15 Easy & Proven Ways to Grow Your Email List in 2024

Let’s face it—

Even if you have the best email marketing material and send it out at the right time, you still won’t get anywhere if you don’t have a fairly large number of subscribers. 

After all, your subscribers are your potential customers—and having more of them on your list creates better opportunities to build successful relationships with them.

But how to grow email lists effectively?

You’re at the right place. We’ve gathered tips to grow your email list with practical examples that will help you build and increase your subscribers quickly.

In this article, we present the 15 techniques to grow email lists:

• Enhance your website
• Use chatbots 
• Create quality content
• Optimize your CTAs
• Utilize email marketing
• Use marketing tools
• Add pop-ups to your site
• Shorten your lead capturing forms
• Join social media
• Be present on Facebook
• Make the most out of LinkedIn
• Connect with customers through Instagram
• Utilize YouTube
• Establish partnerships
• Perform brand visibility activities

If you want to find out more about email marketing, check out these articles:

• 10 Best Email Marketing Software & Services
• 10+ Essential Email Marketing Statistics
• 25 Customer Service Email Templates [+Best Practices]

Let’s start from the basics—

What is an email list?

An email list is a collection of email addresses gathered by a business. The list consists of visitors, new customers, social media audiences, and other people that consented to receive communication from you. This includes product updates, discounts, and general communication from the company in a digital form sent to their email inbox.

So, how to build an email list for marketing?

Some of the best practices you can follow when building an email list include:

• Using a system to store all the customer communication in one place
• Creating a single email inbox with categories for a variety of intents
• Using social media platforms to spread the word about your mailing list
• Capturing valuable email addresses from your product pages
• Adding a sign-up form to your Thank you for your order page

We’ll go through more techniques you can use to grow your email lists a bit later. 

Read more: Learn how to write a thank you for your order message with templates and best practices.

But first, let’s answer the question—

Why should you grow your email marketing list?

You need an extensive email list because it’s the best way to connect with potential shoppers, give exclusive offers to your loyal customers, and keep in touch with subscribers. It also helps you serve a wider audience with personalized communication that can help you turn new leads into clients in the long run.

In fact, research shows that email marketing campaigns are about 40 times more effective than Facebook or Twitter when acquiring customers.

What’s more is that businesses in the US see a 4,300% average return on investment (ROI) from their email marketing efforts.

One of the reasons for this is that emails lower the cost per lead. Also, you have full control over the list of your subscribers, so you can choose the content each of your contact groups will receive, increasing your chances of making a sale.

On top of that, you can easily get updates and exclusive content across to your audiences. People on your email list are the first ones to get to know about the new products, get offers, and receive notifications about items being back in stock. 

Read more: Check out the essential email marketing statistics and learn how to use analytics to measure your email marketing success. 

With that out of the way, let’s answer the main question: how can you grow your email subscriber list effectively?

How to grow your email list: 15 best techniques

The best way to for email list building is to find what works best for your company. But to do that you need to try different tactics first. 

And this is where you dive into the techniques with tips and examples, so you have a full understanding of how to use them for your brand. Ready?

Let’s start with how to get more email subscribers from your website traffic.

1. Enhance your website

One of the best ways to grow email lists is to improve the look and functionality of your website. To do this, you can change its content, experiment with graphics, and play around with the positioning of elements. 

It’s also a good idea to perform A/B testing when trying to enhance your website to see which versions work best. This is one of the most effective methods to check for small details that could be causing you to lose leads. 

So basically, you need to create two versions of the same content with only minor details changed. Then, you can measure the results from both versions and see which one performs better. You can repeat this test as many times as you need to find the right solutions.

You should also consider adding testimonials for social proof to your website. This will increase the credibility and trustworthiness of your online business, which can help you with email list growth and email opt-ins. 

Some of the other ways to grow email lists through website optimization include using chatbots, creating high-quality content, and optimizing your CTAs. So, let’s jump straight into those.

