List Building Best Practices: A two-part series
Posted by Rob Ropars on March 13th, 2009
In today’s economic climate, maximizing the ROI of marketing efforts has become paramount. In addition to ongoing list hygiene best practices, you should be pursuing ways to improve the size of your opt-in file. The more quality opt-ins you acquire (noting that I mean opt-in not purchased/rented lists of so-called “opt-ins”), the more potential buyers at your disposal.
What are some of the best ways to build your email marketing list? In today’s posting, we will look at four ways to grow your file, and in a few weeks we’ll look at additional ways in the conclusion of this series.
1-Referrals – Including a forward to a friend link will give your most interested recipients the opportunity to share with people they know (and you don’t). Like many ESP’s, SubscriberMail has a special link that will guarantee a clean copy is sent to the friends. They will need a place to sign up which leads me to the next item-an opt-in form.
2-Web site – Your site is going to be one of your best sources for new email addresses. Install an email capture field on your front page (or any other high traffic pages), and consider collecting additional data after the email address is entered, by directing them to a second page (or follow-up with them later via email to obtain the additional data).
3-Sales people – If your sales people have captured e-mail addresses of leads, and they are not in your CRM system, make sure they get permission to email them and then enter them into your system. If nothing else, it will give them another reason to touch base with their prospects.
4-“On hold” recordings – Do you have an “on hold” recording? If so, augment it to include a message about your email program. Let callers know that not only do you have a free email available, but also that it contains latest news and potentially exclusive offers only available via the email (always a good way to add value to your emails). Clearly state the web address where the form is or encouraging them to let the call taker know to sign them up right away then and there.
Watch for part two in a few weeks with five more ways to build your list…
[...] discussed some of the ways you can build your list. Did you miss part one? If so, please click here to read that posting before [...]
I have read a few of your posts and they are all interesting and informative…keep up the good work.