How to Grow Your Email List Fast – 42 Actionable Strategies You Can Use Right Now

Host your own online summit. Online summits typically have a lineup of guest speakers all providing valuable information for your target audience. 

As the host, you’re going to get the most traction when you provide your guest speakers with marketing swipe files and images. This way everyone in the summit is promoting the event. Typically the presentations are pre-recorded, so most of the work is prior to the event.

Make sure the summit title is calling in your ideal client. You will get new, fresh subscribers who you can then nurture and present a signature offer to in as little as a few weeks following the online event.

Linda Barutha // Artist Income Strategist, Artist2CEO, LLC 

My top tip to explode your email list growth is to implement exit intent popups. It works by tracking the user’s mouse and triggers an action, such as an email signup form, as they are about to hit the exit/close button on a web page.

Exit intent popups are highly effective when you have an offer people can’t refuse, for example an eBook that you normally sell or a discount on a popular online course you sell. Regardless of what you’re trying to promote, the main aim is to get an email subscriber and add them to your list.

I’ve used this strategy on several of my businesses and have seen good conversion rates and it has led to some serious growth hacking on my email lists. 

Marco Baatjes // CEO & Founder, Caffeinated Face

There’s no point in being stingy on discount codes to new email  subscribers. If your business knows its customer lifetime value, you can  work backward from that to determine the maximum discount you can offer to first-time subscribers to your email list.

We’ve seen great success by offering discount codes to incentivize email sign-ups. We may not make money on the first order, but we profit off signups overall because many users go on to order more products in the future. 

Calloway Cook // President, Illuminate Labs

The number one tip I would give to those interested in growing their email list is to create a content upgrade for their most popular blog posts.

We believe in this strategy so much that we have a unique content upgrade for each of our 170 long form blog posts. So, I’m definitely a bit obsessive about that.

The good news is that by doing so you will be able to see a huge lift in your optin rate. In our case, we’ve found that lift to be about 225% above generic opt-in offers on our blog.

Vic Patel // Founder, Forex Training Group

My top tip on how to grow your email list is to write amazing, best-in-class content as blog posts. By doing so, you’ll build trust, rapport, and a genuine relationship with your audience. When they get home from work, they’ll have an urge to go directly to your site for more entertainment or education, sometimes both. To be specific, I’m talking about 2,000 to 10,000 word ultimate guides that cover every single  topic inside a concept.

For example, if you’re writing a post on virtual reality, then describe what it is, who invented it first, how it’s evolved, the controversies, where the technology is going, the possibilities, how companies use it now, and the potential pitfalls.

You want your article to be the only resource your audience needs on the subject. When they know they can expect this quality from you, you’ll drive millions of views, and receive tens of thousands of email subscribers in the process. This is literally what I did, so I know it works. 

Brian Robben // CEO, Robben Media

Our email marketing strategy revolves around webinars we create to grow awareness and help people learn about our service in an engaging way. This allows us to collect email addresses through our webinar signups which has been key as we grow our contact list and establish relationships. 

If you can provide some type of value upfront in exchange for someone’s email address they’re much more likely to share it with you which is part of the reason the webinar works because a lot of people see it as getting access to an interesting learning opportunity. Think about how your company can offer downloadable guides, access to group chats or other rewards in return for email addresses. 

David Adler // Founder & CEO, The Travel Secret

The single best method I’ve used to grow email lists rapidly is via website pop-ups. Add a pop-up to your site to ask for an email address to send updates. I’ve found that providing an incentive generates exponential growth. Years ago, I grew an email list from 5K to 150K in a little over a year with contests and promotions like a digital camera giveaway when at an online consumer electronics e-retailer.

The strategy still works, especially if you cookie the visitor and only hit them once, instead of every time they refresh or visit a new page. Make sure the incentive is clearly articulated and relevant to your brand to maximize conversions. 

Kent Lewis // President & Founder, Anvil Media, Inc. 

