Building an Email Marketing Database

Ask any Internet marketer what their top tip for a successful campaign is and they will tell you it is essential to build a “list”.  By this they are referring to the creation of a mailing list, or a database that contains the potential customer’s name and, at the very least, their e-mail address.

Many people ask for more information than this, such as a mailing address, the prospect’s date of birth, their telephone number etc – this will vary, and depend on the purpose of the list – but you should always have some means of contacting the prospect after they have left your site.

Building and maintaining a website can require considerable effort; without this data you have no chance of contacting that casual visitor again and turning him or her into a customer.

Make sure yours is an Opt-In list

But how do you go about getting people to sign up?  Well, obviously you need visitors to the site, and that usually requires some great original content regularly updated.  Then, I use a signup form on my website.  This could be something simple – a box with two fields for Name and E-mail, and a Submit button – or a professionally made signup form created by graphic designer.  The critical factor with any email list, however, is to get the prospect’s permission before you send information to them.

Junk e-mail

We all hate getting junk e-mail and legislation in the USA and Europe has made spamming a criminal offence so great care must be taken to verify that the prospective customer really wants to hear from you again.  The way most people achieve this is by sending an “opt-in” email to the prospect as soon as they hit Submit.  This e-mail contains a link that must be clicked before their details are added to your list – in other words, it verifies their subscription.  That way, there can be no argument in the future and you can be certain that everyone on your list is there because they want to be.

Forcible signups

Some people believe that the way to build a list is to force people to sign up before allowing them to access certain content.  While this practice certainly works, I have often found that the people who sign up just to get something for free will unsubscribe from the list as soon as they have what they want.  Even worse, some people mark your emails as spam as soon as you start sending them out.  This is to be avoided at all costs, as nobody wants to be regarded as a spammer.  Not only that, but your reputation and credibility will soon suffer — the Internet is a global medium after all.

Privacy and Incentives

I have always found that a much better ways to offer an incentive to the potential customer.  If your content is what people really want they will sign up anyway, and if you offer something free as an incentive they are far more likely to register.  I find it’s always worth showing samples of my newsletter to people before they sign up so that they can see what they are getting, and if you have any testimonials from existing subscribers so much the better – put them in as well.  Oh, and of course you will want to clearly state your privacy policy – that goes without saying!

Put yourself in your customer shoes

If I am interested in a subject I generally search for information on it online – probably just like you do.  If I find a website that I feel that I can learn from then I will very likely add my name to their mailing list.  They may well offer me an incentive to do so but that is not the real reason that I’m signing up; it’s because I genuinely want the information they’re going to send me.  When they begin to send me e-mails I will probably read them as keenly as if I was sent a magazine subscription through the post, and I’m unlikely to unsubscribe because the information I’m getting is what I asked for.

Auto responder software

There are many organisations that make software specifically to gather and organise subscriber lists.  These vary in size and sophistication, but all of the commercial vendors will only allow opt in lists.  Pricing varies from company to company, but normally you could expect to pay a standard fee which will include a number of subscribers and then a sliding scale where you will pay more according to how big your list grows.  Most vendors operate a monthly fee, most will also accept annual payments.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 10th, 2011 at 6:20 pm and is filed under Blog, Email Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

 

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