8 Tips For Building Your Email List From Scratch

How can you build an email marketing list from scratch?

Email marketing is one of the most important marketing channels online. For every dollar spent, email marketing is guaranteed to offer the best return. The actual revenue you will generate cannot be guaranteed, but you can assume that the more subscribers you have on your list, the greater the revenue generated.

Therefore, it is important you grow your email list constantly.

If you haven’t started to build your mailing list at all; then this can seem daunting. That’s why we’ve collected eight top tips here for you to build your email list from scratch.

1. Signup With An Email Service Provider

One of the most important tips is to ensure you’ve signed up with an Email Service Provider (ESP), like Fluttermail. A good ESP allows you to control your mailing list, look for patterns and build a list within minutes.

2. Offer Something Valuable

While customers don’t pay you anything for subscribing to your mailing list, they are giving you something important: their contact details. They’ll want something in exchange for that information. E-commerce stores can easily offer discounts, but other businesses need to develop a strong, compelling offer relevant to their audience.

3. Create A Landing Page

Landing pages are great online marketing tools. They allow you to provide information that sells your knowledge and expertise and then offers a deal that leads to a subscription. For instance, if you run an accountancy firm, why not offer clients ten tips about saving money. Then offer them a guide for 10 more tips for saving money if they subscribe.

4. For Every Landing Page Have A Unique Call-To-Action

Every landing page you have, and every offer, you should create a unique call-to-action. A unique call-to-action can help you differentiate the offers on each page. This can help increase conversions and can appeal to different audiences who may differ on requirements.

5. Create Personalised Call-To-Actions

Very closely related to the above, a personalised call-to-action is one that is created based on the website visitor. These aren’t too difficult to create on websites and can be designed on specific pages. Research has shown that personalised call-to-actions can outperform generic call-to-actions by 202%.

6. Have More Than One Landing Page

We’ve hinted at this earlier in the article, but this is one of the most important elements of your list building campaign: have more than one landing page. More than one landing page allows you to target various audiences with different priorities. You can also improve SEO by attracting more backlinks to the various landing pages.

7. Make Your Landing Pages SEO-Friendly

If you want to subscribe lots of people, you’ll need a lot of traffic. The average conversion rate for a page is only 2.35%. Even the top 10% of all performances only subscribe one person for every ten visitors. Therefore, if you want to build a big list, to maximise results you need to generate a lot of traffic.

There’s only one true way to develop this and that’s to ensure that your landing page is ranked highly on Google. There are several elements to this but one way to help is to make sure there’s a lot of content on your landing page. Pages with over 2,000 words rank higher than those with less than 1,000.

8. Don’t Forget To Subscribe Current Customers

Current customers are more likely to purchase again from you and they’ll spend more as well. This makes them an important part of your business. Marketing to them should take priority and therefore, you should be subscribing as many current customers to your business as possible.

These people can be marketed to with latest offers, complimentary services/products and even special events just for them. The advantage is that it costs less to sell to these people than it does to sell to others.

Conclusion

Email marketing is one of the best ways to generate revenue for your business. The trouble is: you need an email list to generate revenue. If you haven’t got one yet, try some of the tips above to help you build your mailing list from scratch.

Have you been struggling to build your mailing list? What tips do you have for building a mailing list?

Let us know in the comments below.

Image from Pixabay.

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8 Tips To Growing Your Email List Without Spamming!

email list building

Don’t build your email list by spamming.

The money is in the list. This is the advice of most marketers, and the statistics support it. Email marketing has had the highest ROI of any digital marketing platform for the past decade and with limited costs, endless design options and being easy to monitor – email is perfect.

There is a challenge, however – growing your email list, and this is where people can often feel compelled to cheat, either by spamming their way to longer lists or by purchasing them from third parties.

Both are less than desirable. Buying an email list is illegal, and you can be fined if someone receives a marketing message from you that they didn’t give you permission for.

Spamming, while not technically illegal, annoys your potential customers and makes it harder for you to build trust with them.

So, what options do you have for growing your email list without spamming? Here are eight for consideration:

1. Smartphone Apps

Smartphone usage has now reached over one billion, so not utilising Smartphones within your list building is a wasted opportunity.

One option is to allow people to use an app you’ve created simply by entering their email address.