I’ve been focusing a lot recently on my email list growth, and I’ve 
managed to gain about 1,000 subscribers per month on average in the last few months. 

The biggest thing that impacted my growth was creating an email opt-in course based around my most popular content. In my case, my most popular content was related to making money online. So, I created a 15-day long email course called the ‘Guide to Making Money Online’ and stuck an opt-in for it on every relevant blog post on my site. 

Starting out, I was getting around 200-300 sign ups per month, and it’s 
been growing month over month ever since. The best part is, the subscribers who take the course are extremely active. I get dozens of emails per day from people who have signed up. 

Dylan Houlihan // Founder, Swift Salary

Have some kind of quiz, questionnaire or calculator on your website where visitors can put in their information and then get results that really interest them. Hubspot’s Website Grader is a great example of this.

Visitors anxious to improve their website are prompted to put in their website and email, with the promise that a detailed grade and score will be emailed to them when they do so. And so Hubspot creates a growing list of people interested in improving their website – which, conveniently, is precisely who Hubspot is trying to sell to. 

Calculators which solve things like How much money can I make? What would be my mortgage? Is my diet healthy? and then ask for an email in the last step to display the results work very well, also. I like how these tools provide more of a give-and-take transaction rather than just the typical pop ups of sites asking you to put in your email.

In the best of cases, if these calculators and tools are fun and interesting enough, you might even have hopes of getting the page shared and enjoying an exponential increase in your email list. 

Ryan Cook // Digital Marketing Specialist, Smartcare

The #1 tip that works best for us are quizzes and surveys. They engage our readers already on site, and give us valuable insights about what they are interested in. 

Depending on the setup we can then send them a) a result, such as a score, if it was a quiz, or b) the results from everyone, if it was a survey, or c) a content upgrade that corresponds with their preferences – which we just learned thanks to their answers. 

Either way we can always offer something valuable, and we already have them engaged, hence the conversion rate is very high. 

Chris Kaiser // Founder & CEO, Click A Tree

Most marketers erroneously believe they need a downloadable to entice people to give up their email list. This is so 2015. Today, the most 
persuasive email optins are NOT downloadable. I will give you a few 
examples. There was a relationship blogger. He told men if they opted to get on his list, he’d tell them how to know if a woman wanted a kiss. His list exploded. The answer was one sentence long: The woman leaned in. 

Here’s another example using my most popular optins. I add people to an exclusive Community Pinterest board which is something people in my niche would want. People love exclusive things. In addition, before StumbleUpon folded, I offered a Stumbling service for people who got on my list.

At my height, I’ve offered eight different optins. You don’t have to have just one and your optin(s) do not have to be downloadable

Janice Wald // Blogging and Social Media Coach, Mostly Blogging 

There’s so many great ways to grow your email list successfully but one of the ways that is often overlooked is the power of community. Facebook favours Groups, and creating an active and engaged group around your specific offering or niche is a fast way to grow your community and your email list.

In your sign up questions be sure to add an optional question about receiving your weekly or monthly newsletter. Most people tend to offer their email address willingly. A major bonus here is that these people are not coerced or ticked into subscribing to you, and they are exceptionally qualified as your target audience already so you’re not wasting your time on subscribers who will not open or engage with
your content.

Louise Donnelly-Davey // Founder (Blogger / Entrepreneur), Online Business Growth Hacks

The best way to grow your email list is through gated content. Many websites ask visitors to sign up for an email list and that can be a great way to grow your list, but when a visitor is likely to get something, they are more likely to give something-like their email address.

Gated content can be made available through a website pop-up or landing page. The more valuable the gated content, the more information an organization can ask for. For simpler content, like a single-page checklist or guide, ask only for the client’s name and email.

The more information you request, the more valuable the content should be. So, if your gated content is an instructional e-book, feel free to ask for organization name, title and phone as well as email. 

