’s evergreen content, which continually attracts traffic, should be gated and actively promoted across various channels.
When your evergreen content is promoted on social media or other platforms, it gets attention and draws visitors. When they see they have to enter their email addresses to read the evergreen content, they surely will.
Without promoting your blog organically, you can gain visitors and subscribers but cannot rely on it. To maximize results, you must fuel your efforts with strategic promotion. By doing so, you can achieve the full potential of your content and attract a larger audience.
How to Build an Email List for Free From Scratch
Building an email list for free from scratch can be challenging, especially if your online store is still in the preparation phase. However, some email list-building strategies may help you grow your email list.
Now, let’s catch up on how to build an email list for free from scratch—
14Offer Discounts or Freebies to New Subscribers
Who doesn’t love freebies? Hardly no one!
Offering incentives like coupons, discounts, or free trials can be a great way to entice people. In exchange, simply ask for their email addresses by subscribing.
For example, the Q Magazine offering a free music magazine to new subscribers is a surefire way to attract music lovers.
15Run a Contest or Giveaway
Running a contest or giveaway is a great marketing approach for attracting visitors and growing your email list. A giveaway incorporating a contest can encourage participants to enter their email addresses.
The giveaway prize should be something relevant to your business and valuable but something everyone desires. Otherwise, you will end up with the giveaway with a broad, non-specific audience who may not be interested in your product or newsletter beyond the giveaway. This could lead to high unsubscribe rates post-giveaway.
So, to run a successful giveaway, ensure you have an engaging contest and relevant and valuable prizes.
16Offer Lead Magnet
Lead magnet is a powerful marketing strategy that helps marketers grow their email list.
Through a lead magnet marketing strategy, you provide valuable incentives to your audience. In exchange, they allow you to send them your marketing emails.
Lead magnet incentives can be,
- Ebooks
- Whitepaper
- Discount
- Coupon code
- Free trials/demos
- Webinar etc.
These incentives serve as valuable tools for engaging your audience and nurturing leads.
17Upsell Upcoming Product
Upselling strategy is mainly focused on boosting sales. But it also can capture email addresses while increasing your sales.
For instance, if your business is gearing up to launch a new product or service, you can promote it with a “Notify Me When Launched” button. This approach helps generate interest and anticipation and enables you to collect email addresses from interested individuals.
18Create a Newsletter
Newsletter sign-ups are a great way to grow your email list. On top of that, it is free.
In addition, apart from the best blog content, newsletters can provide various other valuable resources, such as
- Offer Update
- FAQs
- Event Update
- Upselling opportunities
- Testimonials
- Referral and more.
To capitalize on this email list growth opportunity, employ a sign-up form clearly outlining how the email addresses will be used and what subscribers can expect to receive. Maintaining transparency in your marketing efforts builds trust and rapport with your audience.
19Use Opt-in Forms
Opt-in forms are the most transparent way to collect email addresses for sending marketing emails, making your product more trustworthy.
Opt-in email marketing means asking people to willingly share their email addresses to get marketing emails. In exchange, they receive valuable offerings like free e-books, whitepapers, demos, or sign-ups.
Double opt-in is even safer because it asks for a final confirmation. Implementing a double opt-in process adds an extra layer of reliability, as it requires confirmation of the final action from the subscriber.
For additional insights into opt-in email marketing, explore the following examples,
💡5 Opt-in Email Marketing Examples and Best Practices That Drive Results
20Use a Live Chat Widget
Many businesses use live chat widgets for instant customer support. Did you know you can use them to collect email addresses?
Before starting the live chat, you can place a form for updating required information. This will help you collect the email addresses of those who are already interested in your product.
Many users find this approach a bit much, but it brings good results in the long run. Since only people engaged with your business will reach out for support, these email addresses are secretly opt-in.
21Use CRM Tools
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools help businesses efficiently manage marketing, sales, and customer service functions.
If you’re collecting email addresses from various sources like live chat widgets and opt-in forms and storing them in CSV (Comma-Separated Value) files, using Gmail alone may not suffice for handling campaigns professionally.
So it would help if you had a mailing tool.
Here are CRM tools. It integrates with your software, collects all the customer data, and automates email marketing campaigns.
Note: MailBluster stands out as the most cost-effective option to consider.
22Use Free Trial Period
If your business is service-based, this strategy perfectly fits you.
Offering a free trial option within your paid plan attracts many users who are eager to try it out. Make sure to keep the trial signup process simple—just ask for an email address.
Many users do not proceed further if they find it requires card information to start the free trials.
So, provide 30-day free trials and collect the email addresses to target and convert these leads more effectively.
Remember, they’re already interested in your product, making them more likely to convert soon.
