It’s common knowledge that you’ll have more success with an email campaign that is targeted and permission-based. This means that subscribers on your list have opted into receiving email correspondence from you. However, as a report in eMarketer from August 2008 showed, just because users opt into an email list, marketers shouldn’t see this as an opportunity send endless, irrelevant material to them.
The study showed that while the main reason respondents reported email as spam was still because they didn’t sign up (52%), 41% percent marked email as spam if it was of no interest to them. A quarter said they marked email as spam if they received too much email from a sender.
What this shows to email marketers is that effective customer relationship management (CRM) strategies and knowing your customers is absolutely crucial in keeping ROI high, and also in insuring that you don’t spam your potential customers. Unsolicited emails are can cause more damage than good to your brand.
So, how do you grow your Email Marketing subscriber list ethically and meaningfully?
Keep it clean
List hygiene is undoubtedly the most important factor in determining an Email Marketing campaign’s potential success. Databases that are well structured and contain relevant subscriber information enable you to personalise emails, send targeted and triggered email messages and implement various other good CRM practices.
Ensure you go through your email list on a fairly regular basis to do a clean-up. Remove addresses which have become inactive or that frequently don’t provide you with any feedback or response.
Create opportunities
Make it easy and obvious for people to sign up to receive your newsletters. For example, include a sign-up box on your homepage and include a link to your email sign-up page in your email signature. Also, ensure that you include an unsubscribe link on every email you send.
You should encourage your subscribers to “tell a friend” and include a link or button which enables them to easily forward your email message on.
Ensure that your newsletter is available in an HTML version on your website and that it is properly Search Engine Optimised. Organise older newsletters into archives, with relevant, keyword-rich titles to enable web users to find them easily through search engines.
Add value
One of the easiest ways to grow your subscriber list is by offering content that’s really valuable to your readers. This increases open rates, ups engagement and will often see your current readers forwarding useful emails on to their friends, thus increasing readers and subscribers virally.
About AlterSage
AlterSage offers tailored online marketing solutions that achieve targeted exposure for your website. Goal focussed and driven by return on investment, services include search engine optimisation, pay per click advertising, web design and development, persuasive web copywriting, brand building, conversion analysis and many more.
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[Website] www.altersage.com
16 February 2010
How to Grow your Email Marketing Subscriber Lists
Submitted by: Carla{pp}Email Marketing is a very effective way to speak directly to your customers and clients, ultimately driving engagement which increases leads and sales.
But of course, in order for Email Marketing to be successful, targeted messages need to reach the right people. Part of what makes email marketing unique and so effective is its ability both to broadcast, and also to target individuals with personalised content simultaneously.
But of course, in order for Email Marketing to be successful, targeted messages need to reach the right people. Part of what makes email marketing unique and so effective is its ability both to broadcast, and also to target individuals with personalised content simultaneously.
Published in Advertising, Media Consulting, Marketing Research
