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Building Your Lists

If you are just starting an email marketing initiative, or if you’ve been sending emails to your list for years, you need to be sure you have the right acquisition strategy in place.  As mentioned above, in-house lists outperform rented lists in every way.  You will have higher open, click-through, and conversion rates and fewer bounces and complaints simply because the people on your list requested information from your organization.  Your in-house list allows you to build strong relationships with your subscribers that are based on trust and respect from the very beginning whereas a rented list can show a lack of consideration for the recipient’s privacy and time if not handled correctly.  Finally, your in-house list will contain all of the history you need to know about each subscriber before you deploy the message so can target the recipients with messages specific to their individual needs.

The most important part of your email acquisition strategy is to remember to ask your customers to join your mailing list at each and every customer touch-point.   Email acquisition should not just be a function of your marketing department, it should be offered as an additional service with every customer interaction as long as it is done the right way.

Never assume that your customers want to be added to your email list.  You must ask for permission to send them email messages.  For example, several retailers ask for customer’s email addresses during the check-out process in their stores.  Some clerks ask for the information saying the store will send them coupons, but most of the time they just ask for the shopper’s personal information.   This is very presumptuous and it does not add value to the customer experience.  Even if the customer is interested in receiving the coupons, the fact that the store clerk didn’t ask for permission will turn many people off and they’ll refuse to give out their personal information.   Instead of demanding the information from customers, a better way is to have your cashiers ask a simple question. “We periodically send coupons and invitations to special store events through email.  Would you like me to add you to our list?”  It might seem like a small thing, but doesn’t that sound better than an unexpected “What’s your email address?”  It is much more inviting and it makes the customers feel like they’ve been given an added bonus to their shopping experience.  Most importantly, it allows them to be in control of the email messages they are receiving.

This same tactic may be used by your call center staff, event staff at trade shows or special corporate events, and anywhere else you interact personally with your customers.  The process should be quick and easy and you should only ask for permission to send email messages and for the customer’s email address.  If you require additional profiling attributes you can collect them using the dynamic profiling.  Read Listrak’s “Improving Relevancy of Email Campaigns: Simplify Data Capture with Dynamic Profiling” white paper to learn how you can implement this tactic.

Surprisingly, only 36 percent of marketers ask customers to opt-in to their lists in their stores or at corporate events and only 28 percent use their call centers. It is much easier and cheaper for organizations to add their current customers to mailing lists than it is to pursue new subscribers so this should be the first group you target.  Just be sure to follow these best practices:

• Ask for permission
• Keep the opt-in process quick and simple
• Let the customers know you won’t sell their information to a third party
• Give your clerks, call center, and event staff a list of questions and specific answers so they give the customers the correct information
• Send an email, including a coupon or special incentive, to the new email addresses as soon as possible to confirm they are valid.  If not, remove them from your list immediately
• Be sure the message has the right branding in place and that it contains a link to your privacy policy, an unsubscribe link, and other CAN-SPAM requirements

Your online list growth initiatives should follow these same rules with slight modifications.  Like the offline strategies, you cannot rely on just one area to collect your subscribers.  Every page of your web site should contain a way for your visitors to opt-in to your email list with prominent postings on your home, shopping cart, check-out , and log-in pages.  Your site should also include a page describing your newsletters and email communications so your subscribers can see exactly what they’re signing up to receive.  This is your opportunity to show them the value and benefits of joining your list as well as set the right expectations so they know how often you’ll send emails to them.  Putting these simple things in place will help subscribers remember joining your lists and will decrease the number of unsubscribes and complaints your messages receive.

Your web opt-in form should be quick and simple, yet it needs to capture the right profiling information.  It might be tempting to have your subscribers answer lots of questions so you can target them with relevant emails, but you should keep your form short and easy – especially if they are opting into your list as they are making a purchase.  After all, you don’t want to do anything to distract them from placing an order or completing one of your goals.

Another tempting practice is to offer a contest or incentive in order to gain subscribers.  This is a surefire way to populate your lists; however, you must carefully weigh the pros and cons before starting this initiative.  Many of the subscribers will only be interested in the contest or incentive and are not interested in receiving messages from your company on an ongoing basis.  Relevant and timely messages can win over these subscribers but there will still be a higher percentage of opt-outs. A better practice is to save the incentives for the welcome message and the contests for remarketing campaigns.
Here are some other best practices your online opt-in process should follow:

• Don’t pre-check the opt-in box as you’ll capture email addresses of visitors who don’t want your emails. Your unsubscribe rates and complaints will increase
• Allow visitors to opt-in to your newsletter from every page of your web site, but don’t distract the visitors from completing a goal
• Collect only the profiling attributes that are most important to your business
• Post your privacy policy where subscribers can easily view it
• Provide sample emails so your subscribers know what to expect
• Offer subscribers choices – such as text only or HTML versions of your message or allow them to choose to hear from you daily, weekly, or monthly.  If they can’t set their own frequency let them know how often you’ll send messages to them