WHY BUILD YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS DATABASE?
Get the email addresses of your customers:
- Provide an additional channel to reach your customers.
- Increase the ROI of your marketing investments
- Significantly reduce your customers’ acquisition and marketing costs
- It allows you to easily measure the impact of your marketing campaigns.
- Increase your customer engagement and retention rates
With the continued postal and telemarketing pressures affecting the marketing budgets of many organizations this year, email marketing could become the “silver lining” for many marketers. But how do you create a successful email marketing campaign if you don’t have a substantial email database? That question may be one of the biggest internet-related challenges companies are facing this year.
Research shows that most organizations have email addresses for less than 10% of their postal files. So how do you level the playing field and start adding quality permission-based email addresses to your database?
Here are some tips you can use to profitably build your email address database and increase your customer engagement and retention rates:
START ORDERING IT!
Every communication or point of contact with a customer must begin or end with a request for an email address. By using the following four points, you should be able to add email addresses from 5% to 10% of your postal file over the course of a year.
1. Direct mail collection
Think about how much time and money you spent copying and designing your latest new direct mail piece. Most companies have started asking their customers for their email address information within these emails. This is a big step forward. However, companies should consider a major upgrade if they want to increase their email address collection rates.
To date, most requests for email address information have been sent, stuck, or stuck in whatever blank space is left. It should come as no surprise that the success rate has been less than stellar.
To improve these efforts, you must provide your members with a reason to give you their email addresses. E-newsletters, purchase confirmations, requests, and discounts and special offers are just some of the benefits that will encourage your members to participate.
2. Collection of web pages
Many companies have a web-based email address collection feature. To improve your registration fees, add text below the email request box that informs your visitors of the special email benefits they will receive (i.e. email newsletters, purchase confirmations, delivery updates, etc.) at the check in. You can also use a pop-up link to inform users of these special benefits.
Finally, your email address request feature should be available on your home page. Don’t make your users go looking for it. Every click away from your home page reduces the chances that your users will take an action and provide you with their email address information.
3. Gathering the existing email database
Don’t forget to ask members of your existing customer base for the email addresses of their friends, family, and associates. Viral marketing is a powerful tool to use and it is extremely profitable! You can ask them to provide you with additional addresses or simply to send your newsletter, specific email offers or other information to others who they think have similar interests.
4. Telemarketing collection
Don’t assume your telemarketers are asking for email addresses from potential customers. Make sure your agents have an up-to-date script, outlining the benefits outlined above for potential customers of providing their email addresses.
The above suggestions are a great start! However, they should really be seen as a secondary plan to building your email database. To grow your email database exponentially and quickly, read on!
LEARNING EMAIL
Utilizing an email add service allows you to add email addresses for up to 25% of your postal file, all within 3-4 weeks.
Attach Email – This is the process of adding a person’s email address to that person’s postal record in your existing database. This is accomplished by comparing the postal database with a third-party database based on permissions for postal address and email information.
Best Practices: Attaching emails is not a prospecting tool. The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) and its interactive arm AIM (Interactive Marketing Association) have established guidelines dictating that email attachment will only be used to add email addresses to your existing subscription postal log file.
The process: Your subscription postal file is securely transferred to an email attachment provider, who will make a gross initial comparison of your file’s email address against their subscription database of postal and email address records. email. Your adjunct provider will send these matches a permission-based message prepared by you. All bounces and opt-out requests will be removed from the list. At that time, a valid email address file based on your clients’ permissions will be returned to you.
Cost – Less than the price of a postage stamp!
IN SUMMARY
The first step in any successful email marketing effort is creating a permission-based list of your customers’ email addresses. The simplest, fastest, and most cost-effective way to do this is by adding email, which will allow you to add email addresses for up to 25% of your postal file. Secondary email address collection efforts through direct mail, web, viral, and telemarketing practices are also important and will allow you to add email addresses for an additional 5% to 10% of your base annually.
Best of luck in creating your email address database. As many companies have already learned, the ROI and cost savings to be realized will far exceed your expectations.
Bill Kaplan, CEO of FreshAddress, Inc.
FreshAddress, Inc., The Email Address ExpertsTM, offers a comprehensive suite of industry-leading database and email delivery services to help businesses increase their e-commerce revenue. For more information on how we can help “Build and Update” your email list, please visit http://freshaddress.com/biz or email [email protected].
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