1. Good Reputations Start With Good List Acquisition Practices
In Forrester Research’s report “Six Steps to Improving Email Delivery” ii , David Daniels points out that marketers’ compensations aren’t properly aligned to motivate relevant behavior. In the report, he found that many companies are still gauging success on the size of the list instead of the levels of engagement and conversion.
If a marketer’s success is measured on the size of his or her list instead of its performance it can lead to bad acquisition practices, which will lead to a poor reputation and deliverability. Here are some tips for good list acquisition practices in 2010:
Grow lists organically: There are no short cuts when building and maintaining a positive reputation, so be wary when renting or purchasing lists. Emails sent to purchased lists have the highest complaint rates. Sure, you might get one or two hits from the list, but at what cost? Risking your reputation and deliverability isn’t worth it. A better practice is to grow your lists organically by opting-in subscribers at every customer touchpoint.
Give people many opportunities to subscribe: Don’t hide your subscription form on your website – it should be available from every page, not buried in the shopping cart check out form. And don’t rely on your website to do all of the work. It’s common for clerks to ask for email addresses during the checkout process in stores and for customer service reps to end calls asking people if they want to subscribe to their company’s email list. These are great practices as they increase the number of subscribers, as long as your staff is knowledgeable on your sending schedule, email content, and unsubscribe process. Be sure your offline efforts mimic your online methods or you won’t be incentivizing anyone to subscribe.
Follow best practices for your opt-in form: Your opt-in form has to do more than collect the email address of the subscribers, it has to set the tone for all of your ongoing communications. You must be up front and clear about what subscribers should expect as far as your delivery schedule – let them know they’ll get an email every Monday morning or if they’re signing up for a three part series that will be delivered Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Don’t try to trick people into subscribing to your lists by pre-checking the opt-in box, or, even worse, subscribing all registrants who entered a contest on your site. Let subscribers know who the email will be from so they’ll recognize the name, and be sure to tell them how easy it is for them to unsubscribe at any time. If subscribers have a positive opt-in experience, you’ll have fewer complaints.
Send a welcome message within 24 hours: Welcome messages have the highest open, read, click, and conversion rates so if you aren’t sending a welcome message within 24 hours you’re missing a huge opportunity to interact with subscribers when they are most engaged. Welcome messages also remind subscribers that they opted-in to the list; greatly reducing the number of complaints. More importantly, welcome messages can also be used to check the validity of the email addresses so you can quickly remove any invalid addresses before they damage your reputation.