Katherine Hunter-Blyden // Principal, KHB Marketing 

Email lists are essential to my company because it is one of our marketing strategy and the best way to connect with my customers. It is a fast and accessible method of business communication that can greatly benefit my business.

One of my best and successful strategies in growing my email list is by promoting an online contest using my social media account. 

Giving freebies in exchange for contact information will help encourage the newcomer to click through my website and sign up using their email address. And I believe growing my email lists can yield reasonable rewards. 

Martin Seeley // Chief Executive Officer, Mattress Next Day

In the past, getting someone to provide you with their email address was pretty much simple and straightforward. But in these days of scams and spam, most folks are a lot more reluctant to take that step. They just figure that doing so will do nothing more than inundate their inbox with more unnecessary and irrelevant emails.

If you want to cross that hurdle, try giving out a freebie. It will obviously depend upon your business, your niche, your targeted customer, and your audience, but Internet enthusiasts dig freebies, trust me.

It might be access to an e-book you’re currently selling or just released. It could be company swag if you’re a bigger operation, or it could be a guide of some sort where you deliver expert and inside advice on how to achieve a particular goal. Again, it’s hard to specify this since it will depend upon your industry.

What you can nail down is the fact that you’re offering it for free. Will you get 100% buy-in? No. But you’ll probably see better results than with any other strategy because this is essentially old-school, but wholly relevant now. 

David Bakke // Marketing Expert, National Air Warehouse

Email marketing is a classic strategy that businesses should not ignore and to reach more people using this approach, we use our other channels to grow our email list.

The best trick to do this that has given us the best  results is by running contests and games, more often on our social media accounts. We make them share their email addresses with us in exchange for a token to participate in our prized events.

People just love incentives and they are enticed with this kind of strategy that they are willing to give this information with us to get a chance to win. 

Shari Smith // Founder, Shari – Sells

I have found that those exit-intent pop-ups offering special discounts in exchange for sign-ups have proven to be very effective in growing email lists.

But offering discounts may not be a viable solution for everyone. In such cases, a simple pop-up window would suffice, but your content will have to be very attractive and persuasive.

Ideally, you should make a very good case and tell your visitors exactly why they should provide you with their email address. For example, you could say something like “Be the first to know about exclusive offers” or “Get the latest updates on this season’s hottest trends”. 

Simonas Steponaitis // Marketing Manager, Hosting Wiki

Here is a great tip on how to grow your email list.

A few hours before you send an email out, post a teaser on Twitter. For example, you might say, “Wrote a long piece about virtual employee engagement with some very interesting data, and sending out via our 
newsletter later today. Link in bio.”

That way, anyone that follows you on Twitter (and folks that follow them) may see your message and be interested in signing up. 

Michael Alexis // CEO, TeamBuilding

My number one email list growth strategy would be giving out an ethical bribe to your potential target market.

This ethical bribe includes, but is not limited to, free pdf, free excel sheet wherein your market can fill up the respective fields, free audiobooks, and much more! But, in order to be able to get their emails, you will be requiring them to fill out a short form which would ask for their name and e-mail address.

This way, you can add them to your email list and send promotional emails whenever you are about to release a product. 

Lewis Keegan // Founder, SkillScouter

As a company we often use email to inform and update our patrons of what’s the latest. We also use it to get new ones. As time goes by, emailing lists degrade by some percent when people change their email addresses for some reason such as moving to a different company, when they simply opt-out of your email communication, etc.

This is why it is important to make sure that you are always adding fresh contacts to keep your numbers moving up. 

There are a lot of ways but there’s only one thing that pops my mind when I hear the words “email list growth strategy”. I believe encouraging your 
subscribers to share or forward your email works.

You should include an “Email to a Friend” button to gain you access to their friends, family, and 
colleagues. I would also suggest to include “Subscribe” buttons at the bottom of your email so people can easily opt-in too. This strategy has 
helped our business double or triple the growth in our email list. 

