Email – List Building

What is list building? We at Raven5 suggest that email is your primary communication tool today. Digital Marketing has changed our communication channels and email is the first place and often the easiest place to start. Email allows you (as a marketer) to send your message, to your target, on your schedule. No other marketing tool allows for this style of communication. Like an arrow through the heart.

It’s our observation that many marketers are not overly committed to email, nor really appreciate the one to one marketing opportunity. Whether your list is 1, 100, 1000 or 10,000 names, it’s important to get this process started. List development is an ongoing exercise and in order to achieve good results from email, list building should be an organizational focus. All front line sales and customer service teams should make list building and development a daily routine, in fact a call-by-call, visit-by-visit, action-by-action routine.

List purchasing and cleansing can be a starting place and list rentals are another, yet list development and in-house lists always outperform. Developed lists have increased open rates, click through rates and purchase (e-commerce) rates. We’ve seen this again and again, sometimes outperforming 2 or 3 times the other options.

Keep in mind, if you provide your email list participants valuable offers, personalized offers and email specific offers, you will enjoy a strong email following. A strong list will provide value over the longer term.

Here are a variety of ways to capture customer and prospect email addresses:

1) Landing page opt-ins

2) Website page opt-ins

3) In store contest coupons

4) Guestbooks

5) Tradeshow business card collection

6) Order confirmation

7) Press releases and replies

8) RAF – refer a friend

9) Online forms

10) Contests

11) Special offers

12) Ballot boxes

13) Just ASK. Really, just ASK

Once you have a list, well that’s another story. Developing an active and performing email list is work, takes time, and, as always, you are just on click away from oblivion. In this digital age, one click and you’re gone. What that means to you, as a marketer, is that you have to respect your list.

Keep in mind as well, a valid list, even one underperforming, is still filled with valid prospects. Customers don’t act on your timetable, they work on theirs. If you make the right offer, at the right time, they might act.  Note – the simple act of continuing to receive your email means that they still want to hear from you. It’s a privilege; so treat your email list participants with respect.  It will save you some time in trying to reconnect later. List building takes time and costs real money to develop, so show the list some love, (always) provide value and they will reward you for doing so.

Michael Bickerton, Raven5 Ltd, Oakville, Ontario November 2013

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