2. QR Codes

While QR codes aren’t new and adoption is slow, they are still useful and can help you grow your marketing list without issue.

Simply create your QR code and attach it to your marketing materials (leaflets, business cards, posters, etc.).

All potential clients need to do is scan the code with their phone and they’re sent through to a signup form. Simple, easy and far-reaching.

3. SMS Marketing

If you’ve got the mobile number of a prospect, then you can send them an SMS message. In this, ask them to respond with an email address if they want to receive marketing messages from you.

This is a fantastic way to cross-market platforms and gain more interactions with already engaged prospects.

4. Run A Competition

A competition is hard to resist, especially if the prize is something of value.

Having the prospects signup to your newsletter to enter the competition is not just easy, it’s also a great way to grow your list. Remember a good competition has several components:

  • A clear deadline for entries.
  • A prize that is related to your business and valuable to your potential customers.
  • Easy ways to enter.

You can make your competition more valuable by offering prospects further chances to win by following you on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

5. Give Them A Gift

Free gifts are just as hard to resist as competitions. They also offer you a chance to demonstrate the quality of your product or expertise of your service.

You should give away something that will be valuable to your customer such as an ebook to solve common challenges, case studies, whitepapers on the latest trends or to-do lists for your potential clients.

6. Be Subtle

Don’t plaster your mailing list everywhere on the web. Some companies make every social media update and blog post about their mailing list.

Instead, be subtler and attract people with offers, competitions and good writing rather than demands and heavy promotion.

It’s Not Just About Adding Names To Your List

The average annual churn rate for email is between 25-30%. This is high because so many companies don’t follow best practices and lose a significant number of subscribers every year.

By following the tips below, you can reduce your churn rate.

7. Don’t Email Too Frequently

Emailing too frequently means that people will get bored of seeing your emails in their mail box. At the very least they will delete your emails without opening them or just unsubscribe.

Try to minimise email marketing messages to one or two per week at most.

8. Don’t Always Promote

Sometimes the best marketing message can be about the client. Giving them some information that can help them solve a challenge or improve their life/business. If you prove you aren’t just going to talk about yourself, then people will remain subscribers.

Conclusion

Email marketing is great. It has a substantial ROI and can be tailored to your business. However, sustainably growing your email marketing list can be a challenge. It doesn’t just mean attracting subscribers to your list; it also means keeping them on it. Use the tips above to increase subscriptions and reduce list churn.

What is your subscriber churn rate? How do you attract prospects to your mailing list?

Let us know in the comments below.

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7 Simple Ways To Build a Quality Email Marketing List

What tools will you use to build your email marketing list?

What tools will you use to build your email marketing list?

Building a quality email list is an essential task if you are looking to generate significant income from this marketing channel. A quality list will provide a better return on your investment than one that is just bought or produced by securing the details of random visitors to your website.

So how can you build a quality email marketing list for your small business? Here are seven, very simple ways to do just that.

1. Use Downloadable Content

It is highly effective to use downloadable content to produce a quality email marketing list. You could provide a free download (like an ebook or whitepaper) in exchange for an email, which works particularly well as you can then determine what the prospect wants to know about (the subject of the downloadable content) and you can tailor your campaigns accordingly.

This strategy does take considerable effort. You need to create the downloadable content, the landing page (and sales text) and then market it.

2. Ask For More Information

By collecting more information, you can better segment your list or see if a subscriber is unsuitable for your products (and thus needs removing).

However, if the information they input is incorrect, the prospect could be sent the wrong content, or they could be rejected when they are a perfect candidate.

3. PPC Keywords

If you want to target a particular group, then by thinking of their search behaviours you can target them on search engines. Using paid ads, you can target certain key terms that you know they will search for and direct them to an email sign up page.

This can be a very expensive way to attract subscribers to your email list, but it does mean that you have a list made from prospects that you’ve qualified based on their interests.

4. Run / Attend An Event

Running or attending an event can be a good way to collect email addresses. You can collect the email addresses on a simple signup sheet or give small gifts out to those who provide you with their email address, an excellent tactic, as you can qualify prospects instantly by asking them a series of questions before passing them the signup sheet.

However, you may find that some of those who sign up to your email list forget about you by the time it takes you to send out your first email.

5. Run A Competition

Gamification can be a very powerful tool when it comes to generating interest in your brand. By running a competition, you can attract numerous signatories to your email list. Your competition could be anything from a sweepstake to a trivia quiz. What is important is that their entry must include an email address.

