Do you want to your grow your mailing list, but you’re not sure how to go about it? Do you want to get more potential clients to sign up for your database or email newsletter? Do you want to grow your mailing list without being pushy? Do you want to learn how to ask properly without feeling embarrassed?
In this super useful blog post Anne-Marie Shepherd, The Design Trust’s Business Club Manager, shares 14 of her top tips to grow your mailing list in effective and creative ways.
This is a really in-depth blog post, full of practical advice and actions that you can take today. Get yourself a pen and paper now, grab a nice drink, and create your own action plan to grow your mailing list for your creative business today. If you love this blog post then please forward it to another creative who wants to grow their mailing list too!
Tip 1: Have you got a mailing list plan?
Do you wonder why people would be interested in hearing from you? Many creative businesses worry about this and don’t know what to write about. (Click this link for 24 content ideas!)
The thing is …
if you don’t know why people might be interested in hearing from you then you’ll need to work that out first!
The fact is YOU have to give people a reason to sign up. You have to offer something that people are happy to give you their email address for.
What could your potential clients be interested in?
- Do they want to be the first to know and worry about missing out (FOMO is a great motivator …) on your new collections, upcoming craft fairs or other events, latest products, your news so that they can be the first to access your sale or come to your Open Studios or craft workshops before they sell out.
- Do they want to find out more about you and your work? Where you live and work. Your motivations or inspirations. Your creative processes. Your expertise. Especially if your work is more expensive or one-off or a little more complicated in any way or form then educating your clients about you and your work is a smart move.
- Do they want special treatment and access to specials or offers? Are you treating your email subscribers in the right way to make it worthwhile for them? Do you add value with your emails to them with content, offers, special news, videos?
Knowing WHY people might be interested in hearing from you will help you to write better and mor regular emails or newsletters. And if you write a short reason why people should sign up on your sign-up form on your website then you are much more likely to get more and better suited email subscribers.
Without having a simple plan of why people would be interested to hear from you, you will not be really motivated to engage with and build relationships with your potential clients, which is the number one reason to use email for your creative business.
Click here to read how jeweller Emily Nixon uses email marketing very successfully in her business.
Tip 2: Do you ask them?
When our creative clients ask us how to grow their mailing list, our first answer is: “Ask them!”
So many opportunities to grow your mailing list are lost because you ‘forget’ to ask potential clients.
If you are proud of what you do and you have an email marketing plan, then it becomes a lot easier to ask potential clients.
At events and markets make sure that they can sign up for your mailing list to get future event info. Or when they pay with a card reader ask them for their email address at the same time too so that you can stay in touch.
On your website have a simple signing in form for your Mailchimp list with a little info about what they can expect from you in return (see tip 1).
When you are talking to people about your work, when you’re in conversation with shops, galleries, interior designers, writers or friends, if they are showing an interest in what you do, simply ask them if they’d like to stay connected by receiving your emails.
Tip 3: Move them from social media to your email list
Did you know that email marketing is 10x more effective than social media? People who want to sign up for your mailing list are much more interested in what you do then those who simply follow you on social media.
Try to figure out who of your social media followers is really interested in what you do, and encourage them regularly to sign up for your mailing list too.
Get inventive with how you ask them. We love seeing creatives:
- use Instagram Stories to tell people about their email list
- create great imagery with text to invite them to join their mailing list (with or without an incentive!)
- give enticing snippets of what’s going out in their email that week
- perhaps including an offer code or similar for more sign ups
- And don’t forget to put the link to sign up to your email list in your social media biogs so that it’s super easy for people to join.
Put a reminder on Facebook too. You may also want to include a simple Sign-Up Button to Your Facebook Page.
Share the link to your last email in your social media posts so that your followers can get a taster for what they’ll get. And below that invite them to join your email list and give them the direct link to sign up.
Make growing your mailing list more fun.
Show your personality.
Make people want to be part of your special (email) community.
