Tag: email leads

6 ways you can collect email addresses without a website

We’ve said it before. Email marketing is a critical component of any overall digital marketing strategy.

For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42.

Check out these 48 statistics that show the value of email marketing for your small business.

But what if you don’t have a website? How do you collect email addresses?

First, you can use DailyStory to not only host a landing page with a web form to physically collect email addresses, but also to then develop campaigns to message those email addresses.

(Landing page, web form or not, you at least want to have an email marketing platform.)

The following are six ways you can feed email addresses into your database to then market to later on.

Facebook ads

Facebook features a multitude of different ad campaign types, depending on your goal with any given ad campaign.

As far as capturing leads, Facebook offers lead generation ads, where email addresses can be captured within a form hosted on Facebook itself. You also can use a Facebook ad to drive traffic to a landing page (if you have one) with a web form to capture those email addresses.

Facebook ads can target your ideal audience. Just remember to offer a reason enticing enough for users to give you their email addresses. It could be a discount offer or a piece of premium content, so on.

Check out these seven tips to better target your Facebook ads.

Host contests

Even with a website, social media is often the best place to promote contests and giveaways.

Of course, we recommend reviewing required terms and conditions you need to provide in any contest, and it’s especially helpful to have a web form to capture email addresses and add them to your database.

A landing page (available through DailyStory) is the perfect solution to show the parameters and rules of your contest, as well as collect email addresses for entries.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to give away your own products or services. It can easily be something else that appeals to your target audience if you want. You also could partner with another company for a contest as well.

Dive deeper into Terms and Conditions and how to confirm your giveaways are legal.

Organic posts on social media

It’s the idea of not necessarily feeding all your content to a website blog but publishing it where your audience is. Potential social media platforms include (but are not limited to):

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube

In addition, Medium.com could be an option for content publishing. The key is to decide who you’re trying to reach and what platform(s) you’re mostly like to find them.

You can include email newsletter sign-up call-to-actions within your content mix, giving those you are reaching an opportunity to get more from you.

See what every startup company should know about social media.

Guest appearances

Whether this is guest blogging for a popular website among your target audience or guest appearing on a podcast, the power of this approach resides in the fact that you’re getting in front of an audience you don’t normally connect with.

Be ready with both your call-to-action and an offer that makes people want to act.

Again, having an easy-to-find web form (via a link or other means) is imperative.

Speaking of guest blogging, see our seven tips to grow quality backlinks and improve your SEO.

Content upgrades

No matter where you’re publishing (social media, Medium.com, elsewhere), you could always deliver a little bit more in a nicer package.

That’s where content upgrades (or premium content) comes into play.

Developing a PDF version of a guide, a deeper dive into a topic or something else that addresses a pain point of your target audience is a great way to collect email addresses.

Ideally, this is evergreen content that’s consistently relevant and designed in a visually engaging way.

All you have to do is offer it for free and use a web form to collect a user’s information. Then, have that content automatically sent to that user. 

Users get the content upgrade. You get their email addresses. Win-win.

Dive deeper into what premium content is and how you can leverage it in your digital marketing.

Webinar hosting

As an expert in your industry, consider what topic you might be able to educate others on via a webinar.

Sign-ups can be promoted through your social media and other channels (and email addresses collected).

Even if you don’t get a lot of sign-ups (or any), the session can be recorded and repurposed for later and alternate uses.

See our 12 expert tips to help you host your first webinar.

In conclusion

Obviously, there are ways to collect email addresses and use email marketing to grow your business without a website.

However, we definitely recommend creating a website as soon as possible since it offers a consistent home for your promotions, lends credibility to your brand in the eyes of your customers and can help drive search engine rankings, among other reasons.

Check out our beginner’s guide for choosing and acquiring the perfect domain name for your business.

Need assistance not only capturing email addresses but maximizing your email marketing efforts? DailyStory features email automation, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

12 strategies to capture more email leads without annoying everyone

The last thing any smart business wants to do is accidentally annoy or “chase off” website visitors in the pursuit of capturing email leads.

Why capture email addresses?

About 80 percent of business professionals say that email marketing increases customer retention, according to HubSpot. That and 59 percent of respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions, according to SaleCycle.

The good news is that there are many ways to capture email leads without annoying people on your website, 12 to be exact. And you can pick any of our below recommendations that make sense for your company’s website. 

Spoiler alert: We offer suggestions beyond just less-intrusive pop-up ads.

Tip #1: Your pop-up doesn’t appear until the end of your content

A common practice is to have a pop-up ad appear within so many seconds of a visitor landing on your content. 

This runs the risk of losing your visitor before he or she has had time to be won over by your content itself.

By waiting until the content is over, that patience can lead to a higher conversion rate of those who finish your content. It appears more like the call-to-action (CTA) that it is rather than a barrier to your content.

Dive deeper with our eight tips to get more leads out of your pop-up ads.

Tip #2: Embed a subscribe box at the end of your content

This is the same idea as the pop-up at the end of your content, except that when you embed a subscribe box, it’s not popping up at your visitor.

