There are literally thousands of websites and dozens of books on how to put together and execute an email campaign. However, the central ingredient to any successful strategy is simply having a large enough list to mail people. This Georgia Email List articles attempts to address this issue by giving our readers practicable and seasoned tactics on building a large and viable email list.
Underlying Principles
No Matter what method you choose, most will not be successful unless you follow the following principles.
Principle 1: Provide Value
For most people, an email address is treated in the same regard as a phone number or address. People simply do not like to release their private information readily especially in the online environment. You can overcome this natural hesitation If you offer something of value in return. Offering something doesn’t mean a tangible or monetary good. Quite a few academic studies and business marketing research on internet usage have shown that people go online for two basic reasons; to learn or to communication. Offering valuable information or content can easily be your carrot to unlocking large volumes of email contacts.
Principle 2: Keep it simple and easy
If you want to build a large email list. Keep it simple and easy to sign up. Many marketers make the mistake of collecting too much information. Usually a name and email address works fine. Your subscription box is not meant to be marketing research. Some marketers ask for data such as age, occupation, sex, etc. But keep in mind he more fields a person has to fill out, the less likely they are to complete it.
Principle 3: Assure Privacy
The most frequently cited reason for hesitation when giving out email addresses is spam. (Surprisingly ahead of identity theft.) Overcome this hesitation by posting a privacy notice. A simple phrase such as “Your privacy is important to us. We will never sell or disclose the email address and information you provide with us” will lead to more emails collected.
Principle 4: No Funny Business
Marketers have become far more aggressive in collecting emails. Often adding scripts and relays to forcibly extract email addresses. List building with involuntary ways will ultimately get you de-listed by the search engines when the various search engines crawl your website.
Principle 5: Honor your subscriber’s wishes. Whether they ask to be removed altogether or removed from a particular topic, always honor your subscriber’s wishes.
Email Gathering Techniques
Now that we have gone over the basic philosophy underlying our methods, let’s talk about various strategies on gathering emails.
- Your Website. A quick way to generate emails for your list is to place a subscription form on key web pages. Normally, the left top side of a web site is the area that a visitor looks at first. This is a natural area to place a small box that says, “Subscribe to our informative newsletter” or “download our free ebook” to increase your email list. Another method is you can create a pop-under that appears before they leave, asking if they would like to subscribe to your quality content. However, this degrades from the user experience.
- Checkout. Adding an opt-in box at checkout is a great way to increase your opt-in list as the customer usually gives you their email for receipts. A great way to entice more opt-in emails is to let your customers know you’ll be sending them great discounts or coupons in the future if they sign up.
- Google AdWords. Google AdWords is a very powerful global advertising platform. Allowing anyone to send traffic to their website and only pay per click (visitor) they receive. Clicks can start from as low as $0.01 and go right up to $100+ per click! If you do your keyword research thoroughly you could gain new subscribers to your list for less than $0.10 each
- Landing Pages – You can use paid searches to reach higher positions in marketing through the various search engines and post a email opt-in list on the landing page.
- Buy Pre-Existing Opt-in Lists. There are many list brokers out there so you should be wary of purchasing. Find companies – Buy pre-existing opt-in lists that match your target market.
- Leverage Pre-Existing Opt-In Lists. Find other businesses that are complementary to your own that currently email market. Express a desire to partner with them. Perhaps splitting marketing costs to add your products or services.
- Blogs. What you are reading now is the power of blogs. People love free information and what better way to share it than through blog posts. We prefer to just give away information but other companies have succeeded by just teasing their readers, leaving them to want more. Those companies then offer them a link to your opt-in page for more information on the subject.
- Article Marketing. There are dozens of article and e-magazine sites you can submit articles or blog posts to. EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com are among the biggest on the internet. Submit articles to these sites to drive traffic back to your own. Other great back link sources are Digg.com and Squidoo.com
- Incentives. Offer opt-in incentives such as white papers, ebooks, email-only discounts.
- Signature and Footers. Ad a signup link to all your email correspondence.
- Social Media Marketing. Set up a fan page on Facebook and create a MySpace account.
- Video/YouTube. The power of viral advertising can be immense when coupled with video. Create a video on YouTube that’s related to your industry or niche, you can include a link back to your website offering more information. After people watch the video they’ll click the link to your website and be persuaded to sign-up to your newsletter.
- Events/Conferences/Trade Shows. Setup a sign-in sheet at any of your physical events.
- Direct Mail. Ask for opt-in emails on your outgoing mail including bills and receipts.
- Print. With any print or advertisement, give an incentive for people to visit your website and sign up on your email list.
- Ask during phone. Follow up every phone correspondence with asking for their email. Prepare a 10-second speech that you can end every phone call with.
