Although bloated inboxes can be a real barrier for email marketing, many potential customers are still more than willing to see what it is you have to share with them if you create thoughtful and useful mailings.
But even the greatest email content in the world won’t help if you aren’t employing better email marketing growth strategies.
Four Easy Ways to Grow Your Email Marketing List
Growing your email marketing list can be intimidating if you’re a small business, but it doesn’t really take a lot of money to get this kind of advertising rolling.
Email lists can return much better than paper letter campaigns, plus they’re easy to create because you can simply plug and play the whole shebang with tools like MailChimp.
Even so, you need a plan to expand your marketing list, so try these four techniques on for size:
- Offer incentives. Whether you have coupons, special early access sales or clubs that allow shoppers to accumulate points toward one-time discounts and gifts, a hook can get you into many shoppers’ good graces.Mutual giving can be a great way to form a marketing relationship: you give promos and your marketing list gives you a little bit of their time. It’s a win-win situation all around.
- Provide ways to share socially. According to a study by email marketing firm GetResponse, including social sharing options inside emails actually boosts email click through rates by 158 percent.Not only does this mean that more people are seeing your message, but that you’re getting free attention on popular social media networks simply by making it easy for your target audience to share. Consider carefully which platforms to include, since too many social icons can dilute your marketing message.
- Just ask. It’s nice when companies can offer deep discounts and club memberships in exchange for email address, but not every type of business is properly positioned to do this. Either they’re providing a service or product that is already on a slim margin or their target audience, such as B2B, isn’t necessarily influenced by these shiny offers.In these cases, it’s perfectly ok to simply ask people to sign up for your email list. Make that question bold and prominent, don’t hide it like you’re ashamed of having to ask. You’ll be surprised how many subscribers simply want to keep up with your company’s new products without expecting anything else.
- Use your data. In many businesses it can be hard to know what sort of incentive or sign-up form is the most effective, which is why A/B testing is vital even in email marketing.Use your market data, try out different offers and see what works best for your target audience. This way you’ll be able to better spend your marketing dollars where they work most effectively.
Good email marketing is one thing, but being able to take advantage of all those new leads is quite another. Any time you’re designing a new marketing plan, make sure that plenty of telephone help is available to process orders and answer questions. If your own team can’t handle the load, an answering service company can help take up the slack, either temporarily or permanently.
