Perhaps the most important part of your email marketing campaign is its recipients. After all, without a mailing list, there's nowhere for your emails to go. In this video, we'll discover the tactics that businesses use to build up their mailing lists. A huge part of email marketing is lead generation. Lead generation is the practice of collecting a potential customer's email address. Every time you acquire an email address, you're generating a lead that could potentially turn into a sale. And since the main purpose of email marketing is to turn possible subscribers into loyal customers, leads are pretty important. The moment you start generating leads, you've begun building up your mailing list. How do you go about getting those leads? Email marketers typically use one or more of the following strategies. Website prompts, display ads which are shown in the Google Display Network or through Creatio, SEMrush and Taboola. Social ads like Facebook lead ads, search engine marketing or SEM, referrals, and direct email marketing. One no-cost way to build your mailing list is to create a prompt on your website asking customers to provide their email address. Marketers love this technique because it doesn't require any additional budget and it's a single tactic that makes all the difference. Users visit websites for a reason. If they're visiting your website, they are at the very least intrigued by your brand to some extent. So, it's a great idea to add a prompt on your homepage that encourages them to provide their email. You can even offer them something in return, like a discount code or some kind of free content. A website prompt is a digital banner that calls on a website visitor to act in some way. Another way is through display ads. Display ads are graphic ads on websites and apps through banners comprised of photos, text, or videos. When used in an email marketing context, they will include a place for the Internet user to fill in their email, or it will link them to a learning page where they can sign up. When the email is filled in, the lead is generated and the email is added to the mailing list automatically. Display ads are an effective way to build up your mailing lists, but keep in mind that they do come at a cost. At many organizations, there is no budget allotted for list building. You may want to focus on some best practices that don't require spending. Of course, you may work in an organization that does have a budget for list building. Recall that when someone creates a website or a blog, they have the choice to opt into the Google Display Network, and if they choose to do so, the ads will appear on their site. Those are display ads. Another great way to get email addresses added to your mailing list is through the use of social media ads. If you use social media, you've probably seen social ads before. If you don't use social media personally, you can always go back to the course before this one to learn more about it. Social ads are paid advertisements on social media platforms targeted to social media users. Some social media channels offer ad formats specific for lead generation. For example, Facebook has lead ads. These are similar to display ads in that they combine text, images and a URL that links to a website where customers can learn more or buy products. However, these ads feature a form, where users submit personal information such as their name, email, or anything else the advertiser chooses. And, rather than existing on a website or blog, they exist on social media. Let's say a book publisher wants to build up their email list using Facebook lead ads. The publisher provides an incentive for people to sign up for their list. Anyone who adds their email to the blank field can download one chapter of their newest book at no cost. All they have to do is sign up by providing an email and agree to the terms and conditions set by the brand. You learned about search engine marketing in a previous course. But let's talk about its relationship to your email marketing campaign. Recall that SEM is the increase of a website's visibility in a search engine through paid advertising. If you are using google.com to search for something, you will see some paid text ads above the organic results. This is an example of search engine marketing. One way to build your list using SEM is to include a discount or other type of incentive written out in plain text in your ad, enticing those who subscribe immediately in the ad copy. Another way is to use SEM specifically for email marketing lead generation. So if a customer is browsing a website, they may see an ad for your company with a form included directly in it. They can fill out the form then in there resulting in them subscribing to your list. One way to get additional emails without added cost is to rely on customer referrals and forwards. A customer referral is a word of mouth initiative that encourages existing customers to introduce their family, friends, and contacts to become new customers. Think about how much you trust your best friend or closest family member. If they told you you'd like something, you might believe them. Customer referrals are incredibly valuable because research has found that people are four times more likely to buy a product when they are referred by a friend. If your brand has a loyalty or a referral program, you can offer subscribers points, discounts, or credits toward their next purchase, in exchange for them sharing a referral link with friends. Or you can keep it even more simple and ask them to forward the email to friends. Either way, the goal is to get another subscriber and even possibly another customer, and referrals and forwards can help you achieve that. While we are talking about building your list, it's important to discuss the ethics around handling Personally Identifiable Information, or PII. PII basically refers to any data that could potentially identify a specific individual. When people share information with a company, it's important to use it in ways that build trust and for only the intended purpose. Your subscribers didn't have to share this information with you, but they did, and in doing so, they are trusting your company to use it for good. As a digital marketer, it's your job to make sure you are up-to-date on your country's latest laws and legislation regarding PII. Okay let's recap. To generate leads or build your mailing list, apply these tactics. Use website prompts, display ads, which are shown in the Google Display Network or through Creatio, SEMrush and Taboola, social ads like Facebook lead ads, search engine marketing, referrals, and direct email marketing. We'll talk some more about lists throughout this section, so stick with me.
