It is always a good time to increase the size of your email marketing list. A vague direction to staff to keep an eye open for any likely candidates is not going to increase your turnover to any extent, so an initiative, with everyone aware of what you want to do, is the way to go.

The most basic of steps is to set targets, something for you and others to measure success by. You can use one at a time if you wish or go all out and pick the lot. However the first essential is to make targets work for you, rather than you work for the targets.

Here are some examples of objectives for increasing the size of your email marketing list:

1. Increase the size
There is a certain advantage in keeping things simple. There can be no excuses. If for instance, you want to add 1000 addresses within three months – always include a time limit – then you know full well whether you have succeeded or not.

2. Conversions
Have a percentage of those who receive your email marketing list, or those who are online customers, to subscribe to your email marketing list. Another way of looking at this is coverage. Out of all the addresses you hold, your target should be, say, ensuring 50% are paying customers and your content is increasing your email newsletter list size by 5% after each send.

3. Bounces
A faulty email address is no use to anyone and costs you time and money to rectify. Whilst most addresses collected online with a double entry are genuine, those that are generated by staff, such as at trade fairs, can often be written incorrectly. The percentage of errors can be reduced substantially by ensuring staff ask for business cards or by making more room for the email address on the form. Sometimes the reasons for failure are more obscure.

4. Returns
Everyone wants more value from each lead and email address. By focusing on this aspect, effective use of data becomes the norm. You will know which criteria indicates a greater return so you can then target those with similar characteristics. This goes hand-in-hand with:

5. Data quality and quantity
The more information you have on your subscribers, the more targeted and segmented your marketing emails can be. Accurate data is an essential though. Ensure your headings relate to your product. Do not have a catch-all. Specifics are the only way.

6. Costing
I’ve saved the most important until the end. It must be understood that each email address costs you a certain amount to obtain and maintain. This is the one big outgoing in email marketing, but that does not mean you should just accept it. You can try and lower the overall cost of each individual one, which is good. Better, though, is obtaining more of the kind of addresses which give you a greater return.

However, do not to get hung up on targets. They are there to help you and if you miss them, accept that it is just a figure and not a disaster.