In our last post about the power of email, we talked about the two different types of email communication – sending a regular email newsletter or sending a personal message. Remember, email marketing, if executed property, can provide explosive results when growing a business and online presence. Today we’re going to talk about how to grow your email list and why if you’re not on the email list-building wagon now, you’re missing out on the action.
This is part two in a series of posts discussing email marketing, how to grow your list, how to market to it using email and how to ultimately grow your business through secret ninja ways of the email marketer.
I tell consulting clients all the time, if you’re not collecting email addresses, you’re missing out on one of the single most important ways to communicate with your customers. Just two years ago, I was told that email marketing was, “sooo 2006.” Well, it wasn’t then, and it isn’t now.
Even now with Twitter, Facebook and texting, email is still one of the most used methods of communication. Think about it, we check email on our phones, leave our email clients running on our desktop computers – we have “growl” messages display previews of new emails as they roll in. Your customers are waiting for each and every email that storms into their inbox, waiting for something to respond to, think about or forward to a friend or co-worker. If done right – that is to say, you write the perfect subject line, craft the message just right and send it at the right time of day – email can be the most important part of your marketing plan.
Now, obviously, the big question is, “How to I get all those email addresses that are going to change the way I do business?”
1. First and foremost, you have to tell your web site audience that you have a newsletter.
You need to put a box somewhere in the sidebar, above your content, or in the header of your web site that either clicks over to a page where people can enter their email address or where they can enter their email address right there. Remember, Keep It Simple Stupid.
Don’t make people dig for this, the harder it is for them to give you their email address, the less likely they’ll give it up.Darren Rowse, from ProBlogger.net had implemented and discussed putting a popup box that has an email contact form in it. I personally hate popups, but totally agreed with his logic. He eloquently explained that although he didn’t like popup boxes either, almost nobody complained about it and his newsletter subscription rate increase dramatically. That’s good enough for me!
2. By golly, if you want their email address, just give them something.
Right now I’m writing an e-book called 5 Traffic Secrets your Competition doesn’t want you to know about, and guess what? I’m going to give it away for free to everyone that signs up for the email newsletter. The goal is simple, I want to grow my email database, you want to grow the traffic on your blog or web site, so I’ll trade my knowledge for an opportunity to be your friend.
I’m hoping to have the book complete by the end of March – it will be pretty awesome! In the mean time, get signed up now and I’ll be sure you get it when it is released.
3. If you are a retail business, give your customers a reason to subscribe!
It doesn’t matter what type of retail business you are in, your main objective is to sell your product. The reasons to communicate with your customers are practically enumerable.
Here are some examples of what your customers want to hear from you: when you get new product lines in, updates to existing product lines, when existing products are getting low in inventory (they may want to stock up now), when you are having sales, special holiday (or otherwise) hours, opening a new shop, quick one-time push on a particular product (you may include a printable coupon or a coupon code for online shopping), the list is only limited by your imagination.
If you have a “bricks and mortar” store, ask for the email addresses of your customers as they make purchases. Many of these customers you may already have a relationship with, and the others, this is your chance to start building that relationship. Note: you just want to be sure that you send a “verification email” to them once you get them in your system so they have a chance to “opt-in” – this is just a precaution to maintain the integrity of your email account with whatever service you use, be it Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, Blue Sky Factory, or whatever.
4. Write a whole article on why your readers should subscribe to your email newsletter.
If you are a blogger like me, or you have a web site that you use to drive traffic to your business, just write a quick article spelling out the reasons why people should subscribe to your email newsletter. Tim Ferris, from The Four Hour Work Week did this, titled simply 7 Reasons to Subscribe. Not getting to much into headlines here, Ferris capitalized on a winning headline that was sure to snatch the attention of his readers and persuade them to give up their email address for his further communication in the future.
Again, the whole purpose is to eliminate any confusion or lack of knowledge and convince your customers or readers that they are getting value by subscribing.
5. Run contests on your blog or web site that require an email address to enter.
When I was with PCBdaily, we would run contests from time to time, including giving away season passes to the local amusement area, gift cards to the local mall, consulting services, and others.In the rules, we clearly spelled out that by entering all entrants were agreeing to receive email communication from us and can opt out anytime.
Again, once the email addresses are collected, it is considered best-practice to send a “verification email” to all of the new email addresses giving them the opportunity to “opt-in”. This is called a Double Opt-in and is usually required by all the email marketing services available today. The point is to be sure that the people that don’t want to hear from you aren’t getting your emails and marking them as spam – that is bad.
Growing your email database can be a difference like night and day when it comes to marketing your business. Collecting email addresses can be one of the single most important things you do as a blogger and a business owner.
If you have any clever ideas for collecting email addresses you’d like to share, tell us about them in the comments section below.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Jason – Wow. I always love it when a blogger talks email marketing. I’m impressed with how spot on all of your points are. (Thanks for the Blue Sky Factory mention too!).
I would just caution readers on your last point about “running contests.” This can be a tricky one as you get a boat load of subscribers who don’t *really* want to be on your list, but are just signing up for the free stuff/contest. I know you talked about the double opt-in approach which is great. However, be aware that you may run into some deliverability issues as one metric ISPs look at is hard bounces. A bunch of bogus email addresses could lead to a high number of bounces, thus impacting deliverability.
One more point I’d like to clear up.
Single Opt-In: A subscriber signs up and is added to your list. Simple. Done.
Single Opt-In With Confirmation: A subscriber signs up and is added to your list. You send them an email thanking and/or “confirming” that they have signed up. No further action is required.
Double Opt-In: A subscriber signs up and is added to your list. You send them an email where they must take action before being added to your list. They must click a link, enter a capcha/code. If they don’t, they are not a subscriber.
Finally, double-opt in is *not* required by most Email Service Providers, nor should it be in my opinion. More on that later if you are interested.
Thanks again for talking email marketing! Love it.
DJ Waldow
Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory
@djwaldow
Wow, I never pretend to know it all and you’ve provided excellent incite, right from the source!
Thanks so much for the comment.
About the contests, this can be really tricky as there are tons of regulations on sweepstakes, but if you do your homework, I still think this can be a good direction to take.
But, to your point, DJ, I think you definitely run the risk collecting bogus emails – but I think it largely depends on how you go about it.
In the past, the giveaways that I have done have been very small scale compared to say what a larger company may do. The giveaways I’ve done have largely revolved around existing readership and trying to get them to “convert” to a medium by which I could communicate more readily with them.
I’ve never “advertised” any small contest I would run outside my social network (i.e. on my blog, Facebook fan page, or Twitter stream), and the resulting “registrants” would really only be 100 to 300 people total, and most of them were already readers anyway.
So, I’m not sure that I ran into too big a problem with bogus emails or people signing up that would have absolutely no interest in what we’re saying. Not to mention that the prizes we would give away were usually related to our audience.
One of the giveaways I was thinking about doing at Too Creative was a free blog set up and one year free hosting – which is something I might normally charge $100 to $200 to do. But, Too Creative is very new and I still haven’t solidified all those details yet!
Again, DJ, thanks soo much for taking time to chime in. I greatly appreciate the clarification.
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