How to Build Email List Fast in 2023 | 13 Killer Strategies

Summra Ahmad
Summra Ahmad

Last updated on

February 3, 2024

Is your inbox filled with newsletter emails or discount offers? If yes, you are on the mailing lists of those particular websites. But have you ever thought about how the website got your contact information, to begin with? The answer is pretty simple, but you need to learn the basics of email marketing to understand it. One of the most common aspects of email marketing is to send emails. 

But first, you need an email list. 

Deciding you need a mailing list is one thing. But to grow your email list, you need to fulfill two significant conditions:

  • Focus on increasing traffic to your website 
  • Create quality sign-up forms on your website 

Once these goals are achieved, you can quickly build a customized email list. In this blog post, the smart business owners will learn everything there is to know about building email lists fast. 

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What is an email list? 

An email list resembles your regular contact list quite a bit. It is only a matter of sending emails to current and new subscribers instead of texts or phone calls. 

Multiple email addresses are collected in an email list - anyone who has subscribed to your blog, website, or even weekly newsletter. They are eager to learn about what you have to offer. 

However, email marketing is more than just sending emails. Online businesses want to attract potential target audiences. Opt-in forms and sign-up forms work wonders for this purpose. Email marketers also use lead magnets to generate leads; sometimes, they combine pop-up forms and Google/Facebook ads to grow the business. 

Why build an email list at all? 

A business needs more than just one email type. So, it’s critical to have a separate email list for different types of emails you want to send.  For example, if your business's target audience is CEOs, then the best place to make an email list here would be Linkedin and a Linkedin email finder could help you with this.

According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing has at least a 4,900 percent ROI for small businesses in the USA. 

This means that email subscribers are interested in learning more about your website, brand, products, or services, so they can verify their identity by clicking on the link. Once you get new subscribers, they are likely to convert into paying customers because:

1. It’s personal 

Emails are exclusive as they land in the user’s inbox. There is no ranking system limiting the reach of your messages. So an email is direct and personal communication between you and the email subscribers. 

2. It’s purposeful 

It’s a must for the user to fill the sign-up form and confirm their email address. If a website visitor takes time to fill the form or visit the sign-up page, they are interested in your product. So they are more likely to be receptive to your emails. 

3. Own the email list 

Facebook, Twitter, or Google - These are third-party platforms for your business. You do not own them. A single change in their policies can make your social media campaigns a pile of waste. But an email list is not influenced by the change in policies of other platforms. 

4. It’s a private message  

People always check their inbox on a whim. The message sits idle, waiting for it to get opened. Once users open an email, they can confidently contact you, knowing they will hear from you. Emails are a great way to build trust and healthy relationships with current and new subscribers. 

5. Emails are used regularly 

Every online user has at least one email account. According to research conducted by Radicati, there are at least 3.8 billion active email accounts! Hence the reason big brands opt for social media campaigns is to attract potential customers to sign up for their email lists. 

Email marketing is a long-term investment with a more significant ROI but at a low cost that favors your business and pockets. 

The do’s and dont’s of an email list 

Targeting an audience with email marketing techniques is a fast and effective approach driving quite an impressive ROI of $49 for each $1 spent. The primary purpose of creating an email list is to increase the potential leads. But before you can put the email list to good use, keep a few pointers in mind. 

1. Get the hang of email service provider

Email service providers are the lucky charms that cost you low but with significant returns. This is one of the top strategies for building your mailing list successfully. Your email service provider must have numerous capabilities:

  • Multiple sign-up forms 
  • Ability to send the sign-up form to unique email lists 
  • Monitor the effectiveness of the sign-up forms 
  • Able to segment current subscribers from new subscribers etc. 

Begin by opting for free online tools to test the platform yourself, saving you any future headaches. 

2. Maintain a healthy email list 

Did you know 30% of subscribers change their email addresses every year? You need to delete any inactive subscribers right away. It means maintaining the list of people (active/new subscribers) who approach your business after clicking an ad on any social media platform.

Thanks to the email marketing efforts, these contacts will provide you with high conversion rates. 