2. Use chatbots

Chatbot software is one of the best lead generation tools out there. You can use them to collect contact data and grow an email list automatically. 

Also, you can use pre-chat surveys to encourage website visitors to provide you with their contact details before starting the chat. On top of that, you can offer potential customers a small discount upon entering your ecommerce store that will be sent to their email inbox.

Another way to use a chatbot plugin for lead capturing is to ask people for feedback. And customers want to share their opinion with your business. In fact, about 77% of shoppers have a more favorable view of companies that ask for feedback and accept it.

So, after an interaction with your brand, whether it’s after a customer support communication or inquiring about your services, ask the potential client to rate and review their experience with your brand. This will help you collect valuable customer feedback, get to know your clients better, and gather email addresses for your list. 

As an example, Park Prodigy uses chatbots for their lead generation by giving a 10% discount code:

Ensure that your communication is natural. It’s good to use AI chatbots that utilize machine learning and natural language processing. They’ll make the conversation feel human-like and understand the user’s intent.

Read more: Check out how to seamlessly connect your email marketing software with Tidio chatbots using our new integrations.

3. Create quality content

There are many types of content you can produce to get your visitors to subscribe to your mailing list. For example, you can create blog articles, lead generation offers, case studies, content marketing resources, and free online tools available upon sign-up. 

For example, we created a detailed guide on recreating in-store experiences online that appears once visitors input their email address and a few contact details:

But first—start building brand awareness on Google by providing blog posts accessible to everyone and adding special posts available only for subscribers. This way, you’ll improve your ranking on search engines, get more traffic to your website, and build trust with your clients. 

Blog posts are also one of the best places to encourage visitors from various demographics to subscribe even if you’re still a small business. You can start by inviting them to sign up for your newsletter and, over time, encourage your loyal subscribers to sign up for sale-related content. 

Here’s how HubSpot uses the blog to promote gated content:

After having a blog and gaining brand visibility, start offering lead-generation content. This could include e-books and detailed guides on a topic related to the industry you’re in. Or even content upgrades from topics that you wrote about on your blog.

For example, if you’re in the house-building industry, you could write an e-book on the challenges of starting to build a house and how to handle them. Or, you can create a guide on the best tools and most effective methods when doing final touch-ups to the building. 

Anything related to your area of expertise would work, so get your marketing team together for a brainstorming session. You might be surprised by the number of ideas this could produce.

Make a thorough keyword research to base your content on. This will help you discover what people are searching for and ensure that you’re serving the right intent with your articles. Also, use some SEO tactics to scale your blog posts and search engine visibility. 

Read more: Find out how a real estate data platform achieved a 138% increase in lead generation with Tidio’s live chat and chatbot solutions.

4. Optimize your CTAs

You can easily link to your sign-up forms from a variety of pages on your website by creating call-to-action buttons and putting them on your sidebar.

For example, you can make CTAs that lead to your lead magnets, free tools, or simply to the lead-capturing forms. Place them on some of your blog posts, homepage, About us page, Contact us page, and even some of your landing pages. 

A CTA button works best when the text in it is short and actionable. 

Say you’re offering an e-book on how to use AI for automating your ecommerce store processes, you can use the following CTA: “Discover the most effective tactics to automate ecommerce processes using AI”. And here’s what your button text can say: “Download a free e-book”.

This should lead the visitor straight to your e-book page, where they’ll be able to insert their contact information and get the e-book.

Be straightforward with your CTA text. Complicated or unrelated CTAs will confuse the visitor, and you’ll lose your chance of getting a subscriber. So, ensure that the text is easy to understand and that it’s clear where the button will lead the visitor to.

5. Utilize email marketing

Email marketing is most effective when you already have an existing email list. But, you can also use it to grow the number of your subscribers.

How?

