Build or buy your email list?
At first glance, it can seem that buying a mailing list packed with email addresses is the best solution for fast and comprehensive marketing reach. After all, you can pay a moderate sum and immediately receive a long list of email addresses that someone else has painstakingly harvested, immediately opening up your pool of potential customers.
Not so fast
While it is true that the costs are moderate, and the results are instantaneous, they are not accurate results. For example, if you curate your mailing list, building up a careful list of people who have used your products and services before and therefore are likely to use them again, your email marketing services success rate is likely to be exponentially higher than your bought list of unverified email addresses. Let us see why this is the case.
Invalid emails
You may end up with a list that is predominantly unused or throwaway email addresses that the owners no longer use, or use simply for junk mail, deleting much of it. Curating the list yourself means that you are more likely to receive a genuine email, because you will be offering them something that they are interested in or that they need: your online brochure, or newsletter with unique discounts and deals, for example.
Unsubscribe
The days of needing to know everything have passed now – there is just too much information out there – and people will readily unsubscribe from email lists that do not offer them any value, such as offers for products and services they might never use. If you have been given an email address for sales purposes, but keep your customers and potential customers amused, engaged or entertained, you are more likely to remain on their contacts list
Legality
Privacy protection is big these days, with laws like GDPR going into force all over Europe and other places. These laws are designed to protect end-users from harassment and having their details sold, and when you buy lists you may well be purchasing lists that have not been honestly acquired. Instead, ensure that you have the consent of every person that you email to ensure you stay on the right side of the law.
If this all sounds discouraging and as though it will take too much of your already precious time, you do not have to do all the work yourself. An email marketing agency, such as Mailchimp Services, can do all the legwork for you, working on your behalf to build a quality list of email subscribers who will receive your email offers happily and be more inclined to drive up your click-through rate!
GDPR and the effects on email marketing
A year has gone by and it turns out that GDPR has not had the expected disastrous effects that people thought it would. In a lot of ways, it can be said that GDPR has helped email marketing more than it has damaged it.
Why GDPR is a good thing
GDPR was announced two years before it was implemented, yet most people dismissed it until it was only a couple of weeks before the deadline. Considering the complexity of GDPR, this extensive procrastination caused a frenzied state of confusion for many lawyers and businesses. Despite the overall confusion and criticism, GDPR guarantees that everyone, as owners of their data, have appropriate rights that others must respect. Fortunately for email marketers, when you respect people’s private data, your results will increase.
How GDPR changed email marketing
For some unknown reason, many people believed that GDPR would destroy email marketing by draining their email list and making it very unlikely to find new subscribers. Let’s be realistic, your email list probably did get smaller once you carried out the GDPR opt-in process, however, the people that stayed are your loyal customers. They are the individuals who will open your emails and go through your content. Now that there is a model to follow, the number of email abusers will fade.
Not without its obstacles
One area of change was that of collecting and storing consent. Some of the specific requirements included:
1) Consent must be “freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous”.
2) Data subjects can withdraw their consent whenever they choose, and you have to honour their decision.
3) You must have documentary proof of consent.
Thank you, GDPR
By appreciating your subscribers, and providing value with every email you send, GDPR delivers that additional layer of information that helps you to remember that your subscribers are people with their own data. When you agree to treat them and their data how you want to be treated with yours, good things will happen.
If you wish to know more about GDPR or any email marketing services, get in touch with us today.
4 Email list growth hacks
If you are a new business then do not overlook the importance of having a well-stocked and influential email list. Social media is always important for helping to grow your business and to help spread the news of what you do, but your email list is equally important, as the people and organisations in it will help to feed your social media channels, plus they will be your major consumers. You need to grow this list quickly, but how do you go about this? Below we share four email list growth hacks.
Content needs to encourage sharing
One major way that you can grow your email list is by encouraging the people on your current list to share what you do via email. They are, after all, your biggest supporters and will shout the loudest. Just be sure to make it easy for them by providing a button that they can simply click to forward on that email for you.
Make it easier to sign up
Your website needs to provide a clear and simple way for everyone to be able to sign up to your email list. If it’s not obvious or seems too complicated, then people simply won’t sign up. Choose the page with the most visitors and place the email sign up box in the most prominent place.
Use the power of Facebook
Everyone is on Facebook and we all love to receive free stuff, so combine these two to help grow your email list. Create a post stating that all new subscribers will receive a free gift, such as a coupon code or free ebook and watch that list grow.