3. Say ‘no’ to buying an email list

Don’t buy an email list! Chances are such email lists consist of shady people that can do more harm than good to your business. Email service providers do not collect email addresses randomly. They are experienced marketers, so you should let them do their jobs instead of cutting corners. 

Chances are other businesses may have the same mailing list, so there’s a high probability that the sender’s email address and IP address will be block listed. 

4. Don’t send one email to all subscribers

Emails are scheduled for good reasons. A customer across the country can be reached easily based on their time zone. You may think 6 p.m. is the best time to send the emails because potential customers will be accessible after the workday. But if you want to send emails to customers in New York, they may prefer to receive an email at 7 a.m.

It is recommended to test sending emails at different times. It is crucial to see which timings work best for small businesses or large multinationals. This way, you can track the customer’s response relatively easily. 

5. A/B test your subject lines 

The first thing a customer notices about the email is its subject line. They are short, catchy, and looks easy enough to write. But, a subject line can make or break the open email rate. 

A boring subject line can be why the email is redirected to the delete folder by the user. 

The standard rule of writing a subject line should be only 2-3 words long (35 characters). Longer subject lines can deviate from the message you are trying to convey. So why not try to test multiple subject lines? Test the powerful or emotional words in the subject line that lead a customer to click. 

13 Tried and tested tactics to build an email list 

Are you still confused about how to grow your email list?

Does the fact that hardly anyone subscribes frustrate you? Are you weighing up whether increasing your social media following would be better?

Consider this.

Ways to build email list fast in 2022

According to Jon Cifuentes from his study of 1300 marketers, email marketing still provides the best ROI. He found mid-sized businesses, on average, enjoy a 246% ROI from email marketing. Mike May of MediaPost’s Email Insider came to a similar conclusion. He says for every $1 business spends on email marketing, they generate $40 in ROI.

Want to enjoy such ROI?

If so, the real question is - how can you build your email list fast? What tactics do you need to apply?

Keeping the critical components of email campaigns in focus, below are the most tried tactics to build an email list. 

1. Use of traditional opt-in form 

The thing is, you already know how to create an email list. But if it’s your first time, the standard practice is to collect email addresses by a traditional opt-in form on your official site. 

Take a look at an opt-in form down below by Mailmunch. 

Sway your visitors with opt-in forms

It looks catchy and straightforward to understand, right? You can disable this option as a website owner, but only if a sign-up form is available. 

It’s important to have the opt-in form, especially if you have an eCommerce website. The opt-in form must be highly valuable and make sure the CTA is compelling, playing its part in reaching the target audience. 

2. Surprise website visitors with pop-up forms 

While opt-in forms are convincing enough, it’s still a passive approach. You want your website visitors to sign up for the newsletters of their own free will. You can’t understand what a website visitor is looking for unless they sign up. Or you can use a pop-up form! 

Take a look at this pop-up form. 

Pop-up form by Mailmunch

Looks simple but amazingly catchy, right? 

Popup forms are dynamic tools that can appear on the screen at certain times or for specific events. They also serve as lead magnets for generating leads.

For instance, when you visit any site, the sign-up form appears after a few seconds of scrolling or if the user is about to leave (exit-intent popup). 

Here’s what an exit-intent popup looks like. 

Give a reminder to sign up with exit-intent popup 

Keep experimenting with different sign-up forms until you get the right one. You will experience a significant increase in email subscribers joining your email list. So if you are wondering about how to build your email list, this tactic goes a long way. 

3. Embedded signup forms 

One of the most traditional email marketing strategies is to use embedded signup forms to attain email subscribers’ attention. 

Display the embedded signup forms on the high traffic pages in the most visible area like a header, footer, or sidebar. Sign-up forms are a gentle reminder to the website visitor to sign up. 

Take a look here. 

Embedded sign-up form by Mailmunch

Remember that creating dedicated signup pages is also helpful. For instance, placing the signup button at the top of the landing page is a way to encourage visitors to subscribe. It may seem a little obvious, but it is a proven technique for online businesses. 

4. Incentives are powerful 

The quickest way to build your email list is to offer visitors an incentive to subscribe. 

