Grow Your Text List Using Your Email Subscribers

Growing an engaged SMS marketing list is one of the most important parts of creating a successful text message marketing strategy. 

The problem? Knowing where to start. That’s because there have never been more ways to collect phone numbers and build your text list.

As tempting as it is to swing for the fences, we recommend you start with the low-hanging fruit. 

You can grow your text message marketing list by tapping into an audience that’s already shown they’re interested in your marketing campaigns: your email subscribers.

Here’s how to do it.

Build Your SMS and Email List From Your Website

The very first thing you’ll want to do is update where you currently collect emails. That’s most often an online sign-up form. 

To build your SMS address list too just add a field to collect cell phone numbers. For web forms like this, you should have an unchecked box that a website visitor must check to provide express written consent that they want to sign up for your SMS and MMS messages.

If you don’t have a form collecting email addresses, then you can create one using our Web Sign-Up Form. All you have to do is copy/paste a tiny bit of code onto your site. This video explains how it works.

Popular baby carrier brand Baby Tula used this strategy to collect thousands of new subscribers leading to more clicks on promotional messages and even more sales.

Send an Email About Your New SMS List

If you’re like most businesses, you already invest a significant amount of time into building your email marketing program. Why not leverage this investment to build your text list?

As we already mentioned, these people already displayed an interest in your brand. But it goes even deeper than that. 

People want content that’s optimized for their phones. An analysis of 6 billion emails found that 46% of all opens occur on mobile.

Here’s how you can turn your existing email subscribers into a text message subscriber list. Create an email to inform your contacts that you now offer SMS alerts.

In your email, you should include:

• What’s in it for them? Make the benefit of subscribing crystal clear and consider including an incentive.
• Details about what kind of messages you’ll send.
• Clear and conspicuous disclosure that they’ll be signing up to receive promotional messages sent via an autodialer and their agreement isn’t a condition of any purchase.
• A button that links to the page with your sign-up form or a clear call-to-action to text a keyword to your phone number.

On that last point, if you’re wondering what a keyword is, it’s a word or phrase that people can text to your phone to receive your text messages. Here’s a snippet of one of these emails in practice:

It gets even better. You can use our Mailchimp integration to sync your contacts between the two platforms. 

Don’t use Mailchimp? No sweat. Our Zapier integration lets you pass your newly collected phone numbers to Constant Contact, Sendinblue, SendGrid, and thousands of other apps.

How to Align Your Email and SMS Marketing Channels

Research shows that SMS open rates are as high as 98%, compared to just 20% of all emails. 

So for your organization to have customers who are both SMS and email subscribers puts you at a unique advantage.

By combining the two mediums you have a near 100% guarantee for message visibility.

But with great privilege comes great responsibility. Here are two best practices to keep in mind to ensure subscribers are receiving value from both channels.

Give Your SMS List First Dibs

Since cellphones don’t have a spam folder, it’s nearly impossible to ignore text messages. So when a subscriber is willing to share their number with you, that unfettered access to their attention should be rewarded.

When sending out messages with special offers, event RSVPs, or sales notifications, you’ll want to share it with your SMS list before you send an email blast.

By giving mobile subscribers this early access, it demonstrates a value worthy of sharing their phone numbers.

Send Time-Sensitive Messages or Flash Sales

On average it takes 90 seconds for someone to respond to a text and 90 minutes to respond to an email. 

So when sharing time-sensitive information such as a flash sale or emergency alert, you’ll want to be sure to send a text message as well as an email to ensure it’s read as quickly as possible.

Combine Your Email and SMS Contact Lists Today

There are thousands of people out there who want to receive your messages. You don’t need to be the next Don Draper to advertise your SMS promotions. 

An email is an easy, effective place to start. We’ve seen it work wonders for businesses across many industries. 

When you’re ready to see even more sign-ups, go ahead and try some of these other methods:

• Mobile Sign Up Widget
• Text-to-Join to Collect Phone Numbers and Emails
• Host a Text-to-Win competition

If you want to learn more about sending SMS using our text marketing solution, why not sign-up for a 14-day free trial? 

You’ll even get access to a free keyword of your choice, plus 50 complimentary SMS text messages.