It is important to think about what you offer as a prize, if it is not related to your business activities, then you will attract people who aren’t suitable for your business.

6. Ask For Referrals

Another possible strategy is to ask current customers to recommend you to a friend through a referral system. This works by having your customer enter their friends’ details into a box, and you send them an email saying that a friend has passed on their contact details. In that email, you give them a chance to sign up for your email marketing list.

It can work wonders because friends of your customers are likely to be a good fit for your business. However, there is no guarantee that you will receive permission to contact the person again.

7. Discount Codes

Another staple of the email marketing world are discount codes provided when a customer signs up to your mailing list. Either you send them the code after they have signed up, or using a pop-up application on your website, you provide the code once they’ve entered their details.

The trouble with this strategy is that they might just sign up, with a fake email address, to get the discount code and it doesn’t encourage any long term stickiness with the customer.

Conclusion

There are many ways to grow your email marketing list. What you’ve got to ensure is that the names being added are good quality prospects. Therefore, you need to qualify them as they sign up so you can decide who should and shouldn’t be on your list.

How do you build an email marketing list? Are you confident they are all relevant subscribers?

Let us know in the comments below.

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7 Email Marketing Strategies You Need To Implement Immediately

globe-63774_1280There are approximately 2.5 billion email users in the world and 74% of them prefer to receive promotional material via their email accounts. This makes email marketing one of the most effective and critical marketing activities your business should be undertaking right now.

While creating campaigns for your customers might yield some success. To make the most from your campaigns you should be optimising them. There are several strategies which allow you to do this. Here are seven strategies for you to implement in your next campaign:

1. Specific Audience

Not every email you create is going to be relevant to all those on your list. For instance, a message about setting up a new account with you is pointless to already existing customers. Therefore you want to limit who you are sending your messages to only those who should read the content.

Careful segregation will limit unsubscribers, lower costs and improve your marketing results very quickly. This can be achieved by ensuring there is a label in your database that refers to what sub-list they should be listed on. Then when you are sending a campaign, use the label to determine who should receive the message.

2. Specific Time

Email marketing is effective because it can be picked up at any time. However, research has shown that emails are generally opened at certain times. You’ll want your emails to be sent at the best times and not at other, less effective, times.

There are numerous studies claiming they know when you should send emails. Many of them disagree with the best time to send mail. The best practice is to experiment and discover when it is best to send your audience emails.

3. A/B Testing

To ensure you are sending your email messages at the best time, and that the design of your message is right, you should A/B test your emails. Start with testing when to send your emails and then move onto the email design.

There are various elements you can test, including image position, subject lines or the call to action copy. By testing these one at time, you can ensure your campaigns become more effective.

4. Have Value

Always answer the question: “What is in it for me” question. If your contacts can take an important message away from your communication: whether it is how to do something or where to get something – then you’ll gain their trust and it will make it easier to sell to them.

5. Mobile Friendly

More emails are being read on SmartPhones and other mobile devices, than on desktops. Emails need to be formatted right if they are to be read correctly on your contacts’ mobile devices. Otherwise your messages will not look professional and this will limit impact.

To help with mobile friendliness, you need to limit images and the complexity of your design. At the same time, ensure your website is also optimised for mobile devices.

6. Social Media

Social media is a highly effective way for you to spread word of your brand to new audiences and potential customers. Don’t undervalue the opportunity. Embed social media share buttons on all your emails. Then the emails can be directly shared on various platforms and this can encourage others to view a web version.

7. Follow Up

After you have sent your email marketing message, you need to examine the results. You should use this to determine who is interested in your content and products. If you notice someone is opening your mail and clicking through to your website but then not doing anything, you should follow up with a phone call. They might be experiencing a barrier that is preventing them from buying. By calling them you might be able to help them to complete the intended action.

Conclusion

Improve the results of your email marketing by using some powerful email marketing strategies above. Then you can generate more revenue from your emails and have a better return on investment.

What strategies do you use to ensure effectiveness?

Let us know in the comments below.

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How To Use Email Opt-In Offers To Attract More Subscribers

Free gifts for email details can grow your mailing list.

Free gifts for email details can grow your mailing list.