Jacob Martinez // Founder, SwiftClean

The most important thing to get people to subscribe to an email list is placing the prompts in the right places. Too many times I see people asking for newsletter subscriptions on their homepage, when users wouldn’t have even looked into their content.

It’s best to add these prompts on pages which add value, such as on blog posts themselves. That way, you’ll increase your chances of people signing up as they can now trust you upon reading your content.

Name: Itamar Blauer // SEO Expert, ItamarBlauer.Com

The #1 Strategy for list growth is to identify the absolute pain point of the ideal prospect, then create something for free that they perceive will provide the answer and quickly resolve their pain, but in effect takes them to a place where they actually need more help from you.

This leads them to enquire further for your help and is an ideal strategy for service providers or information-based products such as online programs. 

Lauren Clemett // Co-Founder, The Audacious Agency 

To grow your email list, you need a landing page. However, a landing page must in all times be kept as simple and straightforward as possible.

What is meant by that is that no redirection to other website pages should be required for a potential subscriber to understand your product or service.

A website visitor must be able to understand what you are all about in the first 5 seconds of being on that landing page. Avoid using long text boxes and stick to simple and easy to understand illustrations. Although having very little text on your landing page might not be ideal for SEO, it is primordial when growing your email list. 

Alexandre Mahe // CEO, Sküma

Having a good email list can definitely help you to distribute and communicate with your existing clients or customers. This allows you to distribute information through your “subscribers” just using minimal effort.

However, you need to grow your email list first and there are a lot of tips and strategies you can do.

As a business owner, the best way to grow your email list is by using a time-triggered pop-up survey. This allows your website visitors to have time be invested in your content and ask them if they want to subscribe in a certain amount of time. This has been very effective and it is the best way to grow my subscribers. 

Jacob J. Sapochnick // Immigration Attorney, Social Media Influencer & Founder, Law Offices of Jacob J. Sapochnick 

When it comes to building an email list, I have one ultimate go-to strategy: make it emotional.

People want to subscribe to a product/service that they feel an emotional connection with, whether it’s because of a need or a want. So when you’re creating a marketing strategy to get subscribers, get to know your target audience and play to their emotional needs.

Put yourself in their shoes and ask, what kind of content would serve my need? These days, the way to truly stand out is to be useful to your audience. For example, I apply this philosophy by creating high-quality content that provides my audience with their personal queries. I also collaborate with content influencers that I know my target audience will 
relate to.

Lastly, I make sure they want to connect with a community of like-minded people. It’s simple: Connect, provide, and engage. 

Justin Brown // CEO, Ideapod

Want to know how to grow your email list? Here’s the best advice I can give: Update your blog regularly, and include your email address at the end of your blog posts. 

If you know your audience and write engaging, informative, and SEO’d articles that appeal to that audience, they’re going to come to your website. And a lot of them are going to have questions. Make your email very visible on your website so they know how to get in touch. And when they reach out, add them to your email list! 

I admit that this isn’t going to get your tens of thousands of subscribers like some other tactics can, but you can be sure that the subscribers you do get are interested in your content. After all, they already reached out to you!

Jeneva Aaron // Founder & CEO, The HouseWire

Compared to social media and traditional marketing where it isn’t personal, email marketing remains the best way to connect directly with customers even on a personal level. However, to fully take advantage of email marketing, a company needs to have a large list of people to send their emails to.

The first step to build an email list is to drive traffic to your company. There are a variety of methods to drive traffic, and some may work better to reach your target customers based on their demographics and your industry, you can do this by posting on social media about the companies niche. It doesn’t matter what method so long as the company’s name goes out.

The next step is to analyze that list and see the best possible customers. The last step is to maintain those customers, that they will not unsubscribe. To keep them interested in the company even after they’ve purchased from you. 

