I promised yesterday to talk about building your opt-in e-mail list and growing it. So I'll just cut straight to the point. Growing your opt-in e-mail list can be a pain, the only way you can grow your e-mail list is by hard work.
Go through your contact list
These are your A-list. Invite them, send a gentle introduction e-mail and be specific on what you are planning to do with your e-mail campaign. If it is knowledge product driven, give them a summary sample. Some will say you can just add them on as they can also unsubscribe, but I will say be careful with that practice as you may ended-up burning bridges instead of building them.
For those who want to use e-mail campaign to send out product-based advertisements, you should send them e-mails and get their consent, also make sure they put your e-mail address in your white list first as promotion-based e-mails often get flagged as spam.
Look through your Facebook Friends list
I hope you are on facebook, if not, it's time to do it. Facebook has been transforming from a pure leisure / personal model to a somewhat business friendly model, with business fan page, PPC (Pay-per-click) ads and alike. If you are already on facebook, try inviting your friends to your e-mail list. Rules from above do apply so be careful not to destroy relationships (business or personal) in the process.
How about that Twitter
When compared to Facebook, Twitter gives you higher chances to connect with prospects and random folks who shares the same topic interest. If you do not have Twitter, start there, build your follower base by searching for topic keyword and finding who is talking about that, add them to your following list.
Then invite them to your website and blog, encourage them to comment or engage users there. Then invite them the same way you would above.
How to keep them subscribed
Now that you have a good list built,the question becomes how to keep them subscribed. No doubt you'll have some that will unsubscribe here and there, so keep your content available through social media, blog and your own website so people who unsubscribe can have a chance to look at your content, this will allow them a chance to subscribe back again if they find your content interesting again.
Finally is content. Like I've said yesterday, content is the most important aspect to keep people engaged. Even if your e-mail campaign is focused on product deals and special offers, make sure your content allow people to engage with you as readers today have a very short attention span. grab their attention with your content and allow them to engage with you.
Showing posts with label e-mail distribution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label e-mail distribution. Show all posts
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
e-mail distribution systems and why you should use them
If you are just starting to do e-mail marketing, or want to send out bulk email to 100+ customers, updating them about what you have been up to in a regular basis, you should do so with a e-mail distribution system for better delivery, HTML compliance, better in-box penetration, and enable open / click-through analytics.
SPAM filtering systems uses many identifiers in an email to see if your email is SPAM. One of which is the number of people you are sending out to. If your list contains hundreds of email addresses, it is likely that many system will flag your email as SPAM. Secondly, if the content of the email contains many SPAM-like keywords such as "Free", "Click here", "Sale", it will also be classified as SPAM.
While you can overcome problems with sending out your emails in batches, e-mail distribution systems will help you cut down the time you'll have to spend sending e-mails in batches and help you design, cross-check your content against SPAM filters, and monitor the outcome of your e-mail campaign with analytic.
Email Design
e-mail distribution systems often have template layout designs that you can use to dress up your e-newsletter or special offers. These layouts are HTML based and tested on all popular e-mail clients (note my previous post about HTML email design).
SPAM filter tests
Often referred as SPAM score, it calculates how likely your e-mail is going to be flagged as SPAM. It looks at many metrics such as image / text ratio, SPAM keywords / links population, Subject line keywords, etc.
Analytic and Message Monitoring
By far the most important reason why you should consider e-mail distribution system. They offer different degrees of analytic in terms of how many e-mails were successful delivered, how many were opened, how many click-through, how many unsubscribed, how many forwarded to their friends, etc. Many of these metrics show you a deeper picture of what really happened to your e-mail and the effectiveness of your campaign.
Where to start?
There are a lot of e-mail distribution systems out there, so you really should try out several and see how it works. For beginners I would recommend systems like iContact, Constant Contact as they are very simple to use and provide good functionality. For users that has a large e-mail list or users who requires different level of analytic, look at Exact Target, Lyris HQ, or Listrak. (Once again I would like to remind readers that I'm not endorsing any of these products, this is only a short list of what I have been exposed to, if you have ones that you want to recommand, please feel free to do so in the comment area.)
SPAM filtering systems uses many identifiers in an email to see if your email is SPAM. One of which is the number of people you are sending out to. If your list contains hundreds of email addresses, it is likely that many system will flag your email as SPAM. Secondly, if the content of the email contains many SPAM-like keywords such as "Free", "Click here", "Sale", it will also be classified as SPAM.
While you can overcome problems with sending out your emails in batches, e-mail distribution systems will help you cut down the time you'll have to spend sending e-mails in batches and help you design, cross-check your content against SPAM filters, and monitor the outcome of your e-mail campaign with analytic.
Email Design
e-mail distribution systems often have template layout designs that you can use to dress up your e-newsletter or special offers. These layouts are HTML based and tested on all popular e-mail clients (note my previous post about HTML email design).
SPAM filter tests
Often referred as SPAM score, it calculates how likely your e-mail is going to be flagged as SPAM. It looks at many metrics such as image / text ratio, SPAM keywords / links population, Subject line keywords, etc.
Analytic and Message Monitoring
By far the most important reason why you should consider e-mail distribution system. They offer different degrees of analytic in terms of how many e-mails were successful delivered, how many were opened, how many click-through, how many unsubscribed, how many forwarded to their friends, etc. Many of these metrics show you a deeper picture of what really happened to your e-mail and the effectiveness of your campaign.
Where to start?
There are a lot of e-mail distribution systems out there, so you really should try out several and see how it works. For beginners I would recommend systems like iContact, Constant Contact as they are very simple to use and provide good functionality. For users that has a large e-mail list or users who requires different level of analytic, look at Exact Target, Lyris HQ, or Listrak. (Once again I would like to remind readers that I'm not endorsing any of these products, this is only a short list of what I have been exposed to, if you have ones that you want to recommand, please feel free to do so in the comment area.)
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