At the core of every email marketing campaign is an email list. Your email list is not just a list of contacts; it’s a goldmine of potential customers eagerly waiting to engage with your brand.
However, building a high-quality email list requires more than just buying contacts or hosting social media contests. If you want your list to power a real business, these worn-out tactics will not cut it.
Want to get more subscribers to your email list right away? Well, there are some insanely efficient tactics you can try out!
In this article, we’ve put together some of the best ways to reliably collect email leads. But before we get to that, let’s understand why email addresses matter.
Why Collect Email Addresses?
Email marketing continues to reign supreme as one of the most effective marketing channels. Whether it’s B2B or B2C, email marketing is at the very top of marketing channels for marketers all around. As of 2024, the number of global email users amounted to 4.48 billion users and is set to grow to 4.73 billion users by 2026. Plus, 96% of the consumers use email daily.
That’s a massive amount of people well within the reach of email campaigns. For all it’s worth, email is here to stay!
Apart from the giant user pool to reach out to, emails provide the biggest bang for the buck. With a staggering 4200% ROI (Return on Investment), email marketing outranks all other platforms by miles. In comparison to social media engagement rate (0.6%), email’s average open rate is 22.15% —making it a powerhouse for customer engagement and conversion.
Now all these positive stats may give you the wrong impression by making email marketing seem easier than it is. At the end of the day, only a handful of emails will generate real value for you and your business. Thus, it’s essential to focus on attracting genuinely interested subscribers who are more likely to engage with your content and offerings.
10 Proven Steps to Collect Emails Faster
Collecting emails is by far one of the most challenging jobs for any email marketing team. All the tailored email templates, giveaway products, and discount offers mean nothing if your email list isn’t packed with prospective leads. To be honest, you need to put just as much effort into growing your email list as you would in designing and sequencing your email campaign.
We’ve divided the steps of faster email collection depending on which facet it focuses on.
- Content
- Forms
- Platforms
Let’s get started!
Email Collection: Content
Content is by far the most prominent way to generate leads. Whether or not a user is going to willingly give you their email address largely depends on the content you provide in return. While there are a ton of content formats you can use, there’s no one right type. Which is why it’s important to mix things up i.e. Checklists, Infographics, Templates, Ebooks, etc.
The best practices regarding content for email collection are,
1. Captivating Lead Magnets
Lead magnet is a powerful tool for boosting email sign-ups. The lead magnet is the content you provide in exchange for a customer’s email. There are tons of content ideas you can use to create email collection forms that deliver the most contacts. Common types of lead magnets include:
- Checklists; Especially great for how-to’s and comparisons
- Templates; Awesome option for design vendors working with CVs, presentations, and business proposals.
- WebApps; Free services generate a ton of leads.
- Writing Guidelines; Whether it’s financial reports or a novel, writing guidelines help.
- Planners; Business folks always need planners. Placing your logo and color scheme can help create brand recognition.
To turn any basic lead magnets into a captivating one, consider creating a series of lead magnets tailored to different stages of the customer journey. For example, a beginner’s guide for newcomers to your industry or an advanced toolkit for seasoned professionals. Make sure your offerings cater to diverse audience segments and create value by providing a solution to a problem.
2. Host Live Events Specifically for Collecting Emails
Hosting free-to-access live events is a reliable way to get your prospects’ attention and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. The deal here is quite simple. Organize free live events or webinars relevant to your target audience’s interests. Use email sign-ups to grant access to these events, providing a sneak peek into your brand’s offerings while effortlessly collecting email leads!
For example, let’s say you own a fitness and lifestyle coaching business. You can create a live event where you go over the basics of all or some of the regimens your business offers to collect more emails. You can choose to highlight any section you like but remember to keep it relevant and helpful while not self-sufficient. The idea is to give prospective customers a taste of what your business has to offer.
Your prospects will happily provide their emails to get a sneak peek at your offerings. Just like that, you’ll gain a bunch of new emails without even asking for emails directly!
Additionally, consider partnering with industry influencers or hosting panel discussions to attract a broader audience. You can also leverage social media and email marketing to promote your live events and drive sign-ups. By creating buzz and anticipation around your events, you can maximize attendance and email conversions.
3. Avoid Asking Too Many Questions
To be frank, offering valuable content can only get you so far! No matter how good the content is, you can’t expect people to fill up all of your form questions. After all, it takes time to fill out these forms and most users will not sit through it. This is exactly why you need to avoid asking too much on your email collection forms. Reducing the number of text fields has a drastic impact on the submission rate of your forms.
