List Growth

Grow your list like a pro and make the most out of your email marketing efforts!

Vladislav Stankevičius
February 12, 2024

Last week, I had an interview with a follow-up technical task where I was asked - how would you grow our email list?

While I thought it was an easy question, I still decided to do some research and answer this question properly.

Some opportunities to capture customers’ emails are still overlooked.

List growth is essential to email marketing as it impacts your reach, engagement, and $$$ performance.

More emails = More revenue.

It really is that simple.

I’ll cover basic and more advanced ways to grow your list in this newsletter.

Let’s start with pop-up forms 👇

Popups and flyouts come in many shapes and sizes.

In the cookieless era, capturing visitors’ contact information on the first visit is a must.

The best brands in the world always change their popup for the upcoming relevant cycle.

Specific single-day sales tend to be harder, but things like ‘‘Easter sale’’ or ‘‘Black Friday sale list’’ tend to increase conversions.

The main hypothesis is that this subconsciously communicates to the consumer that ‘‘the brand is living’’.

Testing popups/flyouts:

As you think through the possibilities of what would work well on your site, consider the variables you can play with to create specific experiences.

Different timing:

Show after X of seconds, after scrolling X% of the page, or on exit intent.

Frequency:

The popup disappears forever if someone fills it out. If they haven't filled it out, show it to them again every time they visit, and show it again X days after closing it out.

Device:

Mobile-only, PC, or both. Also, you can test which works best on each platform.

By URL:

Consider testing different popups on certain product pages; if you’re viewing t-shirts, having a popup reflecting t-shirts gets a higher opt-in.

Try to use multistep popup form and on the first screen add two or even three call to actions like in the example below:

You might be thinking that the extra step in the beginning can lead to lower opt-in rates, but the truth is that it’s actually creating a micro-commitment that leads to higher opt-in rates.

Sounds crazy, but I’ve seen many examples when such test outperformed the traditional popup form.

Moreover, you can even try such test idea somewhere in your emails.

There are many popup tools out there and many more variations to test. These are just the basics!

💡 Tip: If you’re working with a bigger brand, consider to try 3-rd party tools for testing different ways of capturing users’ data.

Yes, it will add extra costs, but the return on investment can be much higher.

For example: JustUno. Great tool with many options to choose from for popups: Gamification, Quizess, Personalization, and more.

Traditional and/or exit-intent popups are often used to capture email addresses when a new, non-subscribed visitor comes to the site and tries to exit the site.

This is like a last chance to say goodbye to your visitor ;(

You’ll most commonly see these popups with some sort of offer or discount, as this angle converts higher than simply asking someone to join your mailing list.

Trade something valuable (not necessarily a discount) in exchange for their email address.

Probably one of the greatest options for list building.

You can collect zero-party data (name, age, gender and etc.) from users and use it to build more personalized flows, emails, and overall experiences.

You can get amazing opt-in rates and better conversion rates with good and engaging quizzes.

Brands like Obvi combine different popups and add a quiz to the header of the website.

The brands I used to work with used only quiz funnels, and they performed amazingly well. Here is an example from the Keto Cycle brand.

Think about how you could implement engaging quizzes for your brand.

Subscribe or embed forms on your website.

Some of the brands dedicate a whole page to the subscription form.

This might increase the opt-in rates if you describe why visitors must subscribe to your list in more detail.

Here is a good example from MilkRoad. My favorite crypto newsletter, by the way.

Regarding embed forms, you can usually find those somewhere in the footer of the website.

Don’t believe those can make a huge impact, but it's still good if your footer is empty.

Every brand has its own presence on social media these days.

Every platform allows you to add a link to the profile's header.

Why not use this opportunity to collect more emails?

I would recommend using taplinks where users can select multiple options on how to engage with your brand. Here is an example from BURGA.

Just imagine: Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and probably many other platforms where you can organically collect emails.

Give users a good reason to subscribe, and you’re all set.

💡 Pro Tip: Use social media channels and Email Marketing to drive the growth of the subscribers.

People who subscribed on social media most likely haven’t seen your emails, and people who bought your products probably haven’t seen your social media channels.

Yes, you can use a referral program to grow your list.

Beehiiv, the platform I am using to send newsletters, has an amazing referral program that can be automated.

Here is an example from the Morning Brew newsletter:

The logic is simple: Create a reward > Add milestones > Share the link with subscribers > See how you grow.

For rewards, you can create literally anything; it can be physical or digital items.

Once the subscriber reaches the milestone, you can set up an automatic email with the prize for that milestone.

Or you can manually fulfill the rewards. Isn’t this amazing?

💡 Think about how you could implement something similar to the brand you’re working with.

Trying paid ads might be a good idea, depending on your audience and niche.

Especially if you’re already monetizing your email list.

Usually, paid ads where you push users to subscribe to the free newsletter with a clear value have really low CPAs ($0.10-$0.50).

There are many different platforms where you can try to launch paid ads: Meta, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, other newsletters, partnerships with other publishers, etc.

You probably know your audience better than me.

💡 Pro tip: I recommend using a separate landing page, as I showed you in the Milkroad example.

Give users a good reason to subscribe, describe how users will benefit from your newsletter, and show testimonials or social proof.