Email marketing needs email list, without an email list, you cannot send marketing emails. Success of your email marketing campaigns depend on how big your list is and whether your subscribers are genuinely interested in your products or services. The best way to build an email list is through voluntary subscriptions from your target audience. However, most of the time, this does not become possible as people avoid submitting emails for the fear of spam. Therefore, you will have to use a method like email exchange, where you offer something for free for subscribing to your email list. If you offer valuable content, you can of course get genuine subscribers as people might not want to miss your content. While building an email list, you need to reach out to your target customers. For example, if you have a gaming website, you need to reach out to gamers. You also need to think about retention to avoid unsubscribing, therefore you need to consistently provide valuable content.
By the way, do you have an email list?
I think an email list is important.
I feel that a lot of forum owners should have them. Many feel they're not necessary for a forum but that isn't exactly true. If you mass email from a forum, because of the way email systems are setup on forums, many of the emails will go to spam.
Newsletters on the other hand are sent using a system that is designed to go to the inbox and not the spam folder. Forum providers are not email list experts, they're forum coders. Newsletter providers are email list experts, and they know how to get an email sent properly.
But why even have an email list?
Because it's a direct line to your most loyal followers. Social media algorithms and search engine bots can't get in the way of your newsletter. You own your list. It's just your job to keep people subscribed.
I have a newsletter with other 2,000 subscribers. I pay for the service, but I make enough in sponsorship that is pays for itself and also earns me some profit. That should always be a goal when doing an email list because it's not going to be free forever.
I use Mail Chimp but in all honesty, I recommend KIT (Convert Kit, soon to be just Kit) as they have a free plan with up to 10,000 subscribers. That's more than any other service right now for a free plan. Kit is also very reputable and used by a lot of creators.
We use it at Copyblogger.
To get subscribers, you need to put CTAs all over your site and offer a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a free highly valuable resource you give to someone for subscribing. Some will subscribe to get the resource and then unsubscribe. That's going to happen. Some will subscribe and then never open you email again. That's going to happen.
What you need to do is make sure that the quality and value doesn't stop at the lead magnet. Subscribers need to know that every issue you send will have gold in it and that if they miss it, they're at a loss, plain and simple.
Newsletters are worth it.
