The festivities are over and your New Year promise to go to the gym every morning is, thankfully, a fading nightmare. But what of your resolution to ‘do something’ about your email marketing lists? Now that you have more free mornings, it’s a good time to start honing your biggest asset into a sharp tool.
What you should do depends to a great extent on your particular products and the nature of your concerns with your email marketing lists. Let’s start with the basics of building your lists.
Most of us use online forms as the most convenient method. They are passive, require little maintenance, and are there all the time. With regular campaigns to encourage potential customers to the landing page, you should gain a steady flow of subscribers.
Look to your returns. The data will highlight both weaknesses and strengths of the form. Don’t take the bare number of completions as the best criterion. Be more concerned about the quality of your subscribers.
For instance, is the unsubscribe rate of new subscribers at a concerning level? Those who sign up should be looking forward to bargains and your first offer should be something to impress. If they stay for just a few emails and then unsubscribe, maybe buying nothing, then you are doing something wrong.
The reason might be that they were not sure what they were signing up for. The one thing that is extremely risky with online forms is to deceive and that includes not only telling an outright lie but also not being clear.
Tell them what ticking the box means and do it in big, bright text. You might think that the phrase email marketing might put off potential subscribers. I prefer the phrase being used, but perhaps including your average reduction percentage would be useful.
The old saying of size isn’t everything is never truer than when referring to email marketing lists. You need to ignore sign-up rates and look for those who stay and complete. The most effective way to ensure they don’t tick the unsubscribe box is to be honest with them right from the start.
