How do you create and manage email lists?

“The greatest marketing emails in the world are useless without someone to read them. How do you find the right people for your messages? Our third clinic explains the ins and outs of email list building…”

Ronen Yaari, OpenMoves
Questions? Drop me an email or call!

You now know why you should do email marketing. And you’ve determined the kind of emails you'd like to send customers and/or prospects.

This week we move on to the practicalities of actually building your email marketing system—beginning with growing your list of email addresses.

So how do you collect a list of email addresses likely to respond positively to your messages? And what tools should you use to manage that list?

The importance of permission

Since email marketing is much more cost-effective than direct mail, an understandable desire is to simply blast your emails out to any email address you can find.

However, successful email marketing is based on the idea of permission — which means you send marketing emails only to those who’ve asked for them.

If people do not actively “opt-in” to your email program — regardless of how valuable you think your emails are — some recipients will treat your messages as spam and report them as such, too.

Quite apart from the damage to your reputation and image, spam complaints can result in your Web access being rescinded and your being dumped on various email blacklists.

Internet services use these blacklists to identify “bad emailers” and block all their email from reaching the intended recipients.

This happens even if you are compliant with federal email marketing law.

More important, permission-based email marketing gets the sender/reader relationship off to a positive, trusting start. That’s important, since the success of your emails depends on the quality of that relationship.

But how can you get people to “ask” for your marketing emails?

The basic principle is to consider every contact point with customers or prospects an opportunity to solicit their email address for your program.

Online list-building techniques

Visitors to your website are already interested in your products, services, or information. They are prime targets for your email program.

Each page on your website must include a link to a dedicated Web page about your email program and/or a form allowing people to submit their email address to you online.

Place this form or link near the top of each page, where visitors can easily see it.

Your form or program page must demonstrate the value (for the recipient!) of your emails and show them you can be trusted with their address. Give them:

• Privacy information (reassurance that you won't pass on their address to others)
• An outline of the benefits of subscribing
• An indication of how often you'll email them
• Sample content (such as links to copies of past emails)

Consider offering a relevant incentive to subscribe to your list. Retailers often give new subscribers a coupon. Service companies might offer a free white paper or e-book.

Give particular prominence to sign-up opportunities in these situations:

• Where a visitor interacts with your website — for example, include a “Would you like to subscribe to our newsletter?” question on order pages.
• Where a visitor completes a reading task — for example, add a “Get more insight like this with our monthly newsletter” link underneath informative articles.

Consider partnering with noncompeting businesses sharing a similar audience. Perhaps they can advertise your email program alongside their own?

You may see opportunities to buy or use ready-made lists of email addresses. While some of these opportunities are legitimate, the vast majority are not. Stay clear of such offers unless guided by someone experienced in the ins and outs of bulk email lists.

Offline list-building techniques

As online, every offline interaction with a customer or prospect is an opportunity to drive email sign-ups. For example:

• Train yourself and your staff to promote your email program when talking with customers. Emphasize the same points you do in your online sign-up forms.
• Advertise your email program in existing printed communications (brochures, invoices, etc.).
• Encourage people to opt-in to your program at seminars, networking events, trade shows, workshops, and so on.

Managing your list

When it comes to the practicalities of managing this list of addresses, you need a tool that:

• Automates as much as possible — adding and removing email addresses without requiring manual intervention
• Offers customized sign-up forms and the like to put on your website
• Gives you access to current and historical list information (when and where people signed up, your rate of address acquisition, etc.)

Your existing email tools (such as Outlook or Hotmail) are not up to the job. So you need dedicated email marketing software to manage both your address lists and the distribution of your emails.

The best option is to use a Web-based software service — a so-called email service provider, or ESP.

An ESP offers a wealth of email list management and delivery tools and reports. For example, when someone signs up at your website, the request goes to the ESP and the new subscriber's details are added to your list automatically. You need do nothing.

These tools are inexpensive. Unless you're mailing to tens of thousands of recipients, you can expect to pay far less than $100 a month in fees.

Now that you have an email concept in place and a potential list to mail to, what about the emails themselves? Your next task is to write and design marketing emails that get through to the reader — literally and figuratively.