Email marketing can be a powerful tool for attracting potential customers and promoting brand awareness. Here's how to build an email list to engage with your audience and drive growth.
Do you need help building an email list that actually converts? From creating irresistible lead magnets to boosting your social media marketing, these tactics will help you build an email list that will generate a higher ROI in 2025. So, let’s dive in and learn how to turn your email list into a valuable asset for your business.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves sending email updates to people who have opted-in or subscribed. These messages could be email newsletters, promotional offers, product updates, or any other content that may interest the recipient.
Email marketing aims to build and nurture relationships with potential customers, promote brand awareness, and ultimately boost sales and revenue. Hence, email marketing is a powerful tool for businesses looking to engage with their audience and drive growth.
How to Build an Email List That Converts
With the right email list-building strategies, businesses can attract potential subscribers and convince them to opt-in to their mailing list. This section will explore some of the top email list-building strategies you should consider.
1. Offer Lead Magnets
Offering lead magnets is one of the most effective ways to build an email list. These are free incentives or offers that brands use to entice potential email subscribers to fill in the opt-in forms. Lead magnets can come in many forms, including free ebooks, whitepapers, webinars, discount codes during Black Friday, and more.
First, ensure you create a specific and targeted lead magnet that resonates with your target audience to get the most from your lead magnets.
For example, a business that sells skincare products may offer a free ebook on “10 Tips for Glowing Skin” as a lead magnet. This lead magnet would appeal to their target audience and provide value in exchange for their email addresses.
Secondly, prominently display the lead magnet. The homepage or a dedicated landing page is the best place to display your lead magnet on your website. You can use different types of pop-ups, which you can easily create with pop-up builder software, to grab the attention of your visitors.
This Exploding Kittens pop-up is a great example.
Finally, optimize your dedicated landing page for maximum conversions. Ensure your landing page communicates the value of the lead magnet and includes a clear CTA to encourage subscribers to opt in.
2. Invest in Content Marketing
Content marketing is another effective way to build an email list. By creating valuable, informative content, businesses can attract potential subscribers and encourage them to opt in to receive more content.
To effectively use content marketing for email list building:
- First, understand your target audience: It’s important to know your target audience and the content they would find valuable. You can conduct surveys or use analytics tools to understand their interests, pain points, and preferences.
- Create high-quality content: Develop relevant and valuable content for your audience. This could include blog posts, videos, podcasts, or social media posts. You can always use a content generator to create content easily, especially if you don’t have a copywriting team.
- Use guest posting: Reach out to other blogs or websites in your industry and offer to guest post. Include a call-to-action in your post, encouraging readers to subscribe to your email list. Search for the job title “Content Marketer” on LinkedIn and reach out to them with a compelling guest post pitch.
- Promote your content: Use various channels to promote your content. You can do this by including a CTA in your content, social media posts, or in your email signature.
One successful example of a brand using content marketing to build an email list is Hubspot. Hubspot’s blog provides valuable marketing insights and resources. Also, at the end of each blog post, they offer a lead magnet relevant to the content shown below.
This encourages readers to opt-in to receive more content from Hubspot while also helping them build their email list.
3. Run Co-marketing Campaigns
Co-marketing campaigns involve partnering with other brands to promote each other’s products or services to your respective email lists. This can be a highly effective way to build your email list while promoting another company’s offerings.
To run successful co-marketing campaigns, these are the steps to follow:
- Select a partner whose target audience and brand values align with yours. This makes it easier for both parties to create a mutually beneficial offer and a campaign that resonates with your audience.
- Establish clear mutual goals for the campaign. This will help both parties stay focused and ensure the campaign succeeds.
- Ensure all the parties promote the campaign on various marketing channels, from email marketing to social media. This will help maximize the reach of the campaign and attract new subscribers.
- Measure and analyze the campaign’s results to determine its effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. This can help inform future co-marketing campaigns and ensure continued success.
One successful example of a brand that runs co-marketing campaigns is this ebook Linkedin and Hubspot co-published.
Hubspot promoted LinkedIn’s social selling tips to their email list, which would gain LinkedIn more qualified leads. But Hubspot got to create a lead magnet, which would grow their email list.
4. Leverage Social Media
Social media is a powerful tool for building an email list. Businesses can use social platforms to promote lead magnets, share valuable content, and run ads.
To leverage social media for email list building, start by providing valuable content on your social media channels that boost your engagement rates. You can always repurpose your blog content into interactive types of content that resonate with your audience, like videos, infographics, podcasts, carousels, etc.
Use clear CTAs on your social media channels that encourage your audience to sign up for your email list. This can be a simple message inviting your audience to join your email list, links to sign-up forms, or landing pages like Hootsuite does in the tweet below.
In addition, run social media contests encouraging your audience to sign up for your email list. For example, you can run a contest that requires email signup for your email list to enter into a drawing for a prize.
5. Use Paid Advertising
Paid advertising can be a highly effective way to boost the email list-building process. By running targeted ads on platforms such as Google and Meta, businesses can attract potential subscribers and convert them into loyal customers.
To do this effectively, ensure you give a valuable offer that will entice people to sign up for your email list. Your offers should provide a good deal to your target audience and could be a discount code, a free eBook, or access to exclusive content.
Here’s a great Facebook Ad example.
Your offer must include compelling copy and visuals that make it straightforward for people to understand why they should sign up for your email list.
In addition, use retargeting ads to show ads to people who have already visited your website or interacted with your brand in some way. This can help increase the chances of them signing up for your email subscriber list.
Finally, always measure the success of your ads by tracking metrics like bounce rates, click-through rates, and average conversion rates on tools like Google Analytics. Then, optimize your campaigns based on your results.
6. Hosting Webinars
Webinars can be a powerful tool for building an effective email list. By offering valuable information and insights during a live webinar, you can attract users and encourage them to fill out the pop-up form.
One successful example of a brand using webinars for email list building is DigitalMarketer. The company hosts regular webinars and online events on various digital marketing topics. Attendees must register with their email addresses, which helps the company add subscribers to its email list.
If you’re looking to use the same strategy as Digital Marketer, start by choosing a topic that is relevant to your target audience and that you are knowledgeable and passionate about. The more engaging and valuable your topic is, the more likely people will sign up and attend.
Then, create a dedicated landing page for your webinar that outlines the event’s details, including the date, time, and topic, and provides an easy way for people to register. Ensure your landing page is optimized for conversions and includes a clear call-to-action to sign up for your email list.
Next, promote your webinar through various channels, including social media accounts, email, and your website. Use targeted advertising to reach people likely to be interested in your webinar topic.
Finally, follow up with webinar attendees to ensure customer retention even after the webinar. You can thank them for attending and provide them with additional resources or information related to the topic.
In Closing
Building a high-quality email list is a crucial aspect of any successful digital marketing strategy in 2025, which you can achieve by implementing the right email marketing strategies.
We’ve discussed some of these key strategies above. They include offering lead magnets, investing in content marketing, running co-marketing campaigns, leveraging social media, using paid ads, and hosting webinars.
By implementing these strategies, you can grow your email subscriber base. However, building an email list requires patience and commitment. So continuously monitor and adjust your strategies based on your results to ensure you keep a valuable and engaged email list. All the best!
