 Building an email list is like building a business. Taking shortcuts to hurry the process along, such as turning to third-party mailing list rental or purchase, can backfire in a big way. Use your best selling tactics to promote your email list-building campaign, just like any marketing campaign you use to sell your products or services.
Why not just buy or rent a promising-looking list from a broker and start mailing to it, or collect names through an appending service? Because those lack relevance, interest and trust, the three key ingredients that support every successful email marketing program:
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Relevance: You're sending email to people who didn't ask for it, and that equals spam in the minds of most recipients, no matter how their countries' laws might define unsolicited email.
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Interest: You have no assurance that they will be interested in your company, your products or your email marketing, only a guess that they could be.
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Trust: Unsolicited email can make recipients suspicious. That suspicion can cloud any future customer contacts with your company.
At best, you might get a few nibbles, but the money you spent on those email address lists could have been directed elsewhere, like a search marketing program designed to attract browsers to your opt-in or preference center.
More likely, enough recipients will complain via the spam button to prompt ISPs either to filter or block your email marketing.
Email List-Building Campaign How-To
As with any marketing campaign, your list-building program has an objective, strategies to achieve it, and ways to measure whether you achieved it.
Objective:
Yes, you want to create and build a mailing list. But with what kind of subscribers? Create a profile of your ideal email subscriber, and use it as a template to guide your strategies and tactics.
Also, be able to clearly define the content, format and frequency of your messages to be able to communicate the benefits of subscribing.
Strategies:
Four strategies can help you achieve your list-building goals:
1) Transparent and trustworthy email opt-in process: Permission is both the law in most countries of the world today and the expectation among email users. A transparent opt-in process explains exactly how to sign up for email, what recipients can expect and how you will use the information they give you. Provide this information on your opt-in or preference page with a link to your privacy policy.
2) Relevant, well-written and useful content: You can't build a list without good content. As your program grows, track and analyze activity on your messages to see what does or does not engage subscribers.
3) Benefit-based invitations at every place where you encounter your customers or potential subscribers:
First: Tell subscribers what they'll get in exchange for giving up their email address: "Sign up here for email-only discounts, specials and freebies" is more enticing than "Sign up for our emails." You can go into greater depth, such as providing sample copy, on your opt-in page.
Next: Place this pithy invitation everywhere you will encounter customers or prospects. Some suggestions:
* Devote one tab on your company Facebook Page to your e-newsletter, with sample copy and a link to your opt-in page. Make that tab the landing page from your Facebook link in your email messages.
* Chat up your email content in your posts to all of your social communities, including regular invitations to sign up.
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Extend the invitation offline. Print it in ads and mailings (bills, statements, etc.), even on your products or shopping bags. Ask for email addresses at the cash register, on the trade-show floor or during customer support calls.
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Promote share-with-your-network. Ask email subscribers to share appropriate content via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Delicious or other relevant communities.
4) Regular email list hygiene and management: Believe it or not, regular pruning of your list can achieve growth, too. Even a new list can go stale quickly. Track clicks so you can reach out to subscribers who don't click.
Measurement:
How many email subscribers do you want by what deadline? Setting a goal of 100,000 active subscribers in six months is good, but you have to factor in list churn and inactivity of 30 percent to 50 percent in order to achieve it. That could raise your goal to 150,000 to 200,000 subscribers in order to come up with an active 100,000 base.
This sounds like a big challenge, but you increase your chances of gaining active email subscribers when you lay the groundwork first with a trustworthy opt-in process, engaging content, a wide network of invitations and careful hygiene and management.
Additional Resources:
Lyris HQ offers more email list-building strategies and advice in our Marketing Resources center. The following are excellent places to begin:
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About the Author
Lori Gariepy is a marketing communications manager at Lyris. She is the editor-in-chief of http://LyrisHQ.Lyris.com and of the company's Inside Lyris HQ newsletter, and manages social media and online communications. Connect and converse with Lyris on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
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