Common - Creative... Building your Lists More Effectively

One of the biggest assets for the email marketer is their opt-in list of email addresses. Every year up to 30% of the emails on your list will become invalid emails. Building your list and staying on top of the list erosion can be a struggle. There are very common sense things that need to be in place to capture email address. But, many of these tactics will just keep you ahead of the erosion curve.

Some of the most common and maybe not so common ways companies are building their email lists are…

• Website sign-up form… Hint, make sure it is on every page of your site.
• Adding a forward to a friend link in all your email messages
• Adding a link to sign-up in transactional email messages.
• Require email address for downloading white papers from your site with the option to opt-in
• POS registration options
• Add a message to visit the site and opt-in on the in-store receipts
• Opt-in during the online shopping process
• Customer facing employees need to be asking for the clients emails
• Run contests or sweepstakes
• Don’t forget to promote the website sign-up on all direct mail pieces
• Tradeshow fishbowl with opt-in message
• Bag stuffers promoting the sign-up

If you really want to GROW your list, then you need to start thinking outside of the box and use some creativity. Below are a few examples of the creative ways some companies are using to build their email lists that I felt deserved more than a bullet.

Bounced Email List Append: One way to stay on top of your emails gone bad is to take all those hard bounced emails and see if you can find out their new email address. The company I work for has been doing this successfully for years. Every six months or so, pull the list of your hard bounced emails and append new emails to them. Then send a re-engagement message to them asking them if they would still like to be part of the list. We have seen an average of 30 – 35% of the hard bounce list opting back into the campaign.

Leverage Another Companies Email List: Now I am not suggesting that you send a message to another companies list. However, think about advertising your company in an email message sent from another company. Make sure you choose the company that is messaging to your target audience, of course. This can be accomplished many ways. There could be the opportunity to sponsor the message, buy advertising space, write an article that is featured in the message, and many others. This will drive additional traffic back to your site and hopefully drive more opt-ins.

SMS Technology: Providing someone the opportunity to join your email marketing list by texting their email address to a short code is another fantastic way to build your list. An example of this is to have a sign at the checkout line at a retail store that says “TEXT JOIN {youremail} to {short code} now to begin receiving special offers via email. You can even send them an immediate coupon back to use right there at the register! Now someone can join while they wait in line. They do not have to remember to visit your site when they get home or have time. You do not have to rely on the checkout person to remember to ask for the email address.

Not all of these ideas are going to be appropriate for your business. Some are going to be more effective than others depending on your industry.

Finally, I wanted to give you some advice when thinking about capturing email addresses on your website. Ask for only the information you REALLY need when someone is first signing up for your emails. Asking for a bunch of information when registering will be too overwhelming for some people. Reduce the number of fields you are requiring and you will increase the number of people opting in.

Bonus Tip: Interesting Way to Test Subject Lines!

I am sure you all are aware that I am always on the lookout for new and innovative ideas on improving email marketing results. While on Twitter yesterday, I noticed a post by @mmallin which stated, "Twitter's probably a great place to test different subject lines for email marketing campaigns." At the time, I thought not a bad idea and I retweeted the message. Then a few questions came back to me about how this would be accomplished. So, I feel like this deserves more attention then 140 characters to share my thoughts.

One of the common uses for Twitter is to send links to your Followers to read an article, join a webinar, etc.. The challenge is always to provide a good call to action message that will get the Followers interested in clicking on the link you provided. This is the same challenge all email marketers face when writing a subject line. Twitter is a great place to hone your skills in this area.

Tracking the effectiveness of these messages is the next obstacle. If you have insight into the web analytics for the site you are sending them to, or you have visibility into the registration activity for a webinar you have invited Followers to, then it makes things a bit easier... but not perfect. For example, send a tweet with one message. Wait a day. Check the site traffic. Send another tweet with a completely different message but same objective. Which one performed better for you.

Now let's take it up a notch... By using your email marketing platform, send a message to just yourself with different tracking links for the same destination. Copy those links into different tweets with different messages you would like to test. The effectiveness of those clicks can be seen in real time within your email marketing platform. Whichever performs better, use it in the "real" message to your subscribers... Make sense? Great... Now take advatage of this idea to polish up those subject lines!

Thanks to Michael Mallin @mmallin for this idea. If you use this idea with success, I want to hear about it. If you have questions or other great ideas, share them with everyone by commenting on this post.

Tomorrows Post: Effective ways to build your lists without purchasing emails

Email + Direct Mail Marketing Strategy = FAIL!

One of the biggest mistakes for companies just getting started or, for that matter any company spending time with email marketing, is treating their email marketing like direct mail marketing. I also believe it is a big reason why those same companies get turned off of email marketing. The stats for email marketing do not reflect better results because so many companies are doing it wrong. It does not take much to make a huge difference in your results. Here are a few steps you can take to improve your results immediately.

1. NEVER Send Email to Purchased or Rented Lists: Big mistake… I know there are good list companies out there and sometimes it works for some companies. However, this is the fastest way to a bad reputation a company can take. If you are a direct marketer, the first thing you are looking for is the right list to purchase for your message. If you have the same mentality with email marketing, you are going to fail. Email marketing is all about the subscriber. Instead of finding the right list for your message, find the right message for your list.

There are so many ways to build your list (in fact that will be my next post) there is no reason for you to purchase a list for email marketing. The risk of having a high rate of SPAM is too great to go down this path. If the recipient of your message is not opted-in to receive the message, then they should not be getting an email. This is best practices 101…

2. Maintain a Clean List: If you have been emailing at all, you probably know people tend to use the “Report Spam” buttons more than clicking on the link you provide (especially true in the B2C world). If you are using an email marketing service worth anything, the recipient who clicks this button is automatically removed from your list. This helps you with keeping your list clean, but your reputation still took a small hit. Get enough of those “hits,” and you start to build a bad reputation.

Why not take care of the issue before it causes a problem for your reputation? Review your list every month and remove recipients who have been inactive over the last six months. Now, I know this is not what a direct marketer would do, but this is not direct marketing. You certainly can create a new segment with this group of recipients and market to them differently. There are several strategies for getting inactive recipients reengaged which can be discussed in another post. However, the take away from this is… big lists don’t mean big results. The focus needs to be on clean data with active recipients even if that means sending to a much smaller list. If they are not engaging in your campaigns, why would you waist time with them?

3. Personalize: This does not just mean sending the exact same email to your entire list with the only difference in the email being the fact that you added the recipient’s first name in the beginning of the email. What I am referring to is a more focused, personalized approach to your messaging. Data is the key. Learn as much as you can about your recipients and use that to create a message that speaks directly to that specific person’s interests.

A basic example of this approach is to create an email with dynamic content that is delivered differently based on the gender of the recipient. Instead of a shoe store sending a generic offer email out that offers 30% off of all shoes, the store could send an email out with the same offer, but with a different image for a male as opposed to a female. Take that even further… if the recipient has shopped there before and the store knows what type of shoe they bought, the image changes to that type of shoe and the message changes to “30% off of your favorite shoes!”

The more personal your message can be the powerful the message to the customer. The more the customer is going to feel like your company knows/understands them. This will affect your results immediately for the positive. Communicate directly… Interact, relate with your customer on a personal level. Don’t just blast them with another generic email that might or might not be relevant to them.

As a very general rule, if you have been in the direct marketing world for a long time, email marketing is a different beast. If you want to be successful with your email marketing campaigns, use an old trick I learned from George Costansa… Do the exact opposite of what you would do normally. Success will follow.

As always, your comments are welcome and I hope this post gave you some good ideas on how to polish up your email campaigns.