A high quality email list is the key element of every successful email marketing campaign. Although building one sounds pretty easy and straight forward, a single “subscribe to our newsletter” box on your pages will not work. The main reason is quite simple – anyone who expects reasonable results from his email marketing campaign should have at least 20K subscribers in his list.
Building opt-in email lists is a process not a one off task. The first rule anyone who want an email list built is to add a subscription box or a link to a subscription page on every page of his website. Explain why you need your visitor’s email address and reassure him that his email will only be used for the purposes stated. Spam is a serious problem and people are more and more reluctant to give their emails. Keep this in mind when designing the pages and writing the texts.
Increase Traffic to Your Opt-in List
Another popular method for quick list building is to offer some incentive for those who subscribe. Depending of the services or the products offered on your website, think of a tempting “reward”. If you have sufficient traffic you will see how your list grows in minutes. The downside of this method is that you will collect a lot of emails of people who are not really interested in your products and are likely to unsubscribe later.
Similar but subtle way of email list collection is creating a competition or a quiz. Choose a nice price and put an email subscription box just before the “enter the competition” button. Promote the competition in competition and deal forums and websites to get more traffic. The quality of the emails gathered will be significantly improved as your visitors will have the choice to subscribe or not.
Build Opt-in lists Offline
Offline methods for building opt-in mail lists are also available. Instruct your customer support to ask anyone who calls whether he wants to receive future promotional offers and news about your services/products. Include a short paragraph about the benefits of subscribing for your newsletter in all your printed materials or offline ads.
While building your email list keep in mind that you should be very careful to keep each email address for as long as possible. Welcome each new subscriber accordingly and care for your future relationship.
Your extra effort may very well pay off in future promotions. And you may just learn
a few things in the process.
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