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How to Grow Your Association’s Email List in 4 Easy Steps

Four easy ways to boost up your email list numbers and get your audiences engaged with your association’s email marketing strategy. Incorporate these tips into your existing email marketing strategy and what your numbers grow!

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Every association knows that having a strong email marketing strategy is key for overall marketing success. Why is this? Well, email is one of the most popular forms of communication in the business. In fact, according to Statista, around 269 billion emails are sent every day.

But while email marketing is one of the most important aspects in a good marketing strategy, it also is one of the most challenging. You know you have valuable information to give members in the form of interesting emails, but how do you get them on board?

Growing your email list is a lot harder than it sounds. With the average person getting around 88 emails per day, it makes sense that your members might hesitate when giving out their email address. However, it’s up to your association to come up with engaging ways to grow your email list and attract more of an audience to your emails. While growing your association’s email list and boosting your overall email marketing efforts is a challenge, it’s possible. Many other associations have found success and attracted a large number of email addresses to their email list. So, if you’re looking to grow your own association email list, you’re in the right place. We’re going to go over the best steps you can take (and that many other associations have taken) to collect more email addresses and gather a large audience for your email marketing efforts. Without any further introduction, let’s get right into the tips.

1. Put an offer on your website

One of the top approaches to growing an email list is often the most obvious approaches: Place a call-to-action on your website. Yes, this approach is an easy and “in-your-face” method. But there’s a reason so many of the top performing nonprofits use this method so often: It works. What do we mean by “put an offer on your website”? It’s simple. Add in a tab on your association’s homepage that allows visitors to enter in their information in order to receive updates and information directly to their email. This tab can be seamlessly incorporated into your website design.

Your call-to-action email tab should have an eye catching tagline. Something along the lines of “Join us!” or “Looking for news on the latest industry updates? Join our emailing list”. You want your email join tab to feel like an offer your website visitors can’t refuse. Once you have that strong message that will attract people to join your email list, you can figure out where to place it on your website. Take a look at how Associations Now places their email subscribe button on their website.

The button is located at the top right corner of their home page, right next to the search bar. This is a great spot for attention- anytime someone visits their page and searches for a specific article or web page, they can clearly see the email tab. Notice how the tab is also a different, eye-catching color than the black background of the website’s header. This makes the tab pop out from the page, drawing attention immediately once the home page loads. Your association can follow a similar style when implementing an email tab onto their website. Including a way to subscribe to emails on your association’s website can increase your chances of growing your email list in no time.

2. Email pop-ups

Before we move on from website promotion for growing your email list, we can’t forget to mention the importance of website pop-ups. Sumo’s recent post on the power of pop-ups says everything that your association needs to know about them: They’re not dead. In fact, it’s not the pop-up that gets the negative result, it’s the design of the pop-up. When creating a web pop-up for your email list, you need to make sure it’s succinct and free of mistakes. Even the smallest error can ruin a perfectly composed pop-up. Be sure your pop-up is easily understood. You don’t want audiences to have to guess what your pop-up will do for them. Make your call-to-action short, sweet, and to the point. Something like: Sign up now to join our email list!

You also need to make sure your pop-up offers value to your website visitors. Underneath your call-to-action, provide a short sentence that proves your value to readers. Whether this is a numerical value, or just a short description of what your emails hold. This type of information helps convince readers that signing up for your email list is the right decision. Think of something similar to this: “Join now and receive FREE updates on the latest industry news!” Don’t count pop-ups out in terms of value - you can still find real results with a properly displayed pop-up.

3. Add sign-up options to your emails

This one seems a little redundant, but it’s a great way to make sure everyone seeing your email is actually signed up to receive all of your emails. This is a great option for associations that share their emails on social media pages like Facebook and LinkedIn. Not all of your social media followers will be on your email list when they see your emails pop up on their social feeds.

Give social media fans the option to sign up for emails by including a sign-up button in any email you share. This way, if they enjoy what they’ve read on your social page, they can subscribe for more. This is also a great option for sending out emails to event attendees. You might have collected emails at your last event in order to send out post-event messages to your attendees. But what if those emails could serve as a way to boost your email list?

With a sign-up button at the end of your emails, they can. Give yourself the upper hand by showing email recipients a way to get more information directly to their inbox. Always be sure to cover every base when trying to grow your email list (even the obvious ones).

4. Text-to-join options

And finally, we have mobile users. How can you find a way to get them engaged with your emails without full access to your website? You want to make it not only possible for your mobile audiences to join your email list, but easy and convenient as well. Don’t let them feel like an afterthought in your association’s emailing process. Many email tools like Mailchimp and Constant Contact offer an option that allows audiences to use text messaging to join your association’s email list. This feature, called text-to-join, is a smooth process that any mobile user can figure out how to do. It’s simple: Users send a text to a custom code provided by your server of choice and unique to your association.

Then, a channel will be sent to mobile users for them to access and enter in their email information. Once that’s done, they’ll be automatically added to your email list. That’s right, just two steps will get your audiences on the way to receiving your association’s email updates. Offering a text-to-join option for mobile friendly users will help you fill in the gaps in your email list and get your mobile users engaged with your association. Don’t forget about your mobile users when thinking up strategies to grow your associations’ email list.

So, there you have it. Four easy ways to boost up your email list numbers and get your audiences engaged with your association’s email marketing strategy. Don’t forget to incorporate these tips into your existing email marketing strategy in order to see enhanced email list results.