Provide online courses and webinars
When it comes to email marketing, providing a short free webinar in an email is a good way to keep customers and to attract new customers. Offer information and advice about your service and brand that is of importance. It will be memorable and more likely to be shared.
How to get your first 100 email subscribers
In the digital market, keeping in touch with your client is the only way to ensure they are not swept away by strong competitive forces. Email is arguably one of the best ways to constantly feed your clients with information about your product, your blog, and even your business. For instance, they are more targeted than social media as you can tailor the contents according to the needs of a specific customer. Also, emails are not subject to as much change as social media platforms which make them more reliable.
Keeping in contact with your audience through emails will ensure they keep returning to view your website content. This helps your website rank better on Google and other search engines, giving you more visitor through search links.
To enable you to target a larger audience and get a bigger following, you need to have email subscribers who will consistently receive your notifications and act on them. Below are some tips that will help you increase your email subscribers:
Use giveaways
There are numerous products you could give depending on the services you offer. This could include a resume template, a free t-shirt, or even a white paper. Such products which could be delivered via email allow you to obtain the addresses of your customers. By making sure you obtain the necessary permissions, you will be able to send emails to your customers and keep in touch with them.
Use widgets
In your website, you could make sure that each page has a widget urging the customer to subscribe their emails for offers and notifications. Depending on the length of your content, you could customize your widget to make it appear consistently throughout the pages. The widget should also stand out in order to draw maximum attention to itself.
Encourage referrals
Once you get subscribers, you could encourage them to refer their friends via email addresses and in return offer them a giveaway. By so doing, you will have more email subscribers to whom you could extend the same offer.
Use website tools
Some website tools are dedicated to ensuring the visitor is prompted to take some action which often involves leaving their email addresses. These include adding the prompts to the options menu, prompting visitors just before they exit the site, adding a welcome gate which requires the user to leave their email, among many more.
With the tips offered above, you will get over 100 faithful receivers and readers of your emails who you will be able to reach with your call to action. Such actions including purchasing a product, visiting a shop, or even filling an order form will increase your customer base and therefore increase your revenue. Contact us today to discover how our email marketing services can help to expand your business.
3 ways to build an email list for a B2B business
A business can have the very best product, service or solution in the world, but if it is unable to reach its target audience, or if its attempts at marketing fall flat, then the business will ultimately fail. Success is about far more than just providing something people want and will value – it’s also reliant upon being able to let them know that such an item exists.
One of the most effective and efficient means of getting your message is, and has been for close to two decades, email. Did you know that 99 percent of all consumers concede that they check their email accounts at least once per day, or that 93 percent of all B2B marketers utilise email so as to get their content in front of their target demographics?
The average office worker receives around 121 emails every day, and so figuring out the most appropriate way of making your content stand out, and ensuring it reaches the right people, is absolutely key.
So how should you go about building an email list that does achieve results?
Have a form on your website
The very best way to capture the details of people that genuinely care about what you do and want to be kept updated on latest products or recent progress is to encourage them to hand over their email address while on your website. If, in return, you can provide them with a newsletter at regular intervals, you will be able to build a robust relationship.
Make use of your employees
You and your employees will, over the course of a year, likely interact with people from hundreds – if not thousands – of different organisations. By doing something simple like putting footers in your emails that advertise your conferences, products, services or solutions, you will be making use of free advertising space that has previously gone unharnessed.
Make use of content
If you’re reading this post, then that should offer all the evidence you need to indicate that blogs work. Google absolute loves it when you create content that is valuable and bespoke, and so it will push you to the top of its search rankings if you can do it time and time again, giving you more visibility. To make use of this increased level of public awareness, you need to ensure that every piece of content has a call of action of some kind – a link to a product, an email address of an employee should they wish to get in contact, or a link to another article you have already written.
How to monetise your email list
Email marketing is an effective way to reach a targeted audience. Many businesses rely on email marketing for customer acquisition and retention. Emails have a high conversation rate and a strong return on investment — ideal for driving sales and brand awareness. Here are five ways to make the most out of your email list.
Up-selling, down-selling, and cross-selling
Up-selling is recommending a more expensive option to a customer after a purchase. Down selling is suggesting a less expensive alternative when the customer backs out of a sale. Cross-selling is recommending other complementary products related to the initial purchase. Keeping track of your customers’ transaction history and emailing appropriate suggestion is guaranteed to boost sales.
