Email Marketing – it’s more than just blasting to a list of contacts from Outlook!

It’s obvious to say that email is a tool that nearly everyone uses today, and it continues to grow as more and more people utilise the internet. Email was also one of the first forms of internet marketing and quickly became the cornerstone of many a company’s marketing strategy.

However, email marketing is more than just sending a mass message to the all of names on your contact list. It involves scheduling several promotional and educational messages with specific call-to-actions via email. It shouldn’t be seen as an ‘email blast’ but a campaign that spans over a period of time.

In our first blog in this series, we consider the contact list, which we consider to be the foundation of email marketing.

Building Your Database of Contacts

A core aspect to the success of an email marketing strategy lies in the quality of your contact list. The best way to ensure that you collect quality information is to obtain it with permission directly from the contact. Much like how telemarketing wore out its welcome, so has unsolicited email marketing. This is why permission-based email marketing offers better response rates, increased trust in your company’s brand and better deliverability.

Depending on whether you are a B2B or B2C company, you will want to collect different information from your contacts. For example, If you are a B2C company, then you will likely have their full name, gender, age range, home address, phone number, some of their personal interests and email address. If your contacts are primarily business owners, you would likely want to have their full name, business title, company name, industry, business address, phone number and email address. The more you know about your contacts, the more accurately you can segment your database in order to send targeted emails to them.

6 Ways to Build Your Email Database

Ask for an address:

Every communication or touch point with your prospects and customers should start and end with a request for an email address. Email has become a very popular form of communication, so asking for someone’s email address may be perceived as less intrusive than asking for their phone number.

Remind them to subscribe:

Remind your prospects to subscribe to your newsletter every chance you get! Include it in your email signature and add it to the home page or contact page of your website.

Provide an incentive:

Prospects rarely subscribe to your newsletter just for the sake of subscribing. People already receive too many emails each day before they add another one to their inbox they may not read. Incentives such as receiving exclusive promotions not available to the general public, hearing about valuable techniques that would help them in their everyday life or business, obtaining a free whitepaper and/or any other members-only perks associated with subscribing to your newsletter could help you get some email addresses you otherwise may not have captured.

Run a contest:

A creative way to build your database could be running a contest that would require participants to complete a type of form to enter. This could be as simple as running a draw for a free product, service or giveaway. If the offer is enticing enough, people will want to participate.

Forward to a friend:

Within each newsletter, you should have a ‘forward to a friend’ link. The link should then drive readers to a landing page with a form requiring them to share their friend’s contact details. The form should be set up in such a way that allows them to share your newsletter with multiple friends, not just one (we recommend 5-10 friends). You should also include a message box where your reader can include their own personal message to their friends.

Buy a list:

You can contact one of the many list providers to find and purchase a list of names and email addresses based on demographic and/or psychographic information. For example, you might purchase a list of 5,000 names and email addresses of people between ages 20-40 who live in a certain town or city. The main issue to consider with this option is the list quality. A purchased list will never be as good a quality as an opt-in list that you’ve built yourself over a consistent period of time.

Got a question about anything you’ve read in this article? Why not give us a call on 0161 941 4615 or send an email to info@theagencycreative.co.uk.