Here’s a sad fact: According to MarketingSherpa, about ¼ of your email marketing list depreciates every single year. That means that every year, 25% of people who receive your email marketing content just aren’t receiving them any more. Maybe they unsubscribed, or maybe they’ve changed their email address. Whatever the reason, your message just isn’t getting through.
This is why it’s important that you never focus on the email list that you just have today. Always be looking ahead and to the future. What can you do to grow your email list?
What can you do to try to maintain subscribers? Whether you want to increase your subscription list or just maintain the status quo, here are some tips on how you can keep a healthy email marketing list:
Deliver Great Content
If your content stinks, no one’s going to stick around to read it. They’ll either delete your emails or unsubscribe from your list entirely. Make sure that when you are sending out emails that your content is:
- On point and relevant to your industry or niche
- Unique, helpful, and/or inspiring
If your content is just the same old “blah” about you trying to push your products and services on people, you’ll likely lose even more than 25% of your subscribers. Come up with remarkable content that will get them excited and make them appreciate what you have to offer.
TIP: Want to know what the perfect email template looks like? Check out our free Ebook “The Fast Track to Powerful Emails.”
Create New Freebies
The best way to get anyone to sign up for an email marketing list is to offer great freebies. Having helpful Ebooks, whitepapers, or other downloads that require a user to input their email address to get the information is probably the most successful way of building an email list.
Make sure that you change up the offers at least once a month so that they don’t get stale, and so that you’re able to attract new leads.
Some other great ideas for nabbing new email addresses include:
- Host a webinar or tutorial that requires people to sign up with their name and email
- Make free tools that require people to sign up with their email
- Create apps that, again, require an email address
Host Contests
You can host contests both online and offline. Free promotions and giveaways work really well online, especially if you incorporate them with some sort of PPC campaign. If you do quite a bit of offline promoting, you should consider hosting a contest in your community. If you’re a baker, host a “who can eat the most cake in 3 minutes” contest and gather email addresses at the event.
TIP: Collecting email addresses at other offline events like trade-shows is a must.
Add an Email Signup Tab to Facebook
Take advantage of this free social networking tool as much as you possibly can. You can now create an email signup tab as a “custom” tab on your Facebook business page that users can easily click on.
TIP: Speaking of social networking, take advantage Facebook and Twitter and create posts and tweets that include a link back to a landing page or form that requires a user to input their email address to get some great, free content. If your offer’s juicy enough, your posts will be shared and your tweets retweeted to hundreds if not thousands of people on the ‘net.
Utilize Affiliate or Partner Sites
Got an affiliate or partner site? Then why not run a promotion on those sites to try and gather some new email addresses? You can then potentially reach out to a ton of new prospects that wouldn’t otherwise be reachable.
Make Use of Video Marketing
Videos are by far the preferred method of communication on the web, so make sure that this is part of your inbound marketing game plan. Once you get a video marketing campaign underway, you can then include call to action URLs at the end of your videos and/or include links to appropriate landing pages in the text descriptions of the video.
Switch from Direct Mail to Email
The world is becoming increasingly paperless, so if you do happen to have a fairly successful direct mail marketing campaign, why not get them on to inbound marketing instead? Offer a short message on your fliers and handouts that encourage people to receive email notifications rather than mailed notifications. Not only are you saving trees, but when leads move, there’s a good chance that they’ll still have the same email address when they get settled again.
Key Takeaways
Want to maintain and grow your email list? Then you have to:
- Have great content
- Have a continual fresh supply of freebies to encourage email sign up
- Host contests and promotions
- Use your social networking sites as a stepping stone to the email sign up
- Use other partner or affiliate sites to get fresh leads
- Encourage people to switch from “snail mail” to email
Need Help?
If you’re interested in maximizing your email marketing campaign but are having trouble getting started, contact us today to schedule your free marketing analysis.
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