You email subscription list needs constant maintenance. Part of that job is removing old subscribers from your list so that those who are hard bouncing or not responding to your emails are no longer receiving your content.

The problem is that when you remove contacts from your list, your contacts list shrinks, giving you less opportunity to make a return on your email marketing campaigns. To avoid this you should look into adding names to your list. This is mostly done via an opt-in form that is either embedded on a web page or ‘pop-ups’ after an action has occurred.

Simply requesting the users details may persuade some people to sign up to your email list, but the vast majority of people will not just sign up. Instead you should look into giving something away for their contact details. This is a much better way to entice your website visitors to sign up.

Why Are Offers So Effective?

Email addresses are valuable. When businesses are sold, the number of addresses on their contacts list can form part of the valuation. Consumers know this and they have a vested interest in keeping the number of organisations who have their contact details down to a minimum.

Therefore, you need to give them a reason why they should sign up to your mailing list. Simply stating that they’ll receive more information every so often is not going to be highly effective – every business could offer that promise. You need something unique; an offer that will invoke their imagination and will be highly valuable to them.

What Can Be Offered?

There are a variety of options for your opt-in offer. Many organisations offer a free quote. This can be good for those businesses where customers have bespoke prices depending on the work that needs to be done.

An uncommitted potential customer now could be a loyal customer in the future, but only 30% of those who land on your website will ever find their way back.

Therefore, consider creating information you are willing to provide in exchange for their contact details. This information can be presented to the subscriber in many different formats such as:

  • An auto-responder email system.
  • A whitepaper.
  • An ebook.
  • A locked area of your website.
  • A free application (or a lite version)
  • A trial of your service.

The latter of these is very inefficient and should only be considered as a last resort. However, any of the other three options are very common. The first option, an auto-responder series is highly effective as it regularly reminds your audience of your brand.

However, the real power of the offer is that the audience will find it valuable. Therefore, giving advice like “how to…” and “X number of ways to…” are perfect options.

How Can You Deliver Ebooks, Whitepapers Or Apps?

If you decide to offer your subscribers an ebook, whitepaper o app there are various options for delivering on your offer. The first is through an autoresponder. That is, when the visitor signs up for your email you automatically send them an email to confirm their subscription and provide an attachment of the ebook or whitepaper.

If you use this option you should also include a confirmation link, so they confirm they have signed up to your email marketing list. Otherwise you may breech CAN-SPAM laws.

Another option is to send the visitor back to a secure page on your website where your customer can download the document. This can be effective as it is a double opt-in (where two actions have to be taken to confirm sign-up) and therefore conforms with best practices and CAN-SPAM laws.

Conclusion

Email marketing lists need constant maintenance. Removing old contacts is important, but so is the process of adding new contacts. One of the most efficient ways of adding new subscribers is to offer something valuable in exchange for contact details. This could be a free quote, but more than often it is an ebook or whitepaper. These are highly effective and can really grow your marketing list. The more on your email list – the higher chance you have to make a return on your email campaigns.

What offer do your new subscribers have? How many offers do you have?

Let us know in the comments below:

Take Action:

  • Create more offers for your website to encourage more sign-ups.

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3 Email Etiquette Rules To Observe

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Email marketing is one of the best ways for your business to sell to its target audience. If used correctly, it is highly trusted by those who have opted-in to receive your marketing messages. Research has shown that those who have already interacted with your brand are likely to buy from your email content.

To be able to achieve these results however, you need to be following strict email marketing etiquette. Some of these rules are not just because consumers will dislike your content and perhaps remove themselves from your list, but also because they would violate laws in various countries.

So what are three of the most important email marketing etiquette rules you must observe?

1. Use A Third Party Email Provider

When you are creating an email list for your party or family newsletter, creating a long blind-copy or group list is fine. However, when you want to engage your target audience, you need to use a professional email marketing service.

There are several reasons for this which will impact how professional your marketing content will look to the receiver. For instance:

  • An email marketing provider allows you to include an opt-out link for those who want to unsubscribe.
  • You can’t scale up your email marketing campaigns when you have a successful business or a large list.
  • It is easier to make mistakes when using a general mail client rather than an email marketing software program.

A professional service will also provide you with more functionality such as email list segregation, stylish templates, monitoring of campaign success and automation. While these can be done manually, it would take valuable time away from your business and subsequently lower the return of investment in your email marketing campaigns.

