Growing your business or organization can feel like waiting for the stars to align, but it doesn’t have to be.   We're taking the most popular questions from our latest webinar and expanding upon them so you can learn strategies to attract new contacts and leads, ways to capture valuable information like interests and preferences to tailor content and offers, and how to manage lists over time to improve email strategies and drive success.    You can view the webinar directly through Wistia or right here on the Blog!     What type of sign-up form should I use? It depends on where you’re planning to share the form and how much information you’d like to gather.   On your website, you can use an embedded or pop-up form. These types of forms will keep your website visitors on the page. For social channels and email signatures, create a lead generation landing page. If you’re at an in-person event, create a QR code that links to your sign-up form.   A good practice is to keep your form short. Ask for their email, name, and one or two other pieces of information. What can I offer in exchange for emails? Knowledge is a valuable resource to provide to a new subscriber or lead and it’s free! When you create a landing page, you can customize the Thank You page to include a button that will allow them to download a document or visit a webpage. The document can be a special guide, workbook, or checklist.    The welcome email is also a good place to thank them for signing up. Share a special document or a discount code to use when they are purchasing an item or service.   Can I upload a purchased or rented contact list? These lists are strictly prohibited and cannot be used in any account. Adding or importing names that go against our email permission policy may result in the termination of your account so you do not want to ever use one of these lists.   The good thing about using our sign-up forms to grow your list and capture leads is that these contacts have given you express permission to contact them. Although express is best, implied contacts get the thumbs up as well, as long as you have had some kind of previous business relationship with them. Read more about implied vs. express permission.   How do I use social media to build my email list? If your business or organization has a presence on social media, your followers may not be aware that you have a newsletter or you’re sending out messages through email! Sharing your emails on your social media channels is a quick way to accomplish this. The URL for a campaign includes a Join My Mailing List button for your followers to join your list. If you aren’t ready to share your emails just yet, create a Lead Generation Landing Page and share the URL in your posts and include it in your About section as well. Is it possible to upload my existing Facebook/Instagram/Linkedin followers into my account? Most social media channels do not provide contact information such as email addresses for followers or subscribers of a page or profile. But hope is not lost. You can create a landing page as mentioned above. Tell your followers what they’ll receive if they sign up to receive emails. Let them know they’re joining an exclusive club (and follow through with that claim!). How do I tailor emails to my contacts who have specific interests? The Update Profile form is the easiest way to gather information. You can send a campaign asking people to update their profile. We suggest not asking for too much information or making everything required.    Once you start sending out emails, you can use segmentation which is the practice of splitting your email list into smaller, targeted groups of similar contacts. When you segment, you can tailor content specific to a group and you can see better engagement along with improved open and click rate and a higher change of conversions. You could segment by location, industry, most/least engaged, or new/existing customer.   How do I prevent people from unsubscribing? As much as everyone would love to see a 0% unsubscribe rate, unfortunately, this isn’t the case for most customers. Unsubscribes happen but you shouldn’t take offense to them. Your contacts’ interests may change, they may move out of the area, or they’re trying to reduce the amount of emails they receive.   Every email sent from our system has a SafeUnsubscribe option in the footer. It is required for all large email providers like us to have an unsubscribe option and this cannot be removed or modified.   Instead of “preventing” an unsubscribe, give them a reason to stay on the list. If your emails are not as relevant, encourage them to update their profile and let them choose what they would like to receive from you. How do I delete unnecessary or unengaged contacts? You might want to take a look at these contacts before deleting them. There is an opportunity to re-engage with these contacts. We talked earlier about segmenting contacts. You can use the pre-built segment to find your Least Engaged contacts. Depending on your business or organization, create a campaign specifically designed for them. Consider sending them a special discount or offer to re-engage them, or send a survey to get feedback on your content.   If you don’t hear back from them, you can remove these contacts to keep your contact lists clean and up-to-date so you can concentrate on those who actively engage with your emails. We have created a lot of lists over the years. Can I delete some of them? Yes, you can delete a list. When deleting, you are given two options: delete the list or delete the list and contacts. We’ll explain these in more detail: Delete the list and contacts - This option deletes the list and all of the contacts on it from your account. If you have contacts on multiple lists, they won't be removed from them. Deleted contacts aren't marked as unsubscribed, so if you need to add them back to your account later, you can. Delete the list only - This option only deletes the list and leaves the contacts in your account. You may end up with contacts that are not assigned to any list, but you can manually add them to a different list so they don't miss out on the emails you're sending.   What do I do with my unsubscribed contacts? You don’t have to do anything unless you want your account to only include active contacts. Unsubscribed contacts do not count towards your billing. If you delete your unsubscribed contacts, if you attempt to upload them again, they will still be marked as unsubscribed. ... View more