Tip 4: Offer a free download
This is one of the most common and easiest ways to grow your mailing list. Most of us happily share our email address in return for free bonus content that we love or want.
Be creative about what you can offer as a free download: a ‘how to …’ PDF with top tips, a printable poster or drawing, a colouring in page or screen saver, a checklist or ebook with recommendations, or even a video recording with styling tips.
This can work especially well if you do commissions (e.g. How to commission a wedding jeweller – with great visual examples of your work of course!), teach (downloadable top tips, access to a free webinar, provide services (e.g. Free photography audit) There are so many options here, get creative and go for it!
Tip 5: Everyone loves a giveaway
We all love the thrill of being in with a chance of winning something.
Giveaways can be a simple and effective way to grow your mailing list.
An easy opportunity to get followers from your social media channels onto your email list (see tip 3).
Giveaways can also help grow follower numbers by encouraging your existing audience to tag their contacts to enter the giveaway too.
And competitions can be the perfect opportunity to collaborate with other businesses for mutual promotion and a brilliant bevy of prizes!
A couple of practical competition tips:
- Make it EASY for people to enter.
- Be super clear about what entrants have to do to win.
- Put the correct link to your competition in your social media bio so it’s a smooth, easy one-click journey.
- Make it easy for them to get to the place on your website where they have to sign up to your email list so they don’t have to search around for the right place – they won’t stay long!
- And indeed get them to give you their email address, not just their social media handle!
However before you do a give away or competition on social media ALWAYS check the rules of the social media you use carefully and thoroughly and make sure you have evidence of picking a winner totally at random.
Tip 6: Do a client survey
People love to share their opinion and a survey can be a great way to get them involved, garner valuable market research and stay in touch with what your audience needs and wants from you.
Firstly, think about what YOU want the survey to achieve for you, but also make it fun for the respondents. Ask them to fill out a SHORT survey with specific questions, such as:
- How did you find out about me?
- What specific magazines, blogs, shops/galleries, online shops/websites or events do they use regularly? (Maybe include a tick list to make it easier for them)
- What do you love the most about our products or services, our customer care, our website, …?
- When do they buy your kind of products or services normally? Is it for themselves or for others?
- When you are shopping or purchasing x what’s really important to you?
- Are there any products or services missing? If they could design something with you, what would that be?
- If they could ask you one question, what would that be?
Surveys can work really well if you are hosting craft workshops. Ask them about what they find specifically challenging around your teaching topic. Where they normally go with their questions. What they really would like to learn. What’s stopping them to do your workshops.
We at The Design Trust regularly use surveys before developing our new online workshops. Surveys give us a far better idea what our potential client’s questions or challenges are, or what the really want or need to learn. It involves our audience, and they are very happy to tell us what’s missing and what their challenges are.
We also let them know when this new workshop is likely to be launched. If they include their email address then we will offer them a special THANK YOU discount code if they sign up. An absolute win-win as the people who respond to the survey are very likely interested in the topic we will teach!
You may want to encourage people to fill out the survey by offering them a discount on their next order or enter all respondents into a prize draw. Both are great ways of saying, “thank you”.
Tip 7: Create a special offer
Many creatives offer a discount to encourage more email sign ups. This lets your audience try your product or service at a reduced rate, you capture their email list and can then continue to build relationships with them and add value so they become repeat customers.
Have you noticed that many major retailers have a pop up with a discount code? They have spent money on the research and know that growing an email list with people who are obviously interested in what they have to offer is the effective way forward.
But think beyond just discount codes … what about creating a special deal and offer something extra instead too? People love being treated specially!
Tip 8: Use your ‘About Me’ page
Your ‘About Me’ page is likely one of the most popular pages on your website. Take a look at your Google Analytics for evidence.
Unless you include an opt-in form for your mailing list you will lose these potential clients for ever. If they are reading about you on your ‘About Me’ page, chances are they like what they have seen already, and want to find out more. It’s the perfect place to add a friendly, inviting popup or static mailing list opt-in to catch their contact details there and then.
