9 Proven Steps to Collect Email Leads Faster

At the core of every email marketing campaign is an email list. Your email list is one of your essential assets when it comes to marketing success. Want to get more subscribers to your email list right away? Well, there are some insanely efficient tactics you can try out.

List buying or social media contests for collecting emails will only take you so far. If you want your list to power a real business, these worn-out tactics will not cut it.

In this article, we’ve put together 9 of the best ways to reliably collect email leads. Before we get to that, We thought there should be a section for the newbies. So first let’s check out why collecting email is so important. 

Why Collect Email Addresses

Whether it’s B2B or B2C, email marketing is at the very top of marketing channels for marketers all around. For all it’s worth, email is here to stay and that is backed by solid statistics. As of 2019, around 90% of people above the age of 15 in the US regularly use email. That’s a massive amount of people well within reach of email campaigns. 

Apart from the giant user pool to reach out to, emails provide the biggest bang for the buck. With a staggering 3800% ROI (Return on Investment) email marketing outranks all other platforms by a mile or more. In comparison to social media (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) engagement rate (0.6%) email’s average open rate (22.15%) wins by a long shot. 

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. Many of your contacts will unsubscribe or opt-out of the newsletter for any number of reasons. 

However, it’s hardly a setback according to MarketingSherpa, who report that 60% of consumers willingly subscribe to brands they are interested in, and around 20% use this to stay up-to-date on the latest deals and promotional offers.

9 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 means nothing if your email list isn’t packed with prospective leads. To be honest, you need to put in just as much effort into growing your email list as you would in designing and sequencing your email campaign. 

I’ve divided the steps of faster email collection depending on which facet it focuses on. 

a. Content 

b. Forms, and 

c. Platforms 

Here are 9 proven ways you can grow your email list faster!

Email Collection : The Content

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 actually 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

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 to use 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 you need to keep 3 things in mind,

• Create value by providing a solution to a problem.
• Show your customers the value immediately.
• Deliver the promised value without delay.

2. Host live events for collecting emails specifically

Hosting free to access live events is a reliable way to get your prospects’ attention. The deal here is quite simple. You host a live event on a topic relevant to your business, or what your customers need from you. To give interested users access to your event simply use their emails to send event links or related information i.e. time, venue etc. You can simply add these collected emails to your marketing contacts list and voila!

Take for example, if you own a fitness and lifestyle coaching business. To collect more emails you can create a live event where you go over the basics of all or some of the regimens your business offers. 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 peak at what your business is all about. Just like that, you’ve gained a bunch of new emails without harassing your prospects or even asking for it directly!

3. Avoid asking for too many personal details

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. Another way is to allow partial form submission so your users still get the value for submitting email addresses only. 

Email Collection : The 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’s the top 3 tips on Form design that help in better email collection.

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 that are already visiting your website. Opt-in copies that make it hard for people to understand what they get are not exactly helping you.

To make your form design and opt-in copy one that grabs the visitors attention 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).

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 the pro license comes with FluentForms integration. FluentForms 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 with a simple automation. 

Simply put, you can automatically update contact profiles with new information from your forms. This is saving you a massive load of 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. No one wants popups that look scammy or annoying. Mail 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 page
• Exit intent; Use switching tabs and minimizing browser window as triggers for pop-ups

If you don’t use a popup, you’re missing one of the best ways to collect email addresses. When creating pop-ups, it’s wise tokeep these 3 factors in your head,

• Use large elements
• Place high on the page
• Feature contrasting colors

• We should also consider employing a comment subscription form.

6. Use Power Words in Your Copy

Words can trigger thoughts, emotions and even actions if used correctly. 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, you can try using, “click this” or, “Join us”. So, always remember to add a catchy actionable phrasing for the button. Definitely try it out for yourself in your next collection push!

Email Collection : Social Media

Social media in and on itself is a marketing tool, 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 the other. 

While social media metrics help you reach unique customers, it can also provide a clean way to gather emails from your audience. Here’s 3 ways to do that,

7. Sign up button on your Facebook business page

This one’s the shortest of the bunch. You can add a newsletter signup form to your Facebook page. Frankly—it’s unlikely that you’ll get tons of signups from your Facebook page. However, it’s still worth the effort. 

As far as ways to collect email addresses go, this is by far the simplest. If someone is actively seeking a way to subscribe to you, the Sign Up button provides an easy way for your customers to find a way to reach you and for you to reach them.

8. Share on social media with compelling visuals and snippets

Before I 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, there are some things that 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 I’ll focus on the quality of the post.

The text snippets for your social media post need to be short, engaging and concise. According to SproutSocial, Facebook posts between 40-80 characters receive 88% more engagement. 

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 what not.

9. Video content that links back to your site

While we all love blogs and the value they provide, the digital marketing trend has shifted. Especially towards the video content section. Unlike blogs that you post on your website it makes more sense to host video content on platforms dedicated to the format. Enter YouTube.

The most obvious downside to this strategy is you are at YouTube’s mercy. If YouTube suddenly decides to tweak their 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. 

Ending Notes

I 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 these 9 ways have helped you collect more emails, share your thoughts with us in the comments. For any great solutions that I missed in this blog, you can also let us know so maybe this can be a list of 10 best ways instead of 9. Till then, happy collecting!! 

If you want more email marketing tips check out “10 Best eCommerce Email Marketing Tips for Retailers“.

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