What is an email list?
An email list is a list of details about people who specifically gave you consent to send them updates & promotions via email from your business on a regular basis.
Building an email list is not an effortless task. However, it is an exceptionally effective marketing strategy. In fact, email marketing is 40X more effective at converting prospects into customers as compared to social media or any other online platform. The reason why you should do this, is to create engaging contacts that can turn up into loyal customers.
A healthy email list, is one the best marketing assets for small businesses. However, there poses a challenge to create email list itself due to the rising inbox mess. Also, customers are becoming more receptive toward any unwanted communication; & so marketers should develop their subscriber lists with at most relevance and care.
There are a plenty of simple & effective ways for creating an email list, together with traditional, online, offline as well as emerging strategies like paid search, direct mail, events, special offers, etc.
Few challenges lying at our hand in order to make the most of the email list growth through every customer touch point are:

• Using these strategies sensibly
• Complying with all legal necessities
• Respecting subscriber preferences

Direct Mail
You can advertise email sign-up in all your ads, catalogues & direct-mail order forms. A trouble-free checkbox with fields for writing in an email address on bills, subscription renewals, etc. is all you need to offer to grow your list significantly. Always make sure to email these new subscribers as soon as you can as it’s essential to keep your brand fresh in their minds & continue the conversation further.

Enable Customers to Sign Up For Email through Email Sign-Up Boxes

Inserting a clear & evident form on your site will help facilitate email sign-ups for your site visitors. There are a few crucial things to consider when employing this tactic.

• Keep the look & feel of your website sign-up boxes clean. This makes them easy to find & becomes familiar to your audience.
• Try to place these sign-up boxes as a part of the top banner as majority test results have shown that those boxes located near the top of the website perform better than those located in the footer area.
• There should be a clear description of what’s kept in for a customer. Let them know exactly what they can expect while signing up, & sell the benefits to them for being on your email list.

Include Email Sign-Up Into Your Forms
As per a research, 75% of marketers think site registration is effective in terms of both list quality & quantity. Site registration is one of the successful means of acquisition for marketers. So make sure to include email sign-up into all account registration & e-commerce forms on your Website.
Make sure that the following things are taken care of:

• The reason for registering is clear & relevant to your target audience
• Advantages of registering for your email program are clearly listed
• Geographic & demographic information is collected for segmentation
• The call to action is notably displayed

Another great way to grow your email list is through Word of Mouth
For subscribers, who may have been on your list since a long period of time, a discount can get them into the conversation. Marketers should take advantage of word-of-mouth marketing by including email sign-up on viral components, such as features that allow site visitors to forward products, services, online information, notifications & many more to their friends.
It’s a good practice to ask the referrer not only for a friend’s email address but also for their full name so that the email can be personalized. Remember to add the referee’s full name to the email as well as by referencing them, you gain instant credibility & can attain much higher conversion rates.

Provide Email Sign-Up Opportunities for Potential Customers

When your site visitors request online price quotes, catalogues, company information, etc, ask them for their email addresses. This practice is mainly useful for catalogers, financial organizations, and real estate etc. The value of the information you are providing is directly proportional to the amount of personal data your clientele are willing to provide, so make sure the transaction is fair.

Make email acquisition a part of the checkout process
Retail stores asking their customers for their email addresses at the point of sale (POS) is a proven technique & is quickly gaining momentum. As per research, it was found that in-person & in-store events were ranked second in email acquisition quality as well as quantity.
To follow the same, it will be important for your associates to:

• Ask customers for their email addresses
• Explain to them the benefits of your email program
• Let them know exactly what they can expect in terms of email frequency & content
• Check back the email addresses with them to verify correct spelling & reduce the risk of error.

Send your customers a welcome email offering a free gift with any purchase
To encourage your clientele to give your store associates their email addresses, consider offering them a free product during their next purchase. Tell them an email will be sent to them to confirm their email address which can also include the free offer coupon. This will not only validate the email address but also encourage them to shop again.

Request customer email address during customer service calls
Customers are highly approachable during customer service calls & you should use it to your advantage by requesting email addresses as, at that particular point you have their full attention. Customer service representatives can provide a link to an email sign-up form in their email signatures when they are writing their own emails to follow up with customers.

Never buy email lists – A BIG NO NO!
Buying an email list may seem like a quick and easy way to a high ROI, but buying email lists is forbidden by ISPs.
There are no ways for you to determine the quality of the customers that you have purchased. Also, these customers are unfamiliar with your brand & will be quick to come down like a ton of bricks on you for sending them an unwanted message. You run a big risk of being blacklisted or marked as spam in a matter of seconds which will eventually impact your mail server and it would be difficult to run any further email campaign through your domain.
Also, almost every email marketing tools restricting their use to not to use email database from outside
So, by following liable best practices to create an email list, marketers create a win-win situation for both the customer and the brand. Companies gain long-term, profitable relationships with their customers who in turn receive offers for the products & services that are relevant to them.