Growing your email marketing list

No matter how good your email marketing is, a successful email strategy starts with the recipient offering up their email address and agreeing to receive your marketing emails. Making the most of the start of the process will help you grow your email database, and increase the conversion opportunity that email marketing gives you.

The start of improving the data capture process is answering two key questions: How do we increase the sign-up opportunities and how do we persuade our visitors to agree to receive our emails? Here are a few ideas that could help improve your current list growth.

What’s in it for me?
The first thing to consider when looking for new email addresses is that it can be the first part of a dialogue, the giving of an email address becomes the agreement to participate in a conversation. So you need to have a compelling reason why someone should add your email to an already busy inbox.

Consider:

What elements of your brand, product or service can be communicated without too much repetition and in a way that adds value?

What are people likely to value the most from email communication (web based research would be good here)?

Can you deliver some sort of free service that is related to you main offering like a weekend weather forecast for an outdoor clothing retailer?

Are there times when an email alert could be seen as valuable to the recipient, such as notice of a sale in their local store?

Can you deliver relevance to the recipients without spamming them, how will you do this?

It’s exactly what it says on the tin
Once you have decided why they should sign up (you would be amazed how many companies don’t consider this), you are in a position to construct statements that reflect the value of the email sign-up.

It could be as easy as:

“We know you love special offers and the cheapest deals around, be the first to hear about the latest ones, subscribe to our emails now!”

Or

“We regularly obtain breaking news and product information that you may find interesting based on the publication you have chosen. Subscribe to our email bulletin to hear the latest news.”

Or even something like:

“As well as any special offers we feel might interest you, we often source some exciting new product from around the world, don’t miss the latest products or prices, subscribe to our email alert.”

An example of the type of email they might receive will help with the sign-up rate, as does full disclosure about what you will doing with the email address, whether it will be shared and how to unsubscribe.

Show me where to sign (up)!
Okay, once you have a good reason why someone should sign up to your email communications, you want to use every chance to put the opportunity before them. This could be either online or offline, so it is important to audit every possible customer or prospect touch point.

Website: The first point of collection many think of is the website. Don’t hide the process; make it as prominent as you can. Remember, once you have a visitor’s email address, you can encourage them to visit you again.

Online transactional process: If someone is in the process of buying something from you online, you really must ask them to sign up for your email marketing. In most cases this can be achieved by a pre-selected opt-in, which gives them the opportunity to opt out if they wish.

Call centres: Businesses that operate call centres, either for outbound sales or customer service, should make every effort to collect email address and marketing opt in whenever talking to a customer.

In-store sign-up: This could either be done at point of sale, on a registration card, or using in-store data capture screens. Email can be used to drive people to stores, with special offers not available online, especially useful for higher value items, when up-sell or cross is easier to achieve face to face.

Offline print media: This is another fantastic opportunity to promote your email marketing communications. Advertisements in publications and direct mail provide an excellent platform for your data capture. This can either be done using the URL which takes people straight to the newsletter sign-up page on your website or create a QR code to allow mobile users to sign up directly from their mobile handsets.

Social media: For those people who are interacting with you via social media, you will be able to promote your email communications. You could use competitions that allow the option of them adding their email address to your marketing list. It would be a good idea to make the email address capture optional, as they are already engaged with you on an online channel; it could be their channel of choice.

One thing’s for certain, the more time and effort that is put into email address capture, the less money you need to spend on cold data (and the bigger your list is).

Tim Roe, director of data and deliverability, RedEye International Ltd

@RedEyeUK

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