Despite the rise of social media, email remains one of the best tools to keep in touch with customers or leads.

Email is a powerful selling tool but it is only as powerful as your reach. Even a strong email list is expected to lose a quarter of its subscribers each year, as people move around and change their email address. This means even if you have a solid email database you need to continuously grow your list just to keep reaching the same amount of people.

Here are some helpful tips on growing your email list and increasing your selling power.

Subscribe With Purchase – Ask your customers if they want to sign up to your email list during the purchase process and offer an added value in return for their email address – like a discount on the next purchase or great content.

Create a Loyalty Program – Create a customer loyalty program by offering discounts on future purchases or a free product if you spend $X amount of money redeemable through email.

Give Away Something for Free – Anything that is free is likely to garner attention. From a free sample product to a trial to a free e-book or whitepaper, the giveaway is a great investment because a) it targets leads specific to your business and b) up-selling is considerably easier than selling.

Provide Valuable Content in an e-Newsletter – The key to any good e-newsletter is to offer value. You need to make sure you are targeting your readers’ needs and genuinely offering useful information. An alternative to offering information (or in addition to) is to offer financial value by offering discounts on purchases for email subscribers.

Create a Landing Page for Your e-Newsletter – You should have a good landing dedicated to your e-newsletter. Landing pages have the highest conversion rates on the web. A good landing page must spark interest in the content or value you have to offer in your e-newsletter and have a call to action to make the reader eager to sign up.

Use Your Social Media Presence – If you have a following on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, ask your followers to subscribe to your email list. These followers are already interested in what you have to say.

Update Your List With a Re-Opt-In – Not everyone on your list still wants to get your emails and others have migrated to other email addresses or providers. Having a lot of subscribers does not help you if your emails aren’t getting read. In fact, it can hurt because your messages may be marked as spam and some e-newsletter platforms charge you more based on how many subscribers you have. Occasionally, send a request to your subscribers to opt-in again to make sure only people who want your e-newsletter are getting it.

Email is a direct pipeline to the eyes of people that have already expressed interest in your product or service but email lists naturally decay as people change jobs and move around. This means you need to constantly grow and update your email list to reap the maximum value from this medium.

How do you use email? What has worked best for your business?