Many of our customers, when asking us what they need to be doing to succeed, will know the evangelical fervour that we have at teclan when discussing email marketing.
We can cite many examples of own customers who have become successful over the years in no small part due to careful management and growing of their email lists.
But how to grow your own email list?
Email addresses are like a customer’s valued property or possession. They should not part with it lightly. You should value it more that the customer and accord the
Here are 10 simple, yet effective, ways to grow your all important emailing list.
1. Accessible Sign-up form
If people want to sign up to your newsletter then great. The easiest way is to offer them a simple form. These people are already engaged in you, your products, your business/brand or your message. You want to make it as easy as possible.
Encourage them to sign up as well. Give them an incentive for that extra push to fill out the form. A prize draw entry. A “first to hear the news” list. A “Join to receive regular special offers” list.
Above all, make it easy, simple and quick for them to sign up. They are trusting you with their email address. Don’t make it difficult for them. Make it an easy, safe, fast and reliable experience.
2. Capture emails through every off-line channel you can
You need to treat emails as valuable as money in your bank account. Gather as much and as many as you can!
In-store forms, swapping business cards, paper competition entries, survey feedbacks.
Anywhere you get the chance or opportunity, gather emails. Grow your email list.
3. Aim for a consistent slow and steady growth of the list.
This ensures you maintain quality lists full of engaged customers as well as replacing natural list attrition.
Fast growth with low quality of contacts results in low conversion rates and high unsubscribe rates.
4. Allocate dedicated email list traffic building days
Engage your entire business to gather and capture email addresses where ever they can. Setting clear goals and objectives where the primary focus is to encourage the collection of new email addresses will give your gathering efforts a real boost.
5. “Sign up for special offers” message
The use of “give us your email address for a chance to get first access to special offers in checkout and promotional pages throughout the website will incentive your (potential) customers to give you their valuable email addresses.
6. “Snail mail” existing customers
For certain people receiving a letter with benefits and offers which extol the virtues of providing you with an email address can make the difference. Do you have an existing mail order address list? Do you keep addresses on file separate to email addresses?
7. Request download offer.
Again, your customer’s email address is their valuable property and there has to be a return transaction in the giving process e.g. offer them a valuable PDF, document, gift.
8. Competition entries
As with special offers, competitions are a well-trodden path to solicit email addresses. The bigger the prize the better the chance of collecting more email addresses. Be warned, however, that attrition rates of email addresses obtained this way are usually a little higher as people may unsubscribe should they not win!
The challenge is how to ensure they stay hooked into your list e.g. a “Sorry – try this competition instead” can work well.
9. Affiliate/partner promotions sign ups
Why not work with other companies and link promotional activities with them to share and collect valuable email addresses. This works especially well when there are clear links between the partners e.g. a plumber and joiners.
Build that email list in any which way you can.
Having a strong, engaged emailing list to re-market to is one of the biggest sources of sales an online retailer can have. Email marketing still remains one of the most cost effective marketing methods available.
So, what do you do with this huge list once you have build it up?
I’ll be talking about that in our next article – How to design the perfect email.