Tip 9: Get creative with your sign-up form
… and make it super easy for people to subscribe to your email list.
We cannot stress how important is it that you make the whole signing up process as easy as possible. Even though this may seem super obvious, we often see websites with the sign-up form hidden away somewhere.
You need to ensure that your sign-up form or forms are displayed at all the prominent places of your website, along with a clear call to action.
Think about using your navigation bar (at the top of each page), side bar and use different feature boxes – a subscription box that contains information about your offer along with a strong call to action, which you can use on blog pages too.
Switch it up a bit too. Keep an eye on your sign-up rates to see which blog or offer is the most popular for sign ups. You may be surprised!
And think about personalising your sign-up form too. Add images of your ebook or downloadable tips. Share what your subscribers can expect and put a bit of your personality into the text or picture. Research other people’s sign up forms for ideas.
Tip 10: Make your emails more shareable
If your emails are valued by your readers then make sure that you include regularly a “Forward to a Friend” link in your marketing emails. Many email marketing software applications have this feature built-in, or they enable you to use tools like AddThis, which recipients can use to share your email via social media.
And include the social sharing function on the landing page where your email sign-up is located.
Or simple add ‘Did you enjoy this newsletter? Why not forward it to a friend who might like reading it too!’
Tip 11: Set a challenge or offer a free email course
A brilliant way of adding value to your audience and growing your email list is to share your knowledge. Especially recommended if you teach, if you have a good profile or if your work is more expensive or complicated to understand straight away.
Offer your top tips, short videos about your creative processes or even offer a short free online course via a series of emails or via a Facebook group.
Or maybe challenge your followers to learn a new skill that you can teach them over a few days or weeks. Think about what you can offer your audience in terms of new skills or insights and make it fun and easy for them to join the challenge (and your email list!), get to know and trust you a little more, and learn some new skills too.
Tip 12: Start blogging
Blogging is a brilliant way to share your knowledge and interests, and to grow your mailing list. Blogging around specific key topics and key words will enable you to create content that is going to make it easier for your site to be found and therefore to rank higher in search engine results, bring the right people to your website, get them engaged with what you do, and leave them wanting more.
You can also create a series of emails or newsletters around certain topics and refer back to ‘older’ blog posts, so that you keep getting traffic to your website without too much extra work.
And finally…
Tip 13: Measure what works and what doesn’t work
The only way to really know what works best to grow your mailing list is to keep an eye on your subscription numbers and options. Try testing different offers, headlines, form placements or incentives.
Keep monitoring and comparing the types of offers that work best for your audience.
Once you start trying different strategies and examining the results, you’ll likely end up with a handful of offers that you know will drastically increase your sign-up numbers for your email list.
We believe that doing something is better than doing nothing, especially when it comes to email marketing. You may only get a few people to sign up to your mailing list when you offer them something extra BUT if you don’t try you won’t know and each thing you offer is a learning curve. You can then review what’s working and what isn’t and streamline your mailing list strategy as you go on. The important thing is to get started. And that over time you grow your mailing list.
Tip 14: Make sure it’s legal
If you are maintaining a database (even a paper one!) for promotional or selling purposes then you must register in the UK with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). This is a legal requirement due to the Data protection Act. You need to pay an annual fee too and to register you need to fill in a few forms. Many small businesses are not aware of this, however if you don’t comply then legal action might be taken against you. You can find more information about how to register and general GDPR legislation here. In the last few months they have updated their site and it’s much more user-friendly now.
Did you find Anne-Marie’s expert tips to grow your mailing list useful? Has she inspired you to try some of these techniques out? Want to share your own tips on how you grow your mailing list? Let us know below in the comments.
And … you can sign up for The Design Trust newsletter on our homepage, to be the first to read our creative business blog posts and tips, and find out when our online events or publications are out.
Thank you Anne- Marie. I am always trying to figure out new ways to get people to sign up for my VIP List and these will help.