2. Gain Permission Before Emailing A Contact

Don’t assume you have permission because you have received contact details via a business card, telephone call or because they have followed you on social media. Instead seek permission by either having them sign up through your website or getting them to write down their permission on a sign-up sheet.

This isn’t just polite, because no-one likes to receive something they don’t want to but it can also be a legal requirement. According to marketing laws, you must have sought permission from any individual you email. An individual is counted as anyone who is not attached to a business, is not in a limited company or if the email address has identifiable information included within it.

Therefore, legally, you can only send cold-emails to addresses like sales@website.com or customerservice@website.com. There is no telling who will be monitoring these email addresses and it is unlikely to be a decision maker.

3. Give Subscribers The Opportunity To Opt-Out At Any Time And Easily

The final rule is another legal requirement, especially in America where it is part of the CAN-SPAM laws. You must give subscribers the opportunity to say they no longer want to receive your email marketing messages. This can easily be done by your email marketing provider with a simple link to automatically unsubscribe them from the list.

In addition, you should also manually remove those who request via email that you remove them from your mailing list. This may take some time, but is a legal requirement.

It is also important because if too many people report you for sending spam, your server can be blacklisted and this will make it harder for you to send marketing emails.

Conclusion

These email marketing etiquette rules are to protect the customer and build trust with them. Significant benefits can be had from following them, mainly that your company’s server will not be blacklisted allowing you to send content to all your contacts. This in turn will improve the return on investment from your email marketing campaigns.

Take Action:

  • Assess your email marketing behaviours against these rules.
  • Make changes that are required.

Do you have any other email marketing etiquette rules to suggest? What mistakes do you often see from other companies?

Let us know in the comments below.

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How To Build Your Email Marketing Momentum In 2015

Email marketing strategy for 2015

Email marketing strategy for 2015

2015 could be your small business’ year to make email marketing one of your best sales avenues. With an increase in email marketing results you will see an improvement in revenue and profits without spending a significant increase in costs.

If you want your email marketing to be a triumph this year, then you need to be prepared and build your marketing processes for success. Here is a process to do just that and create momentum that will carry you through 2015 and beyond.

1. Segregate Your Email Marketing List

The first thing you should do is to split your current email marketing contacts list into several sub-lists. Not everyone who is interested in receiving mail from you will be interested in the same thing: some will be new to your small business, others will be old customers or some will have bought certain products that have potential add-ons.

You need to establish which sub-groups your email marketing strategy could utilise and then place members into these groups. This doesn’t mean that you can’t send an email to everyone, but this should be rarely done as you target your contacts based on their behaviours and their position in your sales funnel.

2. Plan What You Want To Publish

Email marketing is not something that you can just create quickly and send off. It takes careful planning and strategising. You don’t want to be sending too many emails with the same subject or topic in a short space of time; nor do you want to be leaving off popular topics.

To avoid this, you need to plan in advance what topics you are going to publish and when. It should also include which sub-list you would like to send the content to.

3. Create Content

To ensure you don’t fall behind on your email marketing campaigns, your content should be created at least two or three weeks in advance. This gives you time to strategise, create, edit and schedule in your emails. It also lowers the stress from having a tight deadline and allows your creativity to be better.

You can start to create content in Microsoft Word or another word processor and then edit it. After this, drop it into your email marketing management program and create the template.

4. Create A Template And Schedule Emails

If you haven’t already, creating a template is really important. It creates a sense of consistency with your email marketing list and this can be more beneficial than you realise. Consistency will instil a professional image for your small business and people will become accustomed with your email’s design. Eventually they may look forward to receiving your content.

Once you have designed your email template, you can create your emails in advance and schedule them to go out at a specific time.

5. List Generation

Next you need to maintain the momentum by continuously growing your list. There are several ways you can do this including using a static form to requests details when visitors land on your website. Alternatively, you can use a pop-up to appear after about 15 seconds to request details from your visitors.

Finally, there is the option to offer your visitors a free gift in exchange for their contact details. The gift can be anything from free content on the website, a downloadable e-book, a free review or something else. For this you can be really imaginative. As long as you are providing something of value, and generating traffic, you will have new contacts to your list.

6. Maintain Your List

At the same time as generating contacts for your list, you should be maintaining those already signed up. This might mean moving them to a different sub-group or removing them because they haven’t responded or interacted with your email for some time.

