Email is 40x more effective at getting new customers than Facebook or Twitter is.

Email lists are valuable assets. You can use email addresses to keep in touch with existing customers and connect with prospects. Email marketing, still one of the most effective tactics, requires building an list.

Don’t resort to spammy tactics to capture addresses.

There are a few ways that you can acquire people’s email addresses with white-hat techniques.

1: Create Downloadable Resources.

If you write a free eBook, you can require that people enter their email addresses as a prerequisite for downloading. This gives you an advantage over buying address lists, since you know the people who signed up for the downloadable product of yours are are already interested in your company.

2: Write Valuable Newsletters.

Second, write a regular newsletter and invite people to sign up for it. The top use for email marketing is the newsletter.

You can ask with a CTA at the end of your blog posts, on your front page, and on social media sites.

Writing email newsletters ensures that current subscribers stay involved with and aware of your brand. If your content is particularly relevant, then they may encourage their friends to sign up.

Even unsubscribes are good news for newsletters. Unsubscribers are not so much lost customers as time gained. Clean, up-to-date lists perform better, and lessen the likelihood of email systems marking your emails as spam or promotions.

3: Run Social Media Contests.

Social media contests are a great way to measure and increase engagement. You can improve the amount of website clicks, comments, and likes by providing people incentives to engage.

Require an email address in order to enter the contest. People will be willing to give an email in order to keep up with contest updates. Then you can use their address to keep them coming back for more of your content, even after the contest has ended. One in three entrants agree to receive information from the company even after the contest has ended.

Instead of acquiring expensive or outdated lists of addresses, create your own lists using the valuable tactics of content marketing.

Sources
1. eMarketer
2. Hubspot
3. Pardot

By Esther Grace Ehrenman, Digital Editor and Strategist

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