A survey by the DMA Group found that nearly 60% of email subscribers to blogs signed up to receive an opt-in offer. For instance, opt-in incentives can be as simple as a one-page checklist to something as complicated as a complete eBook.

The best thing about opt-in incentives is that you can often repurpose old blog posts into some kind of a freebie. With a great opt-in to build your email list, you’ll want to remember a few key points.

  • Spend some time to understand what people are looking for. Once they visit the site, offer an opt-in incentive like a discount, sale, or even free shipping for a limited time to join your list. You can find this by studying what keywords lead search traffic to your site. Making your incentive directly relatable to what people are looking for increases the odds of handing over their email addresses.
  • Make it exceptional. The worst thing you can do is disappoint people with a poorly crafted opt-in incentive. Make sure you have included as much detail as possible to solve a problem for readers.

Here’s what an incentive can look like. 

Discount incentives for first-time visitors

Time to explore multiple email templates for your email subscribers.

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5. Power of content 

Have you noticed that older content gets forgotten as you produce more new content?

How can you bring attention to older content in an appropriate manner?

Consider creating hub pages.

Quality content by Mailmunch

Benefits also include gaining more search engine visibility and getting more email subscribers.

How can you create hub pages?

  • Establish a hub page around an important topic to your audience
  • Link to your best content on that topic
  • Include an opt-in box for continual updates.

Create content, like blog posts and free eBooks. Both are great examples to create content on your website.

Do it consistently so that search engines can pick it up. It may be as slow as a turtle. It can take weeks, months, or even a year to see organic growth in traffic, but you still get traffic to your site. 

6. Interaction with gamification 

How to attract a target audience to your website? It’s easy - to build the email list of your dreams, regular discount offers won’t just do. 

It’s time you think out of the box. Thanks to the free tools, there’s plenty of interactive sign-up forms that are pretty fun for website visitors. This ideation works wonders for eCommerce websites. 

RUGS USA came up with the most interactive gamification for their online retailers in the shape of a spinning wheel. 

Gamification ideation by RUGS USA

As you can see, the image has all appealing elements like animation, gradient coloring, and branding recognition creating a seamless email marketing effort on their part. 

This type of promotion is considered an advanced gamification technique mainly due to the design aspects. Still, to make it engaging, you need a killer content copy. 

Online businesses can positively impact their target audience in terms of fun and getting new email subscribers. Customers get the savings they want on the purchased item, while you can build an email list. It’s a win-win. 

7. Targeting landing pages 

Did you ever imagine building an email list outside of the homepage?

When running email marketing campaigns, you can create a sense of urgency with a limited-time offer. This encourages the email subscribers to buy on impulse. For instance, a major sale like Black Friday or Clearance Sale can work wonders. 

Instead of sending the website visitor to the homepage, you can redirect them to the landing page. 

Following is an example of what a landing page may look like. 

Abandoned cart landing page by Mailmunch

The fewer elements on the landing page can result in high conversion rates. Just focus on one product at a time. If the website visitor is interested in the product, they’ll first subscribe to your email list. 

8. Conjure giveaways 

People are likely to fill out more web form fields for contests than subscribe to a newsletter. The beauty about giveaways is that they can attract many more people and email subscribers if done right.

Here’s an example of a giveaway

A giveaway offer by Facebook 

What could a giveaway do for you?

It turns out, Bryan Harris used a giveaway and got 2,239 emails in 10 days!

Do you want to leverage giveaways just like Bryan?

  • Determine if a contest is appropriate for your business. 
  • Determine what you want to accomplish from the giveaway before you begin promoting.
  • Special prizes that consider your desired audience. Speak to their needs, interests, and desires.
  • Use email marketing software for automation. 
  • Make the process of joining up simple.
  • Be sure to spread the word and encourage others to do so as well.
  • Stay engaged past the launch with those who have signed up and those who haven’t yet.
  • Let your audience know who has won and made a big deal of it.

9. Use lead magnets 

Running an eCommerce business is a great idea if you generate revenue. Sadly, people are usually skeptical of new online stores. This is a major reason behind the low conversion rates. 

A lead magnet can convert the website visitor into a paying customer. 

PDFs, free eBooks, gift guides, stock images, etc., all are valuable lead magnets. But to enjoy the information, the website visitors would need to fill up a sign-up form. 