Removing contacts isn’t a bad option as it allows you to concentrate on those who are really interested and provides better statistical analysis of whether your email content is desired by your email marketing list.

Conclusion

These processes will help you supercharge your email marketing campaigns for 2015. Then you can better process your email marketing leads to achieve good sales, high revenue and better profits.

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Where Should You Put Email Signups On Your Small Business Website?

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Growing your email marketing contact list should be one of the main focuses of your website. Research has demonstrated that 70% of your website visitors will never return to your site unless you subscribe them to something. You can see the evidence of this statement through your own website by opening up your visitor statistics and viewing how many visitors to your site are new and how many are returning.

With email marketing you can change that and turn those new visitors into continuous, loyal visitors. The more times an individual visits your website, the greater the chance they will make a purchase.

So, where can you place your email signup form on your small business website? Here are some of your options:

1. Pop-up

This is probably one of the easiest and most successful ways to build your email subscriber list. The popup window can be designed so it displays to your visitors immediately after they have arrived, after a time delay or as they click off your site or a specific page.

Experts recommend you delay the appearance of your popup so there is at least 15 seconds from when they land on your page to the signup form displaying. You also want to make sure that you don’t have the popup appear every time a particular individual visits your site or for each page they visit. Your web designer should be able to ensure this is programmed in.

2. On The Side Bar

Consider placing the email sign up on the sidebar of your page. It must be at the top of the side bar for it to perform well. Research has shown that placing it even slightly lower on the sidebar significantly reduces the number of subscribers you can sign up.

This is actually a mistake that is fairly common; even for the biggest website brands on the market.

3. At The Top Of The Page

Placing your email sign up form at the top of the page is one way to ensure it is noticed. Some of the big online marketing firms like Social Triggers, have attempted to use this method to grow their email marketing list. Some of those who have tried it out have reported success, while others have reported that their rate for subscriptions declined.

The best option for this is to test for your own website and see what works.

4. Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ all offer options for an email signup form to be on your profile. Social media is a great place to include your signup form because you have already developed a trusting relationship with your followers. This will make them more willing to sign up to receive more promotional information.

It is important to consider this as an option as only 4% and 0% of Facebook and LinkedIn users respectively want to receive promotional content through social media. However, over 80% of email users like to receive news of special offers via email.

5. Your Footer

If your visitors read your entire page, this could be one of the best places to locate your signup form. Your readers will be highly engaged and be looking for more information from your brand; which is what your email list will offer them.

However, this way may suffer from poor signup numbers; but, those who do will be high quality leads.

Conclusion

Your signup form is an important part of your online marketing sales process. If you place it in the correct location, you will see an increase in the number of new subscribers. Then you can see a significant return on your email marketing investment.

Take Action:

  • Test the location of your signup form to see what provides you with the best results.

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3 Potential Changes For Small Business Email Marketing In 2015

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

As 2015 fast approaches there is going to be a need to look at what trends will start or will be continued into the New Year. Being ahead of these trends and implementing them in your small business email marketing campaigns is more likely to generate results that will succeed.

So what are the potential changes that will affect your email marketing campaigns?

1. Quality Content Will Require Professional Writers

As brands continuously develop so they become an online resource for potential and current customers, they will need to generate content that matches their customer’s expectations. To match these, you will need to ensure the writing is of the highest possible quality.

Research has shown how professionally written content can improve the leads and the number of sales generated. Currently, it is reported that two-thirds of the writing produced by businesses is done by product managers. Yet, with so many tasks already their responsibility, they have little time to create a well crafted sales message.

Therefore, some forward thinking businesses will outsource the majority of their writing to professional writers. These writers will be able to create content that is high quality and able to deliver results for your business. This will improve the results that your email marketing campaigns achieve.

Also, because you aren’t relying on an individual who has a significant number of responsibilities already, and may place email content low on their priority list, you will ensure your business is always producing new content, on time. This will allow consistency and improve the trust your email contacts will have in your brand.

2. Video Email Marketing

Video is a rich form of communicating with your audience. The human brain is designed to be attracted to moving images and the changing facial expressions that can be produced and used within your videos.

