7 Tips for Building an Email Marketing List

By Jim Hingst

Photo by Torsten Dettlaff from Pexels

In this article, Jim Hingst provides tips for building an Email Marketing List. He also discusses the advantages of developing your own list versus buying or renting a list.

Advantages of Email Marketing
 

Compared to other marketing programs, such as traditional magazine and newspaper advertising, direct mail and social media, email marketing is significantly lower in cost, generates a higher response rate and is easy to track results.

Using an Email Service Provider (ESP), such as Constant Contact (www.constantcontact.com), you can easily design a mailing by use of a stock template. Well-design email marketing campaigns are effective in:

● Generating sales leads that lead to sales;

● Increasing repeat orders;

● Driving traffic to your website or blog; and

● Encouraging visits to your store or tradeshow booth.

Email mailings can utilize a number of different formats. The templates that the ESP provides to layout your message, makes your mailing look professionally-designed. Formats that you may use for your emailing include:

● Newsletters

● Press Releases

● Invitations to Visit Your Tradeshow Booth or Special Events

● Follow-Up Mailing Following Tradeshows

● Announcements of Specials

Why Building an Email Marketing List is Better Than Buying One

When you compile your own email list, you can qualify the prospects prior to inclusion in the list. Purchasing or renting a list is more of a shotgun approach. The costs for these lists may be quite high.

The advantage of using a purchased email list is that immediately expands your universe of prospects among the demographics that you are targeting. If you use a list broker, you should qualify them by asking a number of questions. Pertinent questions include:

1. Does the broker specialize in business or consumer lists?

2. How was the list compiled?

3. When was the list last updated? The reason that this question is critical, is that the turnover on many lists are as high as 25% each year.

4. Are the broker’s lists rented or sold? Keep in mind that rented lists are contracted for a limited number of uses.  These lists are seeded with dummy names, which the broker uses to tell how often you use it, in the unlikely event that you violate the contract.

5. In what format is the list provided? Does the list include contact names, mailing address, phone number and email address?

Building an Email Marketing List

1. On each of webpage and blog post you should include a Call-To-Action (CTA) requesting that the website visitor include his email address. The Call-To-Action could request for more information, or subscribe to a newsletter or ask for a representative to call. As with other direct marketing endeavors, include a benefit in your offer.

2. Promote your email newsletter on your social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest. You should clearly explain to the respondents that they are subscribing to a newsletter.

3. Involve all of your employees in an effort to collect business cards, email addresses and phone numbers with each interaction with a prospect. Many of your business interactions will involve email. Your employees need to capture the customer contact information and do some of the groundwork in qualifying the prospect. Make it clear to your employees that everyone is responsible in one way or another in your company’s sales efforts.

4. For each of your existing customers, your salespeople should develop a customer profile, which includes email addresses of key contacts, who are involved in purchasing decisions. Ideally you should have a Customer Relationship Management Software program to help you manage the information on your prospects and customers.

5. At tradeshows and other industry events, collect contact information for all visitors to your booth. At my last employer before retiring, I compiled a list of more than 13,000 visitors in Excel. This list was updated with each mailing through the Email Service Provider (ESP), such as Constant Contact (www.constantcontact.com).

After each tradeshow event, I would send a follow-up email letter immediately after the event closed, thanking the visitor for his interest and recapping the key products that had been featured in the exhibit. Each email included several links to the company website and my blog. I could gauge the effectiveness of the emailing as I tracked the upsurge in activity on the blog.

6. If you belong to industry associations, they will often share these lists. If you want cooperation from these associations, maintain good relations with their key personnel. If an association will not give you the list, they may offer it on a rental basis.

7. Offer to send a FREE e-book or sample product, if your visitors to your website or blog complete a request form. To encourage visitors to complete the form is to keep it simple.  Limit the number of questions on the form to the absolute minimum.

Conclusion.

Today, businesses invest a tremendous amount of time, money and effort in developing their presence on social media platforms.  While social media deserves important consideration in your marketing plan, it generally is not as effective as email marketing. If email marketing is not part of your program, you need to rethink your strategy and include it in your plans.

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Do You Have Questions or Comments?

About Jim Hingst: Sign business authority on vehicle wraps, vinyl graphics, screen printing, marketing, sales, gold leaf, woodcarving and painting. 

After fourteen years as Business Development Manager at RTape, Jim Hingst retired. He was involved in many facets of the company’s business, including marketing, sales, product development and technical service.

Hingst began his career 42 years ago in the graphic arts field creating and producing advertising and promotional materials for a large test equipment manufacturer.  Working for offset printers, large format screen printers, vinyl film manufacturers, and application tape companies, his experience included estimating, production planning, purchasing and production art, as well as sales and marketing. In his capacity as a salesman, Hingst was recognized with numerous sales achievement awards.

Drawing on his experience in production and as graphics installation subcontractor, Hingst provided the industry with practical advice, publishing more than 190 articles for  publications, such as  Signs Canada, SignCraft,  Signs of the Times, Screen Printing, Sign and Digital Graphics and  Sign Builder Illustrated. He also posted more than 500 stories on his blog (hingstssignpost.blogspot.com). In 2007 Hingst’s book, Vinyl Sign Techniques, was published.  Vinyl Sign Techniques is available at sign supply distributors and at Amazon. 

Slides of Jim's Artwork

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