10 Reasons You Should Build An Email List
There are countless different things you can spend your time on when you are managing a website or blog.
I don’t know about you, but personally I could fill just about any number of hours that my work week could possibly have, because there are always other things that I want to be working on.
With a limited amount of time being available it is important to use your time on the things that will get results for your business, and one of those priorities should be to build an email list.
In this article you’ll discover 10 reasons you should be making your email list (or lists) a priority for your business.
1. Decreased reliance on Google, Facebook, or other fickle traffic sources
Google search traffic is the holy grail for many marketers. While that traffic is certainly valuable, the past few years have shown that things can change very quickly and that you and I are never in control of search rankings.
Google has manually penalized thousands of sites, and even more have had their rankings destroyed by a Google algorithm change. I’ve personally had sites lose 25-30% of their traffic overnight, and that is without a manual penalty for doing something wrong. I was just on the wrong side of an algorithm change. Many others have had much worse experiences.
Facebook is another highly-sough-after source of traffic, but we’ve seen that change as well. If you spent a few years building up a huge fan base on Facebook you were probably really disappointed when your posts stopped being visible to all of your followers. Now you’ll have to pay Facebook to show your content to most of your fans.
I’m not against Google or Facebook, but when you rely on them as traffic sources there is a lot that is outside of your control. You could build up a great source of traffic only to see that change very quickly. But with an email list you have much more control.
2. Win the trust of your subscribers
Repeated contact with your subscribers is a great way to build trust and develop a relationship with your most loyal followers.
Think about the email lists that you subscribe to. Chances are you feel more of a connection with someone if you read an email from them once a week, or however often they send an email.
Your subscribers will get used to seeing your name in their inbox, and hopefully they will look forward to your emails. When this happens you have developed trust that is incredibly valuable.
3. Repeat traffic
Getting traffic to your website or blog can be hard work. One of the best things about having an email list is that people who choose to subscribe to your list are very likely to return to your site at some time in the future.
Of course, your emails can include links to your site, so every time you email your list you will be attracting more repeat visitors. Those repeat visits over a period of time can be very valuable to you, regardless of how you choose to monetize your site.
Related Reading: The Definitive Guide To Choosing A Blog Monetization Strategy.
4. Provide value to your followers
Not only is list building good for you and your business, but it can also be very beneficial for the people who subscribe. People want the information or resources that you have to offer, and when you provide them with value it is a good situation for everyone. If you focus on helping your visitors, subscribers, and followers, good things tend to happen with your business because you will have their trust.
5. Sell your own products
An email list is incredibly valuable if you want to sell your own products. Even if you don’t plan on creating and selling products right now, once you have a really solid list you may want to consider it because there is potential to make a lot of money with your own products.
The combination of building an email list and selling digital products is my preferred method for making money.
6. Increased affiliate revenue
Selling your own products isn’t the only option for making money from an email list. You can also promote other people’s products and earn affiliate commissions for sales from your list.
Of course, you’ll want to be careful and only promote products that you truly believe in, otherwise you’ll wind up losing the trust of your subscribers and they won’t buy based on your recommendations.
But if you use this approach with some moderation it can produce amazing results. Even if you do sell your own products you can also promote complimentary and non-competing products as an affiliate to boost your revenue.
Related Reading: The Best Affiliate Marketing Plugins For WordPress Bloggers.
7. Get lasting value from today’s visitors
Have you ever had a big rush of traffic one day and then had the traffic levels go back to normal? Have you wondered what you really got out of that traffic, or what long-term impact it will have?
Well, if you’re not soliciting email addresses from your visitors that rush in traffic may not make any impact long-term because most visitors will leave your site and never return.
However, the subscribers that you get today may continue to visit your site, buy your products, and add value to your business as long as they are subscribed to your list.
8. Improve revenue steadily over time
As you focus on adding more subscribers each day your list will continue to grow.
Each day, week, month, and year you will see your list grow, and that means more opportunities to attract repeat visitors, more potential for selling your own products or affiliate products, a stronger relationship with more people in your targeted audience, and in general more influence.
All of those things will typically lead to increased revenue with time. Your list may not generate a lot of traffic or sales for you right now, but how much impact could it have for your business two years from now if you continually focus on building your list?
9. Increase the value of your business
As your revenue and profits grow, so does the value of your business. So your focus on building an email list can and should help you to increase the value of your business should you ever decide to sell.
Also, a strong list can add even more value to the business because many potential buyers would love to have access to that email list.
Maybe they see the list as a great way to protect themselves against the possibility of a drop in organic search traffic from Google, or maybe they have other products or services that they want to be able to promote to your list.
Any way you look at it, building a quality email list is one of the best things you can do for your business.
10. Can be scaled
One of the great things about email marketing is that it does not need to take a lot of your time. As your traffic and revenue grow you don’t necessarily need to invest more time into your email marketing.
You can continue to dedicate the same amount of time, but you’ll get a lot more out of it as your list grows. Once you have the email subscription forms on your site (and preferably a lead magnet that will entice visitors to subscribe) you can let it collect email subscribers on autopilot.
Also, it takes the same amount of time to write an email that you will send to 100 subscribers as it does to write an email that you will send to 10,000 subscribers.
Growing your list isn’t adding more work for you, but it is adding more value.
Wrapping it up
While the prospect of building an email list may look daunting, it’s easier than you might think.
Tools and platforms like GetResponse now make it easier than ever to build an email list, deploy opt-in forms, and build high-converting landing pages.
The upside is that you’ll have more traffic, more shares, and more revenue as a result of focusing on building your email list.