First on the checklist for growing your email marketing list is to consider all touch points with your prospects. At each touch point, you should be asking prospects to join your subscription list, subscribe to your service and/or register for a useful resource, like a whitepaper or webinar. Here is a checklist of places where you should be asking contacts to subscribe to your email marketing list:
Email Signatures. Create an email signature such as – “3 Reasons to Subscribe to our Email Marketing Tips Newsletter”, with a link to the subscription landing page. Ask all Singapore Email List employees to include it in their corporate signature.
All transactional emails. If you’re confirming an order, paper download or anything else, always ask people to join your subscription list or register.
Product warranty / registration forms.
Invoices. Add your list contact information on every invoice. Are you sending electronic copies of invoices / sales receipts? If so – this is a perfect place to include a link to your sign up page.
Website. Every page should have an invitation to subscribe and a link to your email marketing registration page.
Surveys, customer satisfaction surveys.
Call Center. Ask support and sales staff to ask customers and prospects if they’d like to subscribe to your newsletters and correspondence.
Registration Landing Page Contents
We’ve seen many customers whose registration landing page is a lonely form with a dozen contact fields. Make sure the registration landing page has the following contents:
Make your case – clearly summarize the benefits. It sounds easy but 3 out of 5 sites don’t explain the benefits of signing up.
Provide a link to a previous newsletter or two, or links to a few teaser pieces of content. This lets your potential subscribers review your newsletter before they sign up and determine if it is something they’d be interested in.
Clearly state your privacy policy and include a link to the details.
Include 1-2 customer testimonies
Do not include a long list of links to other pages. This is distracting and your goal should be to drive prospects to signup – don’t provide other distractions.
Can you offer a relevant incentive? A free massage or T-shirt are nice options but you’ll just get people who like free T-shirts and massages. If you offer reports or pay-for content, consider offering free access for subscribing.
Use Double opt-in. Also indicate clearly on your registration page that a link will be sent to the person’s email. This increases the likelihood that people enter a valid contact email address and reduces the likelihood of someone entering a spam honey-pot address.
Keep it Simple
Ask for what’s needed – email, first / last name, perhaps company and phone. Ideally include check-boxes or a memo field so people can state their specific interests (or provide a note). Most Email Service Providers make it easy for to ask prospects to augment their profile later.
Be a Tease – Use Teaser Content
A more viral approach is to make a limited amount of your content readily available without requiring registration to your email list. Then include information on the benefits of joining your email marketing list, along with subscription links. Chances are that your paper will be downloaded and passed around to many more people who you would have otherwise not reached – allowing greater ‘visibility and influence’. You may have fewer direct registrations overall but you gain broader visibility. Try combining the viral pass-around approach with standard registration for other content.
If you are producing podcasts and webinars, be sure to include a plug with contact information, registration page access and benefits.
Shameless Self-Promotion
If you are creating contributed content, press releases or blogs, here are a few opportunities to work in a bit of shameless self-promotion. Just don’t “over-message” or over-sell:
Include Information and a Link to Your Newsletter in Press Releases – A good option for smaller companies. Include your company newsletter and other resources in press release copy.
Promote Your Email/Newsletter in Articles and Article Attribution – Include a reference and link to your newsletter after the by-line on articles in trade publications.
Mention in your Blog(s). A link to your registration page is fair game.
Use “Forward to a Friend” Forms
Virtually every email service provider (“ESP”) includes a ‘forward to a friend’ option, where you can include a link for recipients to forward their email to a friend (or enemy). Forward to Friend forms can help you add 2-4% more contacts to your list.
Add Social Share Links to your Email Marketing Campaigns
Include social share links on every email (and on high value web pages on your site) so that recipients can easily share your great content (whitepapers, webinars etc). Though this won’t directly add contacts to your list – if you include contact information within the body of the document, interested recipients / readers are more likely to come to your site and register for future resources.