Simplify your opt-in forms by requesting only essential information. Long forms deter potential subscribers, so prioritize capturing email addresses while minimizing additional form fields. Conduct A/B testing to determine the optimal number of form fields for maximizing conversions. Focus on gathering essential information such as email address and first name, while avoiding unnecessary friction points.
Another way is to allow partial form submission so your users still get the value for submitting email addresses only. By streamlining the opt-in process, you can increase form submissions and grow your email list more efficiently.
Email Collection: Form
The form is where you ask your user to submit all sorts of necessary information, including emails. Form dimensions matter just as much as the content you provide with it. Here are the top 3 tips on form design for better conversion:
4. Optimize Your Form Design and Opt-in Copy
It’s pretty easy to get caught up in directing traffic to your website while building an email list. However, it’s just as important to convert that traffic into actual email subscribers. That brings us to our next tip – optimizing the opt-in copy and form design.
As far as collecting emails go, these factors are criminally overlooked. If done well, they let you get more out of the people who are already visiting your website.
Create clear and concise opt-in forms with compelling copy that highlights the benefits of subscribing. Pay attention to visual elements such as color contrast, button size, and font style to make your opt-in forms visually appealing and easy to use. To make your form design and opt-in copy stand out, keep the following in mind—
- Be clear, not clever; It shouldn’t take any more than 5 seconds to understand what you’re saying.
- Highlight specifics; The more specific the content, the better the chances of conversion.
- Familiar Terminology; Emphasize on the words your customers use to define their pain points.
- Add emotion; Emotions are the best drivers to take action (especially awe, anger, and envy).
- Experiment with different form layouts and placement options to find the optimal design for maximizing conversions.
- Additionally, leverage dynamic content and personalization to tailor the form experience to each visitor’s preferences and interests.
By continuously optimizing your form design, you can enhance user engagement and drive higher conversion rates. If you can nail your opt-in copy, your email list will grow—even without increasing traffic.
FluentCRM comes in handy in this regard as it comes with a deep Fluent Forms integration. Fluent Forms lets you design incredible customized forms for any purpose you like. The best part is, FluentCRM lets you store the form information directly into the contacts profile. Simply put, you can automatically update contact profiles with new information from your forms —saving you a massive effort and time!
5. Use Popups to Make Your Email Collection Forms More Prominent
If the idea of adding a popup makes you uncomfortable. Well, you’re not the only one!
Website pop-ups are a powerful tool for capturing email leads and increasing conversions on your website. If you don’t use a popup, you’re missing one of the best ways to collect email addresses. They are a real attention grabber, offer flexible display options, and allow for implementing targeting and segmentation strategies to deliver personalized experiences. When creating pop-ups, it’s wise to keep these 3 factors in your head—
- Use large elements
- Place high on the page
- Feature contrasting colors
Remember, nobody likes to fill out pop-ups that look scammy or annoying. Email opt-in popups deserve their own blog article if we want to go in-depth. For now, the following suggestions might help you create effective pop-ups-
- 30-second window: Trigger popups after 30 seconds, instead of instantly
- 50% scroll: Trigger after 50% scroll down so visitors can read some of your pages
- Exit intent: Use switching tabs and minimizing browser windows as triggers for pop-ups
Experiment with different pop-up formats such as lightbox overlays, slide-ins, or exit-intent pop-ups to find the most effective option for your audience. Customize the pop-up messaging and design to align with your brand identity and offer compelling incentives for subscribing. By leveraging pop-ups strategically, you can capture email leads at key touchpoints in the customer journey and maximize your list growth potential!
6. Use Power Words in Your Copy
Words can trigger thoughts, emotions, and even actions if used correctly. The language you use in your opt-in forms can have a significant impact on user engagement and conversion rates. Depending on your business, there are words you have to add and others you need to avoid.
While going into details is going to be tough in this blog, we’ll use a common notion to make it clear.
Here’s an easy example: Throw away that Submit button —research shows the word Submit has a negative impact on lead conversion. Instead, experiment with different call-to-action (CTA) phrases and button copy to find the most compelling options for your audience. Use action-oriented language that communicates value and encourages immediate action, such as Unlock Your Free Resource or Start Exploring Now.