David Meltzer // CEO / Insurance Agent, East Insurance Group

Our business operates from our website and email list. An our number one list growing strategy is our referral system.

Our readers have the option to share our emails with their friends and they received credit for our paid products for each referral. The reason this works so well, is that our current readers almost always refer us to friends who are in the same age and income bracket making them our ideal audience.

We don’t have to search for new readers, our current readers find them for us. 

Ben Reynolds // CEO & Founder, Sure Dividend

Growing a list is all about connecting your opt-in with a single, clear, compelling problem your audience has. A high-converting opt-in should be focused on solving that problem with a simple, actionable step that 
delivers a quick win. 

To find a quick win, look back at any replies, feedback, reviews, social media posts, etc. where your followers shared a success that you helped them achieve. Look for patterns, then create a lead magnet focused on that result. 

For example, a wellness brand could talk about a thousand different topics, but you have to start narrow. They might create a lead magnet called, The Top 3 Health Habits That Take Less Than 60 Seconds. Make a clear, attractive offer. Don’t get clever. Just help them get the result as quickly as possible. 

Bonus Tip: Once subscribers give testimonials about the lead magnet, include those on the opt-in page! 

Joe Kerns // Co-Founder MAJiK Marketing 

If you’re looking for a unique way to acquire new email addresses I would definitely suggest experimenting with influencer giveaways.

At Today’s Business, we had an NFL star, Chris Hogan, post an Instagram story giving away a signed football with a swipe-up to a landing page where we collected email addresses.

Within just 1 hour of launching this post, we collected 650 emails. In total, we acquired 1,322 emails in 24 hours from a single Instagram story. 

Joe Sanfilippo // Head of Business Development, Today’s Business 

As a blogger, it’s important that your audience connects with you on a personal level beyond just the written word of your blog. 

I think too many bloggers believe that adding an email subscription box will ensure they’ll get devoted email subscribers. I don’t quite agree with this notion. In my case, not only do I blog about vinyl records and turntables and respond to emails from my readers, but I create videos on YouTube where visitors can see my face, see my vinyl collection, and interact with me on the YouTube platform.

And due to that, when they discover that I also have an email list, they’re much more excited to sign up for my newsletter because they feel like they already know me, enjoy my content and personality, and are excited to get more “bonus” content in the form of my email newsletter. 

Michael Moore // Owner/Blogger, Devoted to Vinyl 

Email marketing is part of the growth strategy at Smith Thompson and we have gained a tremendous amount of traffic using it.

The reality is for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42. And nearly 9 out of every 10 marketers use email marketing to distribute content organically.

Following are my top two strategies for email list growth:

Create great content. Content is the only reason that the customer will be attracted to subscribe to your newsletter. When you have answered what the customer is looking for, it means that your content is valuable to them and they look forward to seeing more of your content.

Secondly, create a free tool or resource. A great way to capture your audience’s attention and grab their emails is to offer them a free tool or resource that they have been looking for. This will enable you to help them and also the customer will look at your content to be more authentic and reliable.

Adeel Shabir // Content Marketing Executive, Smith Thompson

Ask for the minimum essential information in the sign-up form. Now that people are aware of the cyber security threats, they hesitate in giving away some personal information that they feel is not required. But, we humans always want more, more and more!

And that’s where the digital marketers go wrong while asking too much information from the leads.

We naturally want the users to sign up for our offerings, but we end up scaring them away with our temptation to collect the maximum information on them. We might have well-optimized content, free trials or samples, quizzes, and many more, but can they be of any use if all we’ve got is the shrinking email subscriber list!

Finally, I’ve understood that we can always acquire other details later when we have the prospect’s complete trust in our brand’s authenticity. And yes, it’s certainly helping! 

Nathan Sebastian // Content Marketer GoodFirms

Here are some of my thoughts on how to grow your email list from scratch.  

