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• Building Email Marketing Lists

  • Date: 02/07/09

  • Category: Email Marketing

  Building email marketing lists is important because each addition to your list is another potential sale. The more effort you put into building your email marketing lists, the more potential sales you will have. The first (and possibly most difficult) step in a successful email campaign is building email marketing lists, and there are a number of different ways of getting prospects to sign-up.

  Be enticing. People are very protective of their email addresses now, and rightly so. Illegal spammers have taken to bombarding inboxes through illegitimate means. But if you offer people something in return, such as a newsletter, free ebook or whitepaper, online course or software, they are more likely to give you their email address when subscribing and your email marketing lists will see a noticeable growth. The internet has become the main place people come to shop or to learn. If you combine the two, by offering free informative content or free membership to an online course or software once they have bought a product, you stand a better chance of being remembered and recommended.

  Be accessible. Your sign-up form should be easy-to-use and prominently displayed on every page of your website in order to maintain consistent additions to your email marketing lists. It’s not about hounding visitors to sign-up, but making it easy for them when they choose to. It’s no good them being on a page and not being able to find the page with the sign-up form when they have been persuaded. Use simple calls to action such as “Subscribe to our informative newsletter” or “Sign-up here”, and have it positioned on the top left or top right of each page. A pop-up before they leave the site prompting them to sign-up is a good way of reminding them before they leave, but it can backfire if they feel like they can’t leave the site easily.

  Be trustworthy. Your sign-up form should always be accompanied by a clear privacy notice. People are often wary of handing out personal details online, so to overcome this natural hesitation you should make it clear that you are both reputable and trustworthy. You want your email marketing lists to consist of recipients that are happy to receive your communication and trust that you are using it respectfully.

  Be economical. Related to the above, don’t ask for too many personal details on your sign-up form. All you really need is a first name and the email address, so asking for phone numbers and addresses is out of order. Once they are on your email marketing lists, you can always contact them in the future to find out more about them, but until then, don’t ask.

  Be flexible. Different visitors will have different needs. Catering to these is called ‘market segmentation’, and this is another way of building your email marketing lists. Think about what visitors might want from your site, such as a subscription to a newsletter, informative articles or product updates, and edit your sign-up form to include relevant choices. With this data you can offer the recipient the content that they want, and it will instantly make your email one to read because they have chosen to receive it.