It’s simple. All you need to do is create an email campaign specifically for collecting leads and send it out to your loyal customers. In the email, ask them to spread the word about your company and share the campaign with friends. For better results, try giving out referral offers for your anyone that refers their close one.

This tactic will provide you with more leads as well as more customers. That’s because over 88% of people trust recommendations from their friends above any other marketing messaging.

Here’s how The Body Shop uses this technique:

Ensure your email content is engaging, and your email design invites the receiver. This will help you increase deliverability and open rates while slashing the unsubscribe rate. 

Connect your chatbot software to an email marketing platform. This way, you can ask your visitors for contact information using pre-chat surveys and then add these new subscribers to your Omnisend account. It’s a great solution to see your mailing list grow quickly and efficiently.

Read more: Discover Tidio’s new integration with Omnisend and watch your email list grow exponentially.

6. Use marketing tools

You can use marketing automation software for the management of your campaigns, social listening, results analytics, and much more. 

These tools will help you send email campaigns in bulk, track your social media engagement, and post your pre-written announcements across social media channels. This way, your marketing team will gain more time for the creative part of their job and your communication will be free from human error. 

So, how to grow your email list with pop-up forms?

7. Add pop-ups to your site

This is one of the most popular lead magnet tools out there. Pop-ups, especially exit intent pop-ups, are a great way to gather emails right on time when the visitor is browsing your website.

You can easily grow your email lists when using pop-up advertising. That’s because you can target people that are already on your website and are interested in your products or services. 

Let’s say you offer 25% off for your autumn collection when winter approaches. You can create a pop-up that will appear on your visitor’s screen when they enter your website or scroll past a certain point. 

And with the right messaging, you can collect many contact details without putting much effort into it. Here’s how Design Italy combines a pop-up with a chatbot to gain the best results:

Create a small number of pop-ups. The visitors to your website will get frustrated if there are multiple pop-ups flashing at them within the first 5 minutes of them browsing your site. It will also make your website look spammy. So, to avoid these issues, limit yourself to one or a maximum of two pop-ups that will appear to potential clients on your site.

8. Shorten the lead-capturing forms

This technique ensures that you ask only for the relevant information from your forms. And even though it’s tempting to gather as much data as you can straight away, it’s much better to keep the number of fields to a minimum.

This way, you’ll gather more prospects since providing too much information to a business tends to drive people away from filling out the form. It’s better to gradually ask for more information as your relationship with the lead strengthens. 

Here’s how our lead capturing form looks:

Think about what information is most crucial for your business. Are you a retailer and need to know the gender of the person? Or are you a carpenter that needs to know whether a person lives in a house or an apartment? Choose the questions well to get the most important data for your system.

Now—

How to grow your email list with social media?

9. Join the right social media

But before attempting to join social media channels, you should do your research to figure out which platforms work best for your needs.

Start by checking which platforms your customers are using to see where you’ll be able to get the most engagement. Then, start creating your own accounts. 

The most obvious channels to use are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, so we’ll go more in-depth with those later on. But you can also get a Pinterest or a Twitter business account.

If you decide to use Twitter, you’ll be able to host free giveaways that require inputting the user’s contact information, add links that lead to your website, and create campaigns to promote your resources. These have a great opportunity to go viral.

Let’s have a look at how to grow an audience using Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

10. Be present on Facebook

You might be asking yourself how to grow your email list using Facebook right about now. Don’t worry, it’s easier than you might think.

You need to be where your customers are and where the talk is happening. And Facebook is a great place to start. 

You can promote your newsletters on the company’s profile, put it front and center on the page, and even make it your profile’s cover photo to attract attention straight away.

Just remember to use high-quality graphics that highlight the value of your email newsletters when doing this. Otherwise, people might get put off subscribing—and that’s the complete opposite of what you want.

Another way to use Facebook ads to increase your email subscribers is by adding calls to action on your business page. You can also add posts that include a snippet of your newsletter. This will give your audience a sneak peek of your offer and give them an extra push to subscribe.

