Email marketing requires constant maintenance of a database of email addresses.  Whether you’re starting your database or already have one established, building your database to add more interested potential clients or users is vital to the success of your marketing strategy.  To keep building your email database, try some of the following strategies and watch the number of engaged contacts on your list grow:

Share, share, share

Make sure that whatever you send out, there are options to share the email which in turn gives an option to subscribe to the list.  The key here is to use great content that people will want to share.  The best way to make great content is to make useful or very amusing content.  It must stand out from the other correspondence your contacts are bombarded with every day.  So, make sure that what you’re doing is unique, fresh and exciting enough that readers not only want to read what you’ve sent, they want to share it!  Use great graphics; remember as the saying goes, a picture is worth 1000 words.  The faster you intrigue your readers, the more likely you’ll hook them into reading more.

Subscription Types

The more appropriate the content for your contacts is, the more likely people will be to interact with your email or to sign up in the first place.  Depending on the content you’re creating, you can offer content-related subscription types and/or frequency-based subscription types.  This will help your contacts feel more cared for and mean they are more likely to sign up to be on your list, as the subscription fits their needs.

Use Offers and Resources

In order to increase your numbers make special offers for coupons or resources redeemable only by signing up to be on the email list.  Ebooks, printables, and discounts are just some of the options you can use to entice your readers into subscribing.  These can be offered through your website, networking events and of course social media.  This brings us to our next point.

Social Media

This is the way many people are now interacting with brands and has become as popular if not more popular than email itself.  By linking in to great content on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and having subscription options available there, you’ll make great strides in building your database.  Making special offers through social media with a requirement to sign up, as mentioned above, is a fantastic way to get more addresses.  And of course, sharing through social media is another great advantage, as sharing on social media is even more common than through email.

As mentioned at the beginning, the golden rule to growing any email marketing list is having great content.  Promotional content with no added value to the readers won’t get people to share and interact – which is the ultimate goal.  So, make sure you’ve got your five-star content together before beginning a new campaign and use the tips above to get the most out of it.

Looking for more information about email marketing?  Check out my post about email marketing and what you need to know about it here.