Here’s an example from Laika.

Lead magnet example 

Lead magnet example 

This lead magnet is a pop quiz! Needless to say, if anything, people love quizzes. A lead magnet is the most engaging option to show authority in the niche topic. 

10. Create marketing campaigns with social media  

Social media is a constantly evolving platform not only in its tech but also in terms of viewership. So it’s important to link out to your subscribe form as much as possible. 

Marketers understand that Facebook ads are one of the quickest ways to reach the target audience and find potential customers by targeting the existing email list. 

Guess what? Facebook ads are suitable for selling products. But they are also a deal-breaker to generate leads. When it comes to lead nurturing, collect email addresses with the ads, and link them to the landing pages. 

Similarly, a business active on Twitter can convert its followers into new subscribers using Twitter’s Lead Generation Cards ( a link to add in your tweet allowing people to subscribe to the email list directly). 

Take a look at QuickBooks’ marketing campaign using Twitter’s Lead Generation Card. 

QuickBooks Twitter Lead Generation Card

Lead generation cards are also used to promote your email list on a tweet with great content, or if people are tweeting about your products or content, reply to them asking to subscribe to your email list. 

11. Integrate email list with email marketing software 

If you are looking to build your email list or even grow it, you already have existing customers. All you need to do is integrate the email list in a classic CRM that works perfectly for your email campaigns. 

Use email templates with email marketing software

For instance, Mailmunch is an exceptionally complete lead generation platform that allows you to build email lists and you can choose an email template from the email template library. The third-party integration will enable you to automatically add new subscribers from various applications like WooCommerce, Google Sheets, FreshBooks, etc. 

So if you are a Mailmunch customer, expect to benefit from integrating your email list into the email marketing software. 

12. Right CTAs at the right time

It’s an understood thing that out of 1000 visitors a day, only a few people will subscribe to your email list. 

Offer the website visitors multiple options through content, landing pages, and even social media in general. A CTA is an ultimate nudge they need to click to lead them to the signup form. But first, you need to lure the target audience with plentiful resources. 

For instance, you can use CTAs in blog posts, social media bios, and landing pages.

Quality CTA used by Zendesk 

A blog works well, especially with a catchy CTA giving reasons to subscribe. Investing time in writing a detailed blog post, you can offer great value with quality content.  

A well-crafted CTA will offer high value; the visitor does not feel “forced” to subscribe to your newsletter. 

13. Referral programs  

A fantastic way to grow your email list is to use referral programs. Starbucks, Dropbox, and McDonald’s became industry leaders thanks to referral programs by making offers to their customers that they can’t say no to. 

Some would say referral programs are bribes, but there are three common ways where you don’t have to bribe a contact. For instance, add an option to share or forward the newsletter and welcome emails

This may work for an email marketing campaign for a while, but it’s not enticing enough. So instead, offer something of value in exchange for a referral. Free shipping, a $20 coupon, or a 15% discount will brighten up the current subscribers. 

For instance, Broadway Bank came up with a superb referral program offer for its target audience, benefit giving them the chance to earn up to $500 per calendar year. Here’s how it looks. 

A referral program offered by Broadway Bank 

This type of referral work wonders to get new customers. 

Conclusion  

At the end of the day, you need an email list that is not a deadweight for your business. Figure out the types of email campaign strategy you want to opt for to encourage potential website visitors to convert as paying customers for good. 

Mailmunch is all about providing tactics and appealing email templates that work best for your business. The above-mentioned tactics are tried and tested in context to the email marketing strategies used by us and several other popular brands. 

As people join your email list, you can nurture them with more quality content for which we offer email marketing guidelines for your understanding. These ideas about email lists are your ticket to boost conversions and improve the organic traffic on your site. So start using the ideas you’ve learned in this guide.

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Author Bio

Summra Ahmad

A bookworm and a pet nerd at heart, Summra works as Content Writer at Mailmunch. She loves to play with keywords, titles, and multiple niches for B2B and B2C markets. With her 3 years of experience in creative writing and content strategy, she fancies creating compelling stories that your customers will love, igniting results for your business.

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