23Include an Email Filed in Your Checkout Process
If you are running an ecommerce business, consider adding a required field in your checkout form as an email address. Customers who have already purchased from your store might return or want to know about upcoming deals, discounts, coupons, etc.
This strategy can be particularly effective, as 26.1% of marketers rely on retargeting.
Note: Additionally, you can manually integrate Mailbluster in your checkout form using Mailbluster API documentation.
24Host an Event
This is an amazing way to build an email list from scratch for free.
Host a killer event on a small scale. Ensure that the event’s objectives align with your targeted customers’ interests.
Now, create a registration form for the event and add an email address field. 😉 you got the tricks, right?
You got your email list, and your audience has gained entry to an event. In this case, to ensure compliance and permission for further communication, consider implementing double-opt-in to confirm their registration.
25Ask Personally or on the Phone
You can use this method when you provide service via phone or in person. It is especially applicable for brick-and-mortar businesses.
While providing sales service or support, after discussing the main talks, wrap up by inviting them to sign up for your newsletter. Highlight the benefits they’ll receive, such as coupon code updates, discounts, or other valuable offers that your business could provide.
This approach not only builds your email list for free but also enhances your CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score).
26Conduct a Survey
Conducting surveys is a very effective marketing strategy for understanding the behavioral psychology of your potential customers. You can also get to know the insights to improve your business.
Acknowledge your sales team to create a survey form that includes email address fields—after all, you also need to build your email list.
See, you have another option to grow your email list for free.
27Host A Webinar
Amy Porterfield is an online marketing educator. She has experienced remarkable growth in her email list, expanding it from 600 to over 250,000 through the strategic use of webinars.
Can you imagine?
Webinars can increase your brand’s visibility and significantly contribute to growing your email list. Yes, it is
simply ask for the email addresses during the webinar registration process.
Bonus Tip: you can record your webinar and use it later for opt-in email marketing.
28Run a Quiz
Using quizzes is a smart way to get people interested because this strategy makes your audience think about your business or products.
They’re effective for getting people to share their email addresses. To see their quiz results, people need to enter their email addresses. Quizzes can really help you build your email list.
29Referral Programs
Word of mouth promotions are very effective for any kind of business. But it is also a great way to expand your email list for free.
Throw some incentives to encourage referrals from family, friends, or colleagues, and ask them to start referrals by entering their email addresses.
Got the trick? You better do. 😉
30Use ‘No, Thanks’ Copy in CTAs Strategically
When it comes to asking for sign-ups or email addresses, who wouldn’t want to provide an easy way out? But let’s add a touch of sarcasm here.
A few days ago, I discovered a form from a yoga app, and I wasn’t keen on signing up for their newsletter. As I reached for the exit button, I was greeted with the copy, “No thanks, I don’t want to lose weight.” I found myself hesitating to exit the form without subscribing.
It shows that a cleverly sarcastic or humorous “no-thanks” button can catch your audience’s attention, even when they’re not initially interested in subscribing to your newsletter.
31Gamify Sign-ups
No, I am not indicating a game competition but a gamified strategy for building email lists at zero cost.
Look at the image below—it is a template of the Gamify experience designed to attract more visitors from Optimonk.
Before purchasing your product or service or right after landing on your store, you can offer your customers to spin this game by entering their email address.
This is a foolproof strategy to grow your email list effortlessly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions to enhance your understanding. If you have any other queries, please feel free to comment below, and I’ll provide the appropriate answers.
1What-is-an-Email-List?
An email list is a collection of email addresses of individuals who have opted in to receive emails from a specific organization.
2What Makes a Good Email List?
A good email list comprises relevant, engaged subscribers who have given explicit permission to receive emails, ensuring effective communication and compliance with regulations.
3Email vs. Social Media — is Email Dead?
No, Email isn’t dead.
It is a huge discussion. There’s a myth—social media has rendered email obsolete. But yet, Email can not be replaced. Its unique strengths and advantages continue to make it a vital communication tool for businesses and individuals alike.
The point is that email and social media can work collaboratively.
Learn more about email marketing vs social media marketing from the following blog—
💡 Email Marketing vs Social Media Marketing: Head-to-Head Comparison
4Why is an Email List Important?
Email lists are very important for communication and marketing processes.
Because email marketing is an effective way to connect with customers, it can generate a significantly 6x higher CTR than other marketing channels.
5Who are My Ideal Email Subscribers?
Your ideal email Subscribers are those who gave you permission to send them emails on a regular basis.
Maximize Your Reach
Congratulations!
You’ve learned over 30 practical strategies of how to build your email list for free. But now, it’s time to take it further and maximize your reach.
By implementing the techniques mentioned in this guide, you are not only growing your email list but also expanding your brand’s visibility and engagement simultaneously.
Remember, building an email list is just the first step. The magic happens when you utilize that list to connect with your audience, nurture leads, and drive conversions.
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