Paid subscriptions to premium content
If you are an expert in your field, you could use your vast knowledge and experience to create content that your subscribers would be willing to buy. It could be coaching sessions, business tips and news, webinars, or analytical information. Create a weekly, monthly or annual membership for accessing premium content. Ideally, it shouldn’t be an expensive subscription; it’s better to have many subscribers paying a small fee than a few paying a high price.
Promotional content
Keep your customers up to date with the addition of new features, products or services in your business. Let them know what you’re up to; are there any new products they might be interested in, any seasonal discounts and offers? This could be in the form of a newsletter or general promotional ads.
Sell ad space on email content
Many businesses are always on the lookout for legitimate email lists. It’s never a good idea to rent out email lists, but you can at least rent out some ad space on your email content such as newsletters. The best way to do this is to write a review of the business and subtly encourage your subscribers to follow their links. Just make sure that the third party is not a competitor.
Target abandoned shopping carts
In some cases, potential customers fail to complete checkout for various reasons. With the right emailing campaign, abandoned carts can become marketing opportunities instead of lost sales. Send your subscribers a reminder email if they abandoned their cart, highlight any discounts available with the purchase, down-sell, and offer any available checkout assistance.
How to keep your email list clean
When it comes to delivering exceptional email marketing for your business, whether that’s Mailchimp services or similar, one of the best ways to do this is to keep your email list up to date and clean. This not only reduces the number of spam complaints but will also help you to target your email marketing campaigns more efficiently, and get to know your target audience better. After all, there’s no point in targeting emails at a demographic of people who never look at them anyway.
There are a few ways in which you can clean up your email list, without having to worry about risking any potential conversions. As one of the key UK Mailchimp partners, we pride ourselves on providing the best in email marketing tips – here are three top tips to help you get a cleaner, more effective email list.
Review open rate
One of the most efficient ways to keep your list clean is to regularly review open rates.
Using tools such as Mailchimp, we’re able to automatically review open rates, as well as those who are technically ‘invalid’ due to hard or soft bounce rates. If no one is reading your emails, it makes no sense to keep communicating with them, as it is likely to prove unsuccessful.
Review subscribers
Reviewing subscribers and those who have chosen to unsubscribe is also important. See what behaviours or patterns you can identify from this and you should be able to learn what you can do to save time and resource in areas which won’t result in any ROI.
If people have unsubscribed, you’ll be able to see this and remove as necessary to ensure you’re not wasting time and resources.
Remove spam
Most databases will charge based on the size, so removing those which are deemed spam addresses can help in costs and potential ROI from an email campaign. We work with the likes of Mailchimp to ensure any spam addresses can be easily cleaned and removed.
This also includes removing duplicate addresses – this will save time and resource and result in a more effective email campaign.
What is spam and how do you avoid being classed as spam?
Spam emails, also known as junk emails, are defined as unsolicited email messages sent in bulk. Most of these messages are commercial in nature, but some have malicious intent, containing malware or have other fraudulent purposes. It is now estimated that 80-90% of all email traffic is classed as ‘spam’.
So how can you make sure your emails avoid the spam filters, and stand out from the crowd when they land in the inboxes of your prospective customers? Read on for some quick tips on how to make sure your emails reach the intended recipients.
Make sure the list of people you’re emailing have all opted in to receive your emails
You will need a form on your website that makes it really clear that by filling it out they will be opting in to receive emails
Keep an eye on your engagement rates
You can get re-routed to junk folders if your engagement rate is low, so make sure you are sending out emails at optimum times, and tweaking your subject lines and call-to-action sections to keep things fresh and your audience engaged.
Keep your email list clean
Mail service providers will often re-route emails to junk folders if they are sending to a list of email addresses where a lot of them are unused or rarely used. To avoid this, make sure you clean out your email list of those subscribers who haven’t engaged with your campaigns in a while.
Include an ‘Unsubscribe’ link
Make sure you’ve given your subscribers a way out. No matter how engaged they are, there are a myriad of reasons why someone might want to stop receiving a certain email campaign. If someone does click to unsubscribe, you must make sure you process their request within 10 business days.
Avoid using spam trigger words
A lot of spam filters on email are based on certain words being used. We have a list of 628 email spam trigger words available for you to download, so have a look through them when writing your emails, and avoid using them if at all possible.
