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Nov 10

Building and growing a responsive, quality mailing list can require a dreadful amount of work. Furthermore, once you have built your list, you must nurture and grow it. Whatever you do, do not flood your recipients with advertisements and pointless emails constantly. This is a great way to destroy your precious opt-in list. Honestly, acquiring all of those email address is minuscule part of the email marketing process. It is extremely important to know that you’re building an individual relationship with every person who gives you their email address. If you mess up in the beginning, you are hindering your chances on building a lucrative relationship with your subscribers. On the other hand, do it right and prove your company’s worthiness, and you will both have smiles on your faces for years to come.

There are 3 key elements involved in list building:
  • Acquiring The Email Address

This is the easiest task in building a list. The rule here is that you must have the explicit permission from the subscriber to send them emails. Place a check box on your sign-up page or include this in your terms of service. Remember, it’s all about building trust. It is also illegal not to include this statement if you intend on emailing your subscriber according to the CAN-SPAM act in the United States.

  • Welcoming Your New Subscriber

We all receive the pointless, and endless flood of emails filling up our inboxes called SPAM. Because of this, it can be difficult to make a person read your email. A well thought out welcome message with good content, will build the foundation for a good email marketing relationship between you and the subscriber. The welcome message will not only build trust, but will verify the validity of each email address, further weeding out the bad seeds. It also acts as a 2nd screening process since 90% of your opt-outs will come in after you send this email, so make it pretty, and make it good!

  • Customer Relationship Management

This is the most important element of maintaining a quality opt-in list. It is unfortunate that this is the most overlooked step of list building. I can understand why, as this is by far the most time consuming aspect of nurturing your opt-in list. You must honor all of your subscriber’s personal email preferences. If you have an email marketing service provider or some good server-side software, take advantage of the tracking features. Many will allow you to track bounces, unsubscribing, clicks, and inactivity. This is very useful data and should be analyzed and archived regularly.

Always make sure that you’re holding the interest of your subscribers. If they seem to be fading away and your statistics are declining, send out promotions, special offers, and even surveys to pull them back in.

Most importantly; never give up on your list!

It can take a lot of time and energy to build a great opt-in list. In the end, when you’re staring at page after page of your opt-in subscribers, you will surely look at it as time well spent.

Sep 28

When talking about email marketing, it doesn’t take long for words like “opt-in” to appear. Yet I still receive numerous emails every month asking, “What is opt-in email marketing?”

It’s easiest to think in terms of mailing lists when dealing with email marketing. Email marketing is nothing but a good mailing list in the end. The list of an opt-in marketing campaign obviously starts empty. The only way to grow this list of email addresses is to get viewers of your site to “opt-in”. All you can do as a webmaster is assist an individual in the subscription request submission process.
email templates

This request must always be for a specific list, there can be no grey areas when dealing with opt-ins. For example, if a customer submits a form that says “Yes, please send me a copy of your monthly newsletter” you have permission to add them to the list of customers who will receive a copy of the monthly newsletter, use the list for the newsletter and nothing else. To continue sending them your monthly newsletter, you need their permission to do so (along the lines of “Yes, keep me up to date by adding me to your list of monthly newsletter recipients”).

“Permission-based” basically means the same thing. Marketing material is sent only with permission, and is often customized to the subscribers personal interests and preferences.

Aug 23

When presidential candidate Barack Obama relies on email marketing for one of the most important announcements in his candidacy, it really shows the awesome power of an effective email marketing campaign. “Be the First to Know”, a catchy phrase that says it all. This massive email marketing campaign went off without a hitch, and boy would I love to see that golden opt-in list he’s accumulated since it’s launch.

html email templates

This well crafted email marketing campaign goes to show that building a targeted opt-in list, is actually very simple. In essence, it all comes down to one thing; you have to have something that they want. Of course a well designed landing page, auto-responder, and a great email service provider are also required. Put these 4 items together and you’ll be well on your way to email marketing success!