Organic or Purchased? September 9, 2008
Posted by Mindy Dolan in email marketing.Tags: email marketing, List management, opt-in email list, organic email list, purchased email list, tips to build an email list, tips to sign up for a newsletter
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You want to start doing email marketing but you’ve got a small list. Your boss wants you to send to as many subscribers as possible. How do you quickly grow your list so that you’re reaching more people? Should you purchase the list or just build it organically?
Organically build your list: If you want to build a positive relationship with your subscribers based on trust, then be patient and build your list organically. Here are a few suggestions of how to build your list:
- Add a “sign up for our newsletter” button/link on your website pages, blogs, social media pages, and email signature.
- Add an option on the checkout page on your website for consumers to sign up for the newsletter/updates from your company.
- Ask staff to collect email addresses at the retail location, or have a computer set up for customers to add their info in. Make sure to let them know how often they’ll be receiving it and that you won’t be selling their information. Build the trust up-front.
- Promote your newsletter in other media outlets as a free incentive to keep notified of important updates/promotions. Give them a quick link that they’ll remember to go to when they are ready to sign up.
- Add a “forward to a friend” button/link in your newsletter.
- Tell everyone you know to sign up, and ask them to tell everyone they know to sign up.
A helpful way of showing the value of your newsletter, is to give an example of an actual newsletter. Once they see the perceived value, they’ll know what to expect from you. Right after they sign up, make sure they get a welcome/thank you email. And now that you have them, keep them interested by staying committed to sending out your newsletter in a consistent and timely manner with relevant information – this is the easiest way to build the relationship.
Purchasing a list: Buying a list can get you (and your email service provider) into trouble, and we don’t recommend that you do so. A purchased list contains subscribers who have typically signed up to receive information from a particular company and then checked the box that said they would be interested in receiving information from third-parties. They don’t know who you are when you start sending to them, and will most likely hit the spam button before they even open your email. So now not only have you just paid for an email list, but you’ve also paid for a broadcast to send to this email list (and basically paid for them to hit the spam button and lower your reputation). If you do decide to purchase a list to send to, we advise you consult with your email service provider and understand their policies and procedures on sending to purchase lists.
How do my email campaigns compare to someone else’s? August 29, 2008
Posted by marckamaka in email marketing.Tags: business to business open rates, campaign performance, email benchmarks, email campaigns, email marketing, Forward to a Friend, opens and views, opt-in email list, retailer open rates
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Generally, campaign performance should be gauged against prior campaigns to the same audience. How have your recent broadcasts performed versus your prior broadcasts using your old system?
When clients ask me for benchmarks, I say it varies by audience. When a client has purely opted-in readers their open rates are much higher than one who is sending to a) old subscribers or b) a list gathered from other sources, such as loaded from business cards gathered from a conference.
Generally speaking, open rates above 8% are good, anything higher than 15% is excellent.
Retailer’s broadcasts to consumers generally hit the 3% to 5% mark. Business to business is usually double that. Again, a fully opted in list should expect opens above 10% or higher.
When I look at who is opening, I also check those who are showing unusually high opens, like over 20 times because that indicates that this person is either a) very interested or b) forwarding the information on to their friends colleagues and THEIR FRIEND’S opens are registering under the original person’s userID.
Finally, opens and views are counted every time the email message loads (with images), so that includes each time you preview your newsletter.