As technology develops and Smartphones and other mobile technology become more advanced, mobile devices will be better able to display rich content. Therefore, your email marketing campaigns will need to include videos within their content. These will need to be short, approximately two to three minutes and contain high quality information to engage your audience.

In addition, you will need to host the video on sharing sites like YouTube, which is the second largest search engine after Google, to gain better reach and attract new audiences for future email campaigns.

3. Email Contacts Are Short-Lived

As more businesses start to develop their digital marketing channels, the amount of content that is online for your target audience is going to reach a critical point. At this critical point, the amount of information available is going to be too much for the customers to read in their limited amount of time.

Therefore, what is going to happen is readers will choose which brands deserve the majority of their attention. To ensure your brand has their attention you will have a limited amount of time to grab it. If you are unable to convince them of your industry authority or expertise, they will either leave your mail unopened or unsubscribe from your email marketing contacts list.

Use valuable information and carefully written content to keep their attention.

Conclusion

Email marketing is a constantly evolving digital marketing channel that can be highly successful if it is employed in the right manner. With the New Year approaching, the latest trends will need to be used in order for your brand to achieve the best results from your email marketing campaigns.

Take Action:

  • Examine the changes that are going to happen above and consider what your brand needs to do to make the most of your 2015 email marketing campaigns.

How successful have your 2014 campaigns been so far? What changes are you going to make for 2015?

Let us know in the comments below.

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How To Get Email Subscribers At Industry Conferences (Live Events)

"Image courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net"

“Image courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net”

When businesses think of generating larger email lists they often think of online landing pages, social media, links at the bottom of a website – anything to do with online activity. Many business owners forget to include their offline activities as part of their strategy for increasing their mailing list.

Offline activities can be rather productive. There is nothing more persuasive than face to face contact and Industry Conferences are a perfect place to pitch the reasons why people should be signing up to your mailing list.

Here are some of the methods which you can use to increase the number of subscribers to your mailing list with their advantages and disadvantages.

Hand Out Business Cards With An Invitation To Join

This is probably one of the simplest methods in which to encourage users to sign up to your mailing list. Having a stylish business card with a link to a landing page can give a physical reminder for contacts to sign up, but it might not be the best method.

Advantages:

  • Easy to implement.
  • Physical reminder to sign up.
  • Relatively low cost (business cards should be a must for your business).

Disadvantages

  • Business cards can be thrown away, lost or forgotten.
  • Lack of personal persuasion can limit uptake.
  • The card doesn’t include reasons to sign up to your mailing list.

Taking Names And Addresses On A Form To Add Yourself

This is all about the people who walk around a room at a conference and personally speak to their potential contacts taking details of their email addresses to sign up for their newsletter. This can yield large numbers of names and addresses. One of the important issues of this method is that you need to send an email to those who do subscribe this way to say how nice it was to meet them at the event and thank them for signing up to the newsletter.

Advantages:

  • Personal contact with a good sales speech can yield high numbers.
  • Low cost method.
  • Gives a personal image to the brand.

Disadvantages:

  • Time consuming entering the information yourself.
  • Not sending a confirmation / thank you email can mean your subscribers will unsubscribe quickly or report you as spam.
  • Incorrect details may be given / entered, creating problems with your mailing campaigns.

Encouraging People To Sign Up On The Day With The Use Of A Mobile Site / App

Many of those who attend conferences or events are likely to carry with them an internet ready phone. You can use this to your advantage by encouraging users to log into your website while at the event and sign up directly through a custom made app or mobile website.

You could make this request while you are giving a speech, at a time when people can discreetly choose whether or not to take you up on that offer. If you are only attending the event and not a speaker, you can still inform people about the easy way to subscribe and perhaps give them some support in doing so.

Advantages:

  • High subscriber retention.
  • Time efficient.
  • You can go home to see the results instantly.

Disadvantages:

  • Development of app / mobile website could be expensive.
  • Low uptake.
  • Relies on others having the right technology to sign up.

Whichever method you choose, there is also the main problem: how to persuade those you speak to sign up. The answer is the same as you would do online. You need to sell the benefits of being part of your mailing list, what they will receive and how it will add value to their lives / business.

If you can give solid reasons why they should be part of your mailing list, then there is nothing stopping you from generating a longer list.

Take Action:

  • Implement one or two of the above methods next time you are at an industry conference / live event.
  • Let us know how effective the methods were.

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