Email lists are an incredibly useful and efficient marketing tool… email marketing is arguably the best way to connect with your readers and customers and you are much more likely to create repeat sales and a long-standing relationship with someone if you have them on an email list.
Easy, I’ll just buy one…
You may have a light bulb moment and think – well great, if it’s that useful I’ll just buy one… email lists can be purchased, giving you access to thousands of email addresses to send your promotions and offers to…
However, this is not the way to do it – email lists should be created by getting people to opt-in to them – you should never add people’s emails to a list without their express permission, not only is this illegal but you’ll also get no joy – people will delete unsolicited emails or just ignore them and the same goes with people whose emails are on an email list that you have purchased… they didn’t add themselves to your list and the majority of them will treat your emails as junk.
But if you entice someone to join your mailing list by providing something in return – then they will have joined your list, having been happy to do so and more than likely will be eagerly anticipating your emails and looking forward to reading about what you have to say.
If someone does something on their terms, they are much more likely to want to do it… whereas if you push them into it – then they are not very likely to be responsive.
So the key is to make people want to join your list by giving them perceived value in exchange.
This value could take the form of something tangible, like a free e-book or a free course or webinar… or just great content on your website, resulting in them wanting to read your next post when it comes out.
So how do you go about setting this all up?
The easiest way is to use something called an autoresponder – this is a piece of software that can be incorporated into your website and will allow you to set up a call to action button that will enable you to capture people’s attention and get them to input their email address in exchange for what you are offering…
As I mentioned earlier – sometimes you might not offer anything immediate in return… the call to action button may simply say ‘receive the latest posts from (your website name) direct to your inbox’… the content of your site maybe so amazing that people would actually want to do that without anything immediate in return and getting the latest posts would be perceived value in itself…
This, however, is a harder sell and you’ll probably get more sign-ups if you do offer something immediate in return.
What next?
Once you’ve decided you want to capture your visitors email addresses and you see the value in it – you need to choose an autoresponder to set it all up.
There are many options out there, but one of the best at doing everything you need and more is AWeber.
What is AWeber?
AWeber allows you to automatically create great looking sign-up forms, emails, landing pages and web-push notifications.
The sign up forms can be as simple or detailed as you like and you don’t need any technical know how – the platform will automatically create branded sign-up forms and emails in just seconds.
The platform also allows for easy integration of sign-up forms into your website, again with very little technical know-how needed and what you do need it teaches you how to do.
You simply paste the generated code into your website and the form appears on your page… for example you can add the code to the sidebar widget in WordPress and it will appear on your page when you publish.
The platform also allows you to automate email content creation by broadcasting the latest posts from your blogs – you can create a custom email template that can include images, such as your logo, and then set it to automatically send the emails that contain a link to your latest post as soon as it’s published.
You can also create landing pages without the need for a website – this allows you to create campaigns quickly, even if you’re just starting out.
There is a large library of pre-built templates allowing you to pick something that really suits your brand and allows your site to stand out.
Plans
AWeber now have a free plan that allows you to have 500 subscribers and one email list and allows you to send 3000 emails per month.
This is great for anyone just starting out and allows you to start building a list and emailing for free.
| Features | Pro (Paid Version) | Free |
|---|---|---|
| Subscribers | Unlimited | 500 |
| Email sends | Unlimited | 3000/month |
| List profiles | Unlimited | 1 |
| Create and send newsletters | Yes | Yes |
| Email automation | Yes | Yes |
| RSS to email | Yes | Yes |
| Drag-and-drop email builder | Yes | Yes |
| 100s of email templates | Yes | Yes |
| HTML emails | Yes | Yes |
| Dynamic content | Yes | Yes |
| AMP emails | Yes | Yes |
| Hosted broadcast archive | Yes | Yes |
| Thousands of professional images | Yes | Yes |
| Email Split testing | Yes | No |
| Behavioral automation | Yes | No |
| Cart abandonment / Purchase tagging | Yes | No |
| Branded click-tracking links | Yes | No |
| Remove AWeber branding | Yes | No |
| List size | Pro (paid version) | Free |
|---|---|---|
| 500 users | $19/month | Free |
| 2,500 users | $29/month | - |
| 5,000 users | $49/month | - |
| 10,000 users | $69/month | - |
| 25,000 users | $149/month | - |
| 50,000 users | $239/month | - |
| 100,000 users | $369/month | - |
| 250,000 users | Request a quote | - |
Conclusion
Getting new visitors to your website is not easy and takes time and effort – but once you do, you want to keep in contact with them… it’s much easier to keep existing customers, than to get new ones.
And the best way to keep hold of them is by engaging with them and reminding them that you are there – and for this you will need their email address.
In my opinion AWeber is one of the best platforms for effortlessly setting up and managing your email lists.
You can join AWeber for free here.
I hoped you’ve enjoyed this post – if you have any questions or comments, then please leave them below and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Mohammad
What a great idea to use Aweber. It is such an easy email collector to use and suddenly you are collecting some of that traffic to your website. It is the first thing you should do when you start a website but it can be daunting. Your pictures really make it easy to know where and what to do. Definitely a no-brainer.
Hi Lily – agreed, definitely a no-brainer… once you’ve set it up, it pretty much does what it needs to do by itself.
Generating traffic has been difficult for me, I am still struggling to build a huge following .I guess Rome was not built in a day. I just joined Aweber it looks like a wonderful platform, thank you very much for a wonderful article. I realize people will be more responsive if they actually request being a member of my email list.
Hi Diana – as with anything that lasts and is sustainable, it takes time… but keep at it and try different ideas until you find one that works for you.