It’s an even less intrusive way to achieve the same thing.

You can design and embed the same subscribe box at the end of each of your blog posts, for example.

Tip #3: Slide in your request after so much of a page scroll

Not to be confused with “sliding into your DMs,” you can set up a slider pop-up at the bottom of your webpage that literally slides in on the bottom corner of the screen after a visitor scrolls through a chosen person of the webpage.

This is less intrusive and also appears at a time when your visitor is most engaged and more likely to want to subscribe to your newsletter for more content.

Tip #4: Your pop-up doesn’t appear until a user is about to exit

You may or may not be familiar with exit-intent technology since it’s relatively newer. 

If you haven’t, you’re in for a treat.

Exit-intent is behavioral technology that understands the movements of website visitors and detects when they’re going to leave your site without making a purchase or giving you their information, according to Omniconvert.

Therefore, exit-intent pop-ups appear at just the right time. Again, they’re not perceived as a barrier in any way. They’re intended to catch that visitor’s attention before they leave, and they can be very successful.

See our 18 exit-intent tips to convert your website visitors before you lose them.

Tip #5: Offer a content upgrade to engaged visitors

Smart content marketers know that they shouldn’t give everything up for “free.” 

One way to generate leads without annoying your website visitor is to offer enough content to engage and then deeper content in exchange for his or her email address.

For example, you’re reading our tips about capturing more email leads without chasing away your website visitors. We could offer you through a pop-up a more detailed email-capturing strategy guide that can be emailed to you. 

Upgrades can include, but are not limited to:

  • eBooks
  • Webinars
  • Free tools
  • Templates
  • Email courses
  • Checklists

It’s about the allure of upgraded content for the visitor. The promise of value is upfront.

But to be clear, this does not have to be a pop-up. This can be as simple as an in-line link within your content.

Of course, this can be expanded to any number of content offers.

Dive deeper into premium content and how you can leverage it in your digital marketing.

Tip #6: Feature a permanent sticky top bar

As an alternative to deciding on the timing of a pop-up, you can have a standing, permanent top bar at the top of your page the entire time the visitor is engaging with your content.

The pro is that it’s constantly in your visitor’s sight while also not disrupting his or her experience.

The top-of-the-page sticky bar itself can be simple. You don’t have to overdesign it. Just make sure that it’s a clear CTA.

Tip #7: Consider a feature box on your homepage

A feature box is similar to the top-of-the-page sticky bar. It can vary in design, but typically, it’s a call to action that is on top of everything at the bottom of your screen usually when on your homepage.

Just like any other form of opt-in, it needs to be clear and compelling.

Tip #8: Experiment with a welcome home gate on your website

What’s a “home gate,” you might be asking?

Consider it as a splash screen that’s part of the homepage of your website, which typically is the most visited page of any website. 

It’s an immediate CTA just below your navigation menu, designed to be eye-catching that you can still scroll past for more content on the homepage itself. Keep in mind that it’s not a pop-up. It’s basically the top portion of your homepage.

Tip #9: Create a dedicated landing page

What’s better than an entire webpage dedicated to the conversion of email subscriptions?

If designed well, the conversion rate can be high.

Key aspects that your landing page should have:

  • An appealing offer to drive subscriptions (the sky is the limit here, depending on your brand and what makes the most sense)
  • Clear call-to-action
  • Clean, bright design
  • Feature testimonials if applicable

Tip #10: Include a sidebar next to your content

Another less-intrusive way to capture email leads is to include a sidebar for subscribing next to your content.

Just like the top-of-the-page sticky bar, it can stay in sight of the visitor throughout, depending on the layout of your webpage. 

Be sure that it’s eye-catching for the visitor and not an element that’s easy to overlook. It doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective.

Tip #11: Your pop-up can wait until the second pageview

Similar to waiting until the end of your content or when a website visitor is about to exit, you can wait until the second pageview for a pop-up to appear in order to capture email leads.

Doing so is an acknowledgment of the fact that a lot of your first-time visitors are likely arriving through a Google search in the hunt for an answer to a question that they have.

A pop-up immediately just gets in the way of their mission, but a pop-up on a second pageview on your website is a bet that this visitor is now more engaged with your content specifically. And therefore, now is the time to suggest subscribing to your email list.

The risk is that you will lose the opportunity to “catch” everyone who only appears on your website one time. 

Tip #12: Impress visitors with a full-screen pop-up

A full-screen pop-up can be risky when it comes to annoying your website visitors and effectively capturing email leads.

It has to be well-designed and a very compelling offer to truly “wow” your visitors instead of annoying them. 

A big giveaway could be enough to warrant a full-screen opt-in experience.

Just like with any other pop-up, keep the timing in mind. Avoid anything that is immediate.

It’s important to audit your website with fresh eyes. Where are the opportunities to capture email addresses from those arriving on your site? Remember that less can be more when first starting out, and you’ll want to start out simply, evaluate the performance and build from there.

A number of email lead acquisition tools are available through DailyStory. Schedule a free demo with one of our digital marketing experts today.

Plus, check out our 18 low-cost marketing ideas for your small business.