Additionally, you can leverage social proof and urgency to create a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) and motivate users to take action. By optimizing your CTA copy, you can increase click-through rates and drive more conversions on your opt-in forms.
Email Collection: Social Media
Social media is a marketing channel itself, but it doesn’t need to act alone. While most professional marketers know this, it’s still worth mentioning: The best practice in digital marketing is to have all your channels feed into your marketing infrastructure in one way or another. We compared email marketing vs. social media and found the same verdict.
While social media marketing helps you reach unique customers, it also provides a clean way to gather emails from your audience. Here are 3 ways to do that—
7. ‘Sign Up’ Button on Your Facebook Business Page
This one’s the shortest of the bunch. If you didn’t know this yet, Facebook offers a built-in sign-up button feature to help businesses collect email leads. Using this feature, you can add a newsletter signup form to your Facebook business page. Customize the sign-up button with a compelling copy and a clear call to action to encourage users to subscribe.
Additionally, promote your sign-up button across your other social media channels and digital touchpoints to maximize its visibility and reach. By integrating your email sign-up form with your Facebook page, you can capture leads from a broader audience and drive more conversions for your email marketing campaigns.
Frankly, it’s unlikely that you’ll get tons of signups from your Facebook page. However, it’s still worth the effort!
8. Share Compelling Visuals and Snippets on Social Media
Social media platforms offer tons of opportunities to engage with your audience and promote your brand. But before we even get started on this one, let’s get one thing out of the way— Social Media is not great or terrible when it comes to marketing and email collection. The word you could go for is “okay”.
Yes, social media can direct traffic to your website and increase your number of subscribers. And yes, some things go viral through mass sharing. But it only works if you are good at it. Here’s what social media is great for:
- Connecting with people you wouldn’t otherwise find through organic search and online communities
- Becoming a hub for a diverse audience
- Participate in intriguing conversations (which can also generate leads)
If you want opt-ins from social media, you need to have conversations that people want to be part of. You can achieve this with two things— The quality of your original content and the visual/text previews you provide. We’ve already talked about providing valuable content so here, we’ll focus on the quality of the post.
The text snippets for your social media post need to be short, engaging, and concise. An Express Writers infographic found that social media posts work best at 40 characters or less, earning a whopping 86% more engagement than longer posts!
Of course, you should never publish posts with only text. That is social media 101!
Instead, add visual aids i.e. infographics, relevant images, etc. This creates authenticity for your posts and improves your click-through rates. Remember to use this opportunity to showcase your branding elements i.e. logos, quotes, and whatnot.
Additionally, leverage interactive content formats such as polls, quizzes, and contests to encourage user participation and increase engagement. By consistently sharing valuable content and fostering meaningful interactions, you can attract more subscribers to your email list and build stronger relationships with your audience.
9. Video Content That Links Back to Your Website
While we all love blogs and the value they provide, the digital marketing trend has shifted. Especially in the video content section. Unlike blogs that you post on your website, it makes more sense to use video marketing to generate leads. Enter YouTube!
The most obvious downside to this strategy is you are at YouTube’s mercy. If YouTube suddenly decides to tweak its algorithms, you could wind up losing a lot of potential views and clicks.
The solution? Use YouTube content as a lead magnet and add your email collection form link in the description.
Now your viewers can easily find a way to subscribe to your content even when YouTube isn’t working in your best interest. This method is super effective for businesses that benefit from video content, such as language and music tutorials, electronic goodies, and even WordPress plugins.
10. Bonus: Team Up with Influencers
Let’s talk partnerships! Picture this: you join forces with industry influencers or micro-influencers who resonate with your brand’s vibe. Together, you create magic: sponsored content, joint webinars, or even exclusive deals that make their followers say, “Count me in!”
Let’s dive deeper: Influencer collaborations aren’t just about boosting your numbers; they’re about making meaningful connections. Find influencers whose vibe matches yours and whose followers are your dream audience. Then, team up to craft authentic content that speaks to their community. Use their trust and influence to invite folks to join your email list.
It’s a win-win: you expand your reach, they add value to their tribe, and everyone’s smiling!
Start Collecting Leads at Scale!
We know it’s been a long read. The difficulties of email marketing begin with collecting emails. No matter the business model or product type, email collection is essential. If you think our tips helped you collect more emails, share your thoughts with us in the comments.
For any great solutions we missed in this blog, you can also let us know. Till then, happy collecting!!
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