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Grow Your List or Wither

 In Email List/Newsletter, Email Marketing

Any email marketer knows that an ongoing email acquisition strategy is vital to keep your list healthy and growing. Unfortunately, we experience ongoing list attrition as lists become stale due to poor engagement and subscribers’ email addresses changes. View your list as a dynamic entity that can ebb and flow and commit to growing your list with creative ideas. 

List Health– The first step in checking the health of your list is looking at your ESP’s analytics over time. Is your list growing or shrinking? When and where do you get the most opt-ins (on site, on social media, in stores, at events, etc…)? How many are opting out and why? Is list attrition a result of bounces (hard and soft) or people unsubscribing from your emails?

Channels: What are the most effective channels to grow your list? Every business is different but there some rules of thumb that apply to all:

  • Web site registration- do you have an easy opt-in on EVERY page of your web site?
  • Social Media- easy opt-in from your blog and social media channels
  • Social Media Sharing- social media sharing buttons on your emails

In addition to these basics you can utilize a variety of list acquisition tactics using online advertising and third party lists rentals. Here’s a list of acquisition tactics used by email marketers (2014 Trendline Interactive Inc Survey)

list aquisition tactics

Opt-in Incentives In many cases opt-ins incentives work really well and are very worthwhile for your ongoing list growth and conversions.

Here are some traditional incentives that work:

  • 5% discounts on first purchase, free shipping,
  • Free downloadable compelling content to sign up
  • 1000 rewards program points for joining
  • Join to win an iPad – watch out, an incentive that does not relate to your brand may be short lived.

Snow Joe

Softer creative techniques:

  • Charity- offer a charitable or philanthropic contribution to a choice of 3-5 charities when the person opts-in. This incentive works really well and a nice win-win for all.
  • Tree- Plant a tree in their name for saving on paper

I believe incentives are generally a good thing for list acquisition but watch out as incentives and discounts can devalue you product offerings and could train consumers to expect them.

And remember, to keep them on your list, continue to have great content as an incentive to engage and refer you to others. Send people useful and beautiful emails. It works.

IF you need more list building strategies give us a holler info@openmoves.com

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