Who Likes Spam Anyway?
Open up any personal email and you may find spam clogging up the inbox. There is somewhat of a negative perception of email marketing because of ineffective email marketing campaigns that rely on spam. However, there is real research to suggest that email marketing and your mail list is one of the most important tools for companies and start-ups looking to grow their business. Research has suggested that 72% of people actually prefer receiving promotional material through email rather than social media. Here are some tips for improving your email marketing strategies and growing your mailing list.
Why You Should Grow Your Mail List?
Entrepreneurs need to consider the full value of email marketing. Email is the only digital channel that gives you a direct connection to your customer, without the impact of an intermediary. It also doesn’t rely on an algorithm to direct traffic to your site or business. Email lists and campaigns also drive repeat traffic back to your website by providing incentives once a purchase is made. Most companies derive their value from repeat customers, this makes email marketing an important tool for growing sales in your business.
Tips for Email Marketing and Growing Your Mail List
Furthermore, there are a number of tips and strategies that can be used to craft an effective email campaign:
1. What’s The Purpose of Your Email?
Before you even begin sending out promotional emails to your customers, you need to decide what the purpose of your campaign will be. Will the campaign be offering a special deal on one of your products? Or will it be informing a customer about a hot button political issue related to your business? Is the email purely transactional, or are you seeking to drive traffic to your site? Every email needs to have a purpose behind it otherwise it becomes a wasted expense. For example, some innovative companies are including personalised videos from their CEO thanking them for purchasing their product. Make sure you have considered the purpose of the email before you send it out.
2. Optimise Your Emails For Success
After you have decided on the purpose of your email, there are a number of optimisation strategies to ensure that your campaign is successful. Some helpful strategies include ensuring a diversity of different emails are sent to the customer. It’s important to ensure that you use the right platform for your campaigns to optimise its success. For example, GetResponse is tweaked towards e-commerce platforms. It is also important to monitor the metrics that are created from the campaigns. Metrics such as the open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate and unsubscribe rate are essential to monitoring the success of a campaign.
3. Strategies For Growing That All-important mail List
While you might have an effective email campaign, if you aren’t growing a mailing list, you will struggle to actualise the results of the campaign. There are a number of ways that you can build your mailing list. The first and most critical way to grow your list is to ensure customers can subscribe to your mailing list when they complete a sale. This is an easy way to ensure you are continually building your mailing list. However, there are also some other creative ways of growing your mailing list. For example, companies can run a competition which allows customers to sign up for the promotion by providing their email. This is a fun and easy way to grow your mailing list.
4. Be Wary of Anti-Spam Laws and Their Effect On Your Campaign
While growing your marketing list is a great asset for your business, it is important that you are aware of anti-spam laws. For example, in Australia, The Spam Act 2003 (Cth) regulates email marketing campaigns. The Act prohibits the sending of unsolicited commercial electronic messages with an Australian link to consumers. Core features of the Act include ensuring there is an unsubscribe link in the email, consent is given by the consumer, and they are able to identify the sender in the email. Having a robust IT company policy can ensure your marketing emails do not infringe the Act.
Research More and Practice Makes Perfect Email Marketing!
There are many different strategies and guides available to those seeking to grow their marketing list. No one crafts the perfect email campaign the first time so don’t be afraid to get creative and start sending those emails.
