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Wikus Engelbrecht is a writer, journalist and digital poet at GraphicMail, an international email and mobile marketing service provider. His professional career in language and media has traveled the film, print advertising, magazine publishing, food theatre and online content industries since 2003.

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Four Best Practices for Building Your Email List

Written on
Nov 9, 2011 
Author
Wikus Engelbrecht  |
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Four Best Practices for Building Your Email List

GRAPHICMAIL – The mailing list is the most important element in the success of your email marketing campaigns. If you can convert visits to your website and social pages into lasting relationships via email, the chances of retaining customers are much greater.

A permission-based list built by yourself always yields the best results, since you’re providing people with content that’s relevant and interesting to them. Here are four key principles and practices to help you build a responsive list of addresses:

1) Offer a sign-up form on your website and blog for your email newsletter: The very obvious and most important example of when you have someone’s interest is when he or she visits your website. So feature a newsletter sign-up form in a prominent position on every page, including text that:

•    clearly states that this is a sign-up form for getting email;
•    describes the benefits of being a newsletter subscriber; and
•    indicates how often email will arrive.

2) Integrate sign-ups with other website interactions: If the ideal time to invite someone to join your list is when they’ve shown interest in your brand, it makes sense to build a sign-up opportunity into all your online processes. For example, whenever people:

•    register for an event or webinar on your website;
•    go through the payment process for a product or service; or
•    enter an online competition or complete a survey.

3) Encourage sign-ups via social media: Consumers also interact with your company online outside of your website. Encourage social media contacts to sign up for your html newsletter, to provide a more effective channel for direct promotional efforts.

•    Send tweet invitations to followers to sign up to see the next publication of your newsletter;
•    embed your email sign-up form on your Facebook page; and
•    ensure your social media messages contain information about offers that are only sent to email subscribers. Exclusivity is a powerful incentive to join a list.

4) Work with partners: Find related businesses whose products or services are complementary to yours and ask if they’ll add your newsletter to their opt-in form. Do trade offers, adding an extra registration check-box so people can subscribe to your list and your partner’s bulk email marketing list at the same time.

Cross-published at the GraphicMail blog.





Reader Comments.

Best Practice #5: Marketers should validate the email address field on the registration form. While the user is filling in any remaining fields, the email address is reviewed for validity. If invalid, the user is prompted to reenter a valid address.

Posted by Craig Swerdloff | 5:59 pm on November 11, 2011.

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