Building a valuable email list

Having a good quality subscriber list will be the basis of any good email marketing campaigns.  Follow some simple steps to get yours top notch 

Quality lists are extremly valuable.  Organically growing your list, using an opt in policy, means recipients have given permission for you to send them marketing material so they are likely to give more positive response when it arrives in their inbox.

Ensure you have permission

There is frankly no point in emailing someone who has no interest in your products or services, it creates more expense with little interactivity and more chance of being marked as spam.  For this reason it is wise to make opt in obvious, not just on the website sign up but also on any offline data collection. 

Website signup

The signup is one of the most important places for gaining email opt in.  Best practice recommendations state that the sign up should clearly indicate what the recipient can expect from receiving the newsletter, what benefits and the frequency. It should also be above the fold on every page and have a clear call to action. 

Double opt in

Website signups should ideally also be double opted in.  This means that when someone signs up online, they get a confirmation email with a link they have to click before being added to the subscriber list.  It's good practice because it means that the recipient has to actively confirm they wish to subsribe and are interested, it gets your branded emails in their inbox straight away (you can include a 'add us to your safe contacts' ensuring your even more likely to get there in the future) and it confirms their email address is real. 

Avoid bought-in lists

Buying a list can be tempting. however it is rarely fruitful and, although you can buy lists of business contacts, the same is not true of consumers, who must have given you opt-in permission to contact them.

Growth

It is estimated that email lists have a churn rate of up to 30% a year.  This means to grow your list you need to think of innovative ways to encourage opt in, here are just a few examples:

Incentives and prize draws

These are excellent ways to encourage sign up.  Consumers know their data and email addresses are valuable, so let them know you're willing to pay for it.  Offer something as an incentive.  These should be small and relevant to your product (service) offering.  Something too big or irrelevant will mean you have people signing up just for the chance of winning, not because they are interested in you.

Social Media

Integrating your email campaigns with social media means you may be reaching consumers who may not otherwise have signed up.  Add Social Media links to your newsletter and post your newsletter on Social Media channels for cross platform pollination. 

Collaboration

Got anyone you work closely with?  Know someone who has same market with different products or services?  Why not engage in joint promotion?  Although you cannot swap lists with your partners, you can get 'airtime' in each others' emails, which is great, inexpensive way of getting in front of new people.