7 Tips to Build Your Email List for Upcoming Events and Grow It
Emails are great for building and nurturing relationships. You can customize your campaigns and get personal with potential event attendees. With personalized email content, you increase the chances of them taking your desired action, in this case, attending your event.
But you can’t reap these email marketing benefits without an email list. Think about it. How else can you build and nurture connections using emails if you don’t have a list of addresses to send your messages to?
Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered. Here are seven tips to build an email list for your upcoming events and grow it. Let’s jump right into it.
- Choose a Trustworthy Email Marketing Platform
The first and pivotal step to building an email list for your upcoming events is selecting a reliable and suitable email marketing platform.
You need good email marketing solutions to create beautiful signup forms that will collate your potential attendees’ email addresses. A reliable email marketing platform also provides robust features for list segmentation, allowing you to tailor your communication to specific audience segments. This level of customization enhances the relevance of your emails, fostering higher engagement and conversion rates.
With trustworthy email marketing software, you don’t only get to build a high-quality email list for your event.
You also ensure your brand reputation to subscribers. A reputable platform prioritizes compliance with email regulations and data protection laws, safeguarding your audience’s privacy, and earning their trust. It implements stringent security measures to protect against data breaches, ensuring that sensitive information remains confidential.
With such a powerful tool, you can also monitor the performance of your email marketing campaigns. A well-established platform often offers analytics and reporting tools for this purpose. When you keep track of the performance of your email campaigns, you can gain valuable data. This helps you optimize your email marketing strategies for better results.
- Create Pop-Ups on Your Website
Some internet users indeed find site pop-ups annoying and distractive. However, if they are purposeful, creative, and well-timed, pop-ups can be a highly effective method to build an email list and grow it. A strategically placed and visually appealing pop-up can capture the attention of your website visitors, providing them with a seamless opportunity to join your email subscriber list. It’s no surprise email site pop-ups convert, on average, 3.8% of website visitors. That’s almost 400 emails collected for a website with 10,000 visitors.
When implementing pop-ups, precision, and timing are key. Consider configuring them to appear when visitors have spent some time on your site or when they are about to exit. Doing so ensures that the pop-up doesn’t disrupt the user experience.
Craft your pop-up content thoughtfully, emphasizing the benefits of subscribing to your email newsletter. Check out this website pop-up that emphasizes the intangible benefit of being “the first to know” about the brand’s classes and other special events:
Lastly, create a seamless process for your potential subscribers by providing a user-friendly opt-in form. Ensure you request only essential information and assure your visitors that their privacy is a priority.
- Implement Embedded Signup Forms
Strategically implement embedded signup forms on your website to build an email list and grow it. Unlike pop-ups that, well, pop up, these unobtrusive yet powerful forms seamlessly integrate into your site’s pages, providing visitors with a convenient and immediate way to subscribe.
When you strategically place these forms on high-traffic pages, such as your homepage, event pages, or blog posts, you capture the attention of engaged individuals interested in your event-related content.
Customize the design of your embedded forms to align with your brand aesthetics, ensuring a cohesive and visually appealing user experience. To find the right balance between gathering the necessary information and minimizing friction, consider experimenting with different form lengths and fields.
Embedded signup forms offer a continuous invitation for visitors to join your mailing list as they explore your site. This strategy capitalizes on organic traffic, converting casual website visitors into potential event attendees.
Integration with your chosen email marketing platform ensures the collected data seamlessly fits into your contact database, creating a streamlined and automated list-building process.
- Offer Incentives to Sign Up Like Discounted or Free Event Tickets
For some, being the first to get exclusive content about an upcoming event isn’t a good enough incentive to share contact details. So, you might also want to offer other incentives to get potential attendees to fill out your site-embedded email signup forms or website pop-ups.