Stay active on your Facebook page and give your audience frequent updates. This way, you’ll improve the connection between your business and the customers, which can lead to increased sales and more leads for your email list. 

Read more: Discover the best Facebook chatbots on the market and earn how to make your own.

11. Make the most out of LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the number one professional business network out there. So, you can reach a very large target audience of potential customers by using it—especially if you’re a B2B company. 

But, how to do it right?

Start by posting valuable content frequently. This can include LinkedIn articles, blog posts, fun facts, new releases, or studies that you took part in. In short, anything that your audience might find interesting. For a more effective outreach strategy, consider incorporating LinkedIn scraping to get contacts from LinkedIn and do genuine outreach.

Once you build up your following, start advertising the value people can get from your emails and link to a landing page with an email sign-up form. This will help you gain more high-quality leads that are already aware of your brand’s offerings. Plus, your followers will gain more great content and be able to continue the interaction with your brand away from social media. Utilizing a LinkedIn bot in this process can further enhance your efficiency by automating follow-up messages and keeping your audience engaged.

You can also use the conversations you’re already having with people to send over a link to your sign-up form. Just remember to not be pushy and choose the right place to do this. You can send these links as a direct message, include them in a comment thread, use InMail messages, or even post them in the appropriate groups. What is more, you can automate all these actions through tools like Linked Helper, which will optimize your time and efforts.

Here’s how FixDex used LinkedIn for growing their email lists:

Publish posts linking to your gated content to gain more leads. You’ll stir people’s interest with the post, and they’ll be eager to find out more information from your e-book, guidebook, or study. But to do that, they’ll need to provide their email address that you can add to your list. It’s a win-win situation.

Read more: Learn more about how to increase email subscribers using LinkedIn. Also, discover the best B2B lead generation strategies with tools and best practices.

12. Connect with customers through Instagram

This platform is especially useful if you have products that you can make pictures of and advertise them. That’s because Instagram is a photo-based platform where people go to look at pictures and short videos.

And to get the most out of it, you should add a call to action to your Instagram bio, place a link to your website, and show off your products regularly. Also, remember to use the right hashtags so that the platform knows how to categorize your content better. This way, you’ll reach the right audience quicker. 

Another way you can use Instagram for your business is to share behind-the-scenes stories and include clickable links in them. This feature is a great opportunity to grow your email list while keeping your audience engaged.

Here’s our Tidio Backstage Instagram where we share behind-the-scenes content and stories about our employees:

Use Instagram chatbots that keep your audience engaged, answer people’s reactions to your stories, reply to questions, and more. Automated bots are triggered on specific keywords or phrases and follow up with a set action. So, you can easily change the bot’s replies and actions in the backend to suit your needs.

13. Utilize YouTube

Okay, we do know that YouTube hasn’t exactly been made to be a lead-generation tool. So, how do you grow your email list using your YouTube channel?

Well—first of all, you should upload a number of engaging videos and build your following. Once you do that, you should add engagement features, like video outros, to your content. 

YouTube video outros, or end screens, are basically like a video version of a Read more section. You can put more content for your viewers, as well as insert links that lead to your website pages. This is a great place to put a hyperlink to your sign-up form to easily start growing your email lists.

You can also use your channel’s header to collect leads. All you need to do is place a link to your lead-capturing form in there. But make sure the header is eye-catching and well-designed to attract the users’ attention and highlight the value of your offering. That’s the only way you’ll entice them to click that subscribe button.

HubSpot did that on their YouTube channel HubSpot Marketing:

Don’t forget to add a link and promote your newsletter from the video’s description. On top of describing what’s in your video, here you can add links and extra information. This is a great place for growing your email list without being pushy as people won’t see it until they click to extend the text. But, it’s good to mention that it’s there inside your video, just in case people want to sign up but don’t realize your link is in the description box.