I have moved away from using annoying pop-ups and notification bars. Instead, I add a link to my email opt-in landing page at the beginning of each post. This can be a simple sentence in a highlighted box – something like ‘Want to get your budget under control? Grab my free budget template here!’ 

It is effective and does not annoy my readers. It is also much easier on the eyes than if a reader goes on to read an article and has a rude, abrupt pop-up to deal with. 

Freya Kuka // Founder and Owner, Collecting Cents

How do you grow your email list? My best strategy is: Give them money in return of subscription.

More or less no one wants to reject money! So, our primary strategy is to give our subscribers $10 off on their first purchase. In return, we ask them to give us an email address. Most of the visitors do give us an email as they want a discount.

Once they make a purchase, then their phase of “customer loyalty” starts. In this regard, we send them personalized emails according to their purchase history and other demographics. Not only do our subscribers enjoy the newsletter but also refer it to others. So, the point to ponder is to not only give them a discount but also send them personalized content to maintain an email list. 

Lisa Arlington // Founder, Giftsnerd LLC 

One of our favorite methods for growing our email list is through campaigns which incentivise signing up for emails.

For example, if a user signs up to our email list during one of these campaigns, they might get a discount code to use when choosing an internet provider’s contract.

Incentivising something as simple as providing an email address always works. If it’s easy enough for anyone to do, and they can benefit from it, chances are they’ll give it a shot. And, even if they don’t follow through with a purchase in the end, they’ll still be signed up to your email list.

Carla Diaz // Cofounder, Broadband Search

We use social proofs to encourage more signups. It is human psychology that people feel more comfortable buying things that have more positive reviews and checking what the hype is all about.

Social proof is one effective psychological factor that best describes social behavior where people feel comfortable to follow others. There are different ways to use social proofs.

You can add testimonials on the landing page. You can also add reviews, or show the total number of subscribers. The bubble notifications on the consumer’s screen will help marketers to increase the signups and eCommerce conversions. 

Heloise Blaure // Founder, Home Kitchen Land 

If you check your Google Analytics, you’ll probably find your About page is one of the most frequently visited parts of your website. And that makes 
sense when you think about it.

Anyone who is engaged with your content will  probably want to learn more about you. That makes it a ripe opportunity to grow your subscriber base. 

I recommend putting at least two calls-to-actions to enroll in your email list. The first one should come after your introduction after you summarize how you help your target clients or customers. And the second should go at the bottom of the page at the end of the text. 

Robert Baillieul // Digital Marketing Manager, Lombardi Financial Publishing

Really understand what’s going on in the mind of your potential subscriber as they hit the sign-up form. Take your cue from Eugene Schwartz’s stages of awareness and realise by the time these people see your form, they really want what you’re offering, the desire is already there; you no longer need to persuade them. 

All you need to do is not scare them off. What’s the worst that could happen to subscriber? Spam. How do you remove those fears? Show your human 
side because companies spam, humans don’t. 

Keep the copy lighthearted, reference your busy personal life, your preference to try to avoid sends during dinner time, throw in a nice smiley headshot – anything that makes it suggest they are entering into a one-on-one dialogue that they have control over. 

Steven Sedgwick // Director, SRS Copywriting

We hold free informative webinars for marketing our online training courses. We promote these webinars on various social media channels and paid promotions. We collect the email addresses of people who register for our webinars.

Our webinars provide good educative content and helping us to build trust among our potential customers. Many people who visit our website 
register for these webinars. 

Ashwini Rao // Founder, PMExperto 

My best tip on how to grow your email list is to do it all. Find as many contact points with potential subscribers as you can and use them all.

Try different things to grab attention such as funny graphics, interesting text, and even small games like spinning a wheel. Don’t mess around with trying to find the one best, most effective way to get a subscriber, I don’t think it exists.

It all comes down to getting the right message in front of the right eyes at the right time and the more you put out there the more chance something will hit the sweet spot.

Chris Waltenbaugh // Payment Processing Expert, Payment Depot