These lead magnets can take various forms. Why not offer exclusive discounts on your event tickets? You could even offer free event tickets to some new email subscribers:
Here are other incentives you might want to consider:
- one-on-one sessions with a chosen speaker during your upcoming webinar
- discount on merch sold during the event
- free food and drinks during your upcoming conference
With this strategy of offering similar incentives that are related to your event, such as discounted or free event tickets, you ensure those who sign up for your mailing list are genuinely interested in your event-related valuable content. At the same time, you increase the chances of these new subscribers attending, especially if you sell tickets online. After all, they can only really benefit from your offered incentives when they’re in your event venue or are participating in your online event.
- Leverage Social Media
It makes sense to take advantage of social media when organizing an event. Social media platforms serve as virtual engagement hubs for a vast audience eager for exciting opportunities.
But enhancing engagement isn’t all social media can do. Through social media marketing, you can also build an email list and grow it for your upcoming events. To do this, strategically integrate links to your sign-up forms across your social media channels. See how Hubspot does it:
Click on that link on its Instagram bio and you’ll get to this:
You can also create organic social posts to communicate the value of joining your email list. If you have the budget for it, why not craft similar compelling social ads that drive traffic to dedicated landing pages with your email sign-up options? If your budget is big, you could also seek the help of influencers to promote your event mailing list. Just use an email finder to look for their relevant addresses and send them your pitch. For efficient outreach to potential influencers and collaborators, using tools like GetProspect to find email by name can streamline the process, ensuring you connect with the right people quickly and effectively.
While preparing for your event, regularly engage with your audience by sharing teasers, behind-the-scenes content, and countdowns on social media. Building anticipation fosters a sense of community, making individuals more likely to subscribe for exclusive updates.
- Implement a Referral Program
Grow a solid email list by implementing a referral program for new sign-ups. A staggering 84% of people say they trust recommendations from friends and family. With a referral program, you can leverage this power of word-of-mouth marketing to get others to join your email list. The referral program also turns the current subscribers whose help you engage into your ambassadors.
Consider offering rewards to both the referrer and the new subscriber for the best results. Again, ensure the rewards are event-related to help boost event attendance. You can check out our tip number four for rewards you can offer.
As a final tip, use referral marketing software to track successful referrals.
- Organize Giveaways
Captivating giveaways or sweepstakes serve as a potent strategy for building and growing your email list. With them, you capitalize on the allure of winning to get potential visitors to sign up. Who doesn’t want a chance to beat others and win something valuable?
Make it easy to join your giveaway, otherwise, people won’t sign up. In the example above, for instance, participants only need to fill out the fields before October 28 to join the draw for free event tickets.
Also, make your giveaway instructions clear. The more detailed, the better. If you run out of space to explain the mechanics, you can include a link to a dedicated landing page containing those. In the example above, for instance, interested participants only have to click on “terms and conditions” to get the full instructions.
Don’t forget to specify how and when you’ll announce your giveaway winners as well. Also, promote the giveaway across your marketing channels to maximize visibility.
Conclusion
The significance of building an email list and growing it for upcoming events cannot be overstated. With an email list, you can connect with potential event attendees through your personalized content. You can, therefore, increase the chances of them attending.
Just follow the tips I shared with you to build an email list for your upcoming event and grow it effectively. Choose a trustworthy email marketing platform, offer incentives like discounted or free event tickets, and create pop-ups on your website. Also, leverage embedded sign-up site forms and social media. Don’t forget to use a referral program and organize giveaways.
By following these tips, you not only expand your contact database but also create a community of engaged individuals genuinely interested in your event. Good luck!
The author is Michal Leszczynski, Head of Content Marketing and Partnerships at GetResponse. With 10+ years of experience, Michal is a seasoned expert in all things online marketing. He’s a prolific writer, skilled webinar host, and engaging public speaker. Outside of business hours, Michal shares his wealth of knowledge as an Email Marketing lecturer at Kozminski University in Warsaw. You can reach out and connect with Michal on LinkedIn.
About the Author / Ana Almeida