Now—

How to increase newsletter subscribers using partnerships?

14. Establish partnerships

First things first—

To create partnerships, you should look for companies that are in your industry. This doesn’t mean that you should focus on your competitors. 

For example, if you sell hand-made earrings, you should search for people in the retail industry. Then, connect with them through engaging in PR activities and establish the type of partnership you’re interested in. 

Once you’ve established a few partnerships, you can start using your connections. 

Inquire about writing guest posts and running promotions on your partner’s website. This will give you exposure to a larger audience that you can target through your digital marketing efforts. And ensure that you insert a link to your landing page that includes the sign-up forms in your marketing copy.

Try co-marketing with your partner. What this means is that you create a lead magnet, like an e-book or a webinar, alongside the partner and release it to both of your audiences. And make sure that people give you their contact details before receiving the free content. 

15. Perform brand visibility activities

There are a number of ways to effectively gain visibility for your brand. Some of them include:

• Hosting in-person events
• Recording online webinars
• Printing out display ads
• Participating in a podcast
• Spreading the word in the physical stores

You can try a number of these tactics and see what works best for your business. 

But, let’s explore this in more detail— 

What are these techniques all about, and how to grow your email list fast using them?

Conferences, seminars, meetups, and other in-person events establish your brand as an authority in the field. They allow you to meet with many decision-makers and gather high-quality leads. Take the networking event as an opportunity to collect email addresses from the attendees and send them a welcome email with an opt-in form.

This is similar to an online webinar. You’re gathering people in your field or interested in your industry and providing them with a knowledgeable event. And because it’s online, you can start collecting people’s email addresses when they register for the webinar and add these contact details to your list. 

When it comes to the display ads, make sure to incorporate a generated dynamic QR code into them. This code should lead to your lead-capturing form and be easy to scan for people who are interested. Also, for better results, make your ads graphical and well-designed, so they encourage people to scan the code.

Here’s an example of a sign-up landing page for a webinar presented by Search Engine Journal:

Add a sign-up button to all of your brand-visibility emails, and display it in a number of places during your events. This will ensure that people can easily find your newsletter sign-up form whenever they’re ready to subscribe.

Read more: Ensure you’re sending your emails at the right time for the best results.

How to choose the right tactics for your business?

The best way to choose the right techniques for your business is to try a number of different ones and see which ones work best for you. But there are a number of ways to narrow down your search. 

For example, if you have a well-established blog and your website ranks high on Google, you should focus your efforts on enhancing your site. So, add pop-ups, chatbots, and optimize your CTAs for the best results.

But if you focused your marketing strategy on social media from the early stages of your brand’s existence, you should make the most out of that. This means writing posts promoting your newsletter on Facebook, advertising your new content on LinkedIn, and adding links to your sign-up form from Instagram stories.

Every business is different and the best way to find the right techniques for yours is to test a number of them. You can also perform A/B tests to make sure your results are accurate. 

How to grow an email list: key takeaway

Email lists are the collection of email addresses that businesses can contact with their newsletters, offers, and other marketing content.

So, let’s do a quick recap—how to grow newsletter subscribers?

Some of the most effective tactics for email list growth include:

• Enhancing your website
• Using chatbots 
• Creating quality content
• Optimizing your CTAs
• Utilizing email marketing
• Automating your emails
• Using marketing tools
• Adding pop-ups to your site
• Shortening your lead-capturing forms
• Joining social media
• Being present on Facebook
• Making the most out of LinkedIn
• Connecting with customers through Instagram
• Utilizing YouTube
• Establishing partnerships
• Performing brand visibility activities

You should combine a number of different techniques for the best results. And once you have a substantial list of emails, you should use segmentation and group them for more personalized communication. You don’t want to go through all the effort of growing your email list just to lose subscribers because your content doesn’t match their needs. 

Also, remember to use chatbots that connect with your email marketing system for the best results.