Building an Email List?
You have a website. A brand new website, or it's a website
that's existed for a while but you haven't focused on collecting email
addresses. To get your content out to potential customers social media strategies and email communications are a succesful combination.
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| Building an Email List |
Why Build an Email List?
The most obvious reason to build your email list is to
maximize the value of your customers and your company revenue. However, it's
also important to remember that your email list is a company asset. In the
event that you want to sell your company a high-quality email list can increase
your company's overall valuation. A high-performing email list can give your
company additional revenue opportunities by giving you the chance to sell
advertising space in your email products or send sponsored emails on behalf of
partners or advertisers. You're not just building your marketing channel when
you build email list. You're also building your company's total value. That's
why it's worth your time to build a quality email list over time.
One of the first things that you'll need to deal with when
you begin to build email list is the quality versus quantity debate. The larger
your email list is the more potential you have to generate revenue from it.
However, as with most marketing activities the quality of your leads is equally
important. If you create a large email list by porting over old contacts or by
buying or renting a large list you may have a great number of email addresses.
However, you may have very few email addresses that are actually leads who are
interested in interacting with your product, company, or brand. That's why it's
often a better idea to start slowly and build email list over time. Focus on
getting the best quality leads on your email list and then let the numbers grow
as your business grows. While you ultimately do need to grow the largest email
marketing list possible you also need to grow a quality list that will respond
to your offers and increase your company revenue.
The most logical place to find interested email subscribers
is on your website itself. If users are visiting your website (regardless of
whether they purchase or make a transaction), they have an interest in the
information or content that you're providing. Every page of your website should
include an email sign-up box that allows users to join your mailing kist.
Customers who visit your website but don't make purchases or
transactions are important email marketing leads. However, customers who do
make a purchase or transaction are even more valuable email marketing leads
because they've shown a willingness to purchase from you or entrust you with
personal or financial information. Ensuring that you make it easy and inviting
for users to opt-in to your email program when they purchase or transact with
you will help you build not only a large email list but also an email list of
valuable users with proven purchasing history.
Social media is becoming an increasingly prominent form of
customer retention and brand awareness. With the right motivation and a
properly designed email sign-up box, social media leads can often be solicited
to become higher converting email marketing leads.
Growing your email list can be quite similar to advertising
your business as a whole. Websites that have similar content or user
demographics to your website can be great places to prospect for potential
email list leads. You can do this in a number of ways. Ideally, you can cut a
deal with the website on which you want to collect emails to promise them
advertising space in any email that you send. This will save you from having to
pay to advertise for your email list. You can also pay to advertise for
sign-ups to your email list on other websites. You can do this by purchasing an
impression-based or click-based advertising campaign, or you can offer to pay
per valid email sign-up. Both are acceptable industry standard ways to pay for
email advertising. However, if you are going to pay to advertise your email
list and recruit email sign-ups on another website, you'll need to ensure that
you have a firm understanding of what you can afford to spend per email sign-up
is. To do this, you'll have to assign a value to an email name. The best way to
do this is to keep it simple. Take a look at your last email send. If you had
an email list of one 1000 people and your email generated $1000 in revenue,
then you can spend $1 per email sign-up.
Advertising your email list on websites other than your own
site can be a great way to grow your email list. In fact, it can often be more
profitable than simply advertising your website. If you can give users a
compelling reason to sign up for your email (such as free offers or discount
codes), it is a much lower barrier to entry for most people to sign up for an
email list than to make an initial purchase. Just be sure that you understand
how much you can afford to spend per email address and that you have a plan in
place to identify which emails came from which advertising sources.
Similar to the process of advertising to build your email
list on other websites, using search marketing to build email list can be
equally effective. Build email landing pages specific to your email list and
then optimize for organic search engine placement or paid, click-based search
engine advertising. Again, however, if you do this, be sure that you have a
handle on how much you can afford to pay per email sign-up as well as a way to
track where email sign-ups came from. Many successful email lists have been
built using search engines as the primary method for recruiting subscribers.
If you have a retail location you can collect emails when
customers purchase or visit the store or other location. If you market by
attending festivals or concerts you can collect emails at those locations.
Offering to raffle off a prize and requiring an email on the raffle ticket can
also be an effective way to grow your email list.
If you need to grow your email list quickly there are a
number of services that will allow you to rent or purchase email names. Doing
so comes with several risks. Most list purchases or rentals are somewhat
expensive and you may not make your money back as quickly. A rented or
purchased list means that you are buying email addresses of individuals who
have not been exposed to or shown an interest in your brand or product. This
may mean that they are less likely to respond to your email and may even mark
your email as spam. This could create domain reputation problems for you with
future email sends.
Growing your email list can take time and patience. However,
a good quality email list not only gives you an opportunity to grow revenue for
you company, it also increases your company's value as a whole.
Take your time
and build a solid email lead recruitment process. It will pay off in the long
term.
Steve Steinberger
561-281-8330
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