Create and maintain a strong email list

The quality of your email list is alpha and omega for succeeding with your newsletters. While the number of subscriptions on your email list is often the one that an Email Marketing responsible is most focused on, the quality of the collected leads is an often overlooked parameter – despite the fact that it is basically one of the most important success criteria in your email marketing.

Should you have any doubts about what you can get with a strong email list, there can, among other things, be mentioned:

  • Improved Open Rate
  • Improved Click-Through Rate
  • Improved converting rate
  • Lower unsubscribe rate

The above can also be improved by focusing on sending your emails to segmented lists, by making personalized emails, and by using Marketing Automation. More on this below.

 

Factors to consider when seeking new, strong leads

The success of your Email Marketing starts already when you begin to gain leads. It is regardless of whether it is through your website, via an app, via Facebook Lead Ads, LinkedIn Lead Ads or a completely different place.

You need to consider carefully before your campaign starts getting subscriptions for your newsletter, including whether there are methods that you should stay away from. An example of this is the purchase of email addresses from 3rd party, which, in addition to being often illegal to use on various Email Marketing platforms such as MarketingPlatform, also, most often, is of very suspicious nature that ends up damaging more than benefiting.

You need to consider carefully before your campaign starts getting subscriptions for your newsletter.

To ensure the collection of leads of the highest possible quality, you should, in the sign up stage:

  • Provide double opt-in in order to know that people have shown extra commitment to sign up.
  • Draw attention on how often you intend to send newsletters to people – and possibly give them the opportunity to choose. It is about matching expectations to get a loyal follower.
  • Give people the opportunity to choose which areas they want to receive news about (Offers, news, events, tips & tricks etc.).
  • Consider the way you collect leads. Is it correct to give prizes to get people to sign up for the newsletter? This typically makes a significant increase of registrations, but at the same time, there are many people who sign up for email lists solely to win the prize and then to unsubscribe. However, if you choose to collect leads this way, do a test on this type of leads, where they enter a separate list in your Email Marketing platform, so you can keep a close eye on how this group performs on factors like Open Rate, Click-Through Rate, Unsubscribes and, of course, Conversions.

In order to send targeted, personal data, it will also be good to consider which personal data you ask the person about. As a starting point, be careful not to ask too many questions, as it often turns out to keep people from signing up – conversely, you turn some people away, who are not sufficiently committed to receiving newsletters from you.

Consider the data that may be relevant to you to collect in order to personalize mails.

Consider the data that may be relevant to you to collect in order to personalize mails. For example, there may be data such as

  • First name
  • Surname
  • Date of birth
  • Job title / position
  • Gender
  • Interests,
  • Geographical data or desire for connection to a physical store if your company has this.
  • Desired frequency of newsletters

The more data you can collect, the better chance you have of getting an effective email list that will convert better in the end.

Keep the list healthy – delete inactive recipients

Should your email list prove to contain bad recipients, despite your efforts in the collection phase, do not be afraid to delete the recipients who turn out to be inactive or not involved.

It is more important to have an email list with fewer subscribers, who have more involvement than it is to have many on the list, where some stand as inactive and can therefore trigger spam traps.

Send emails at the right time

You probably know it yourself – During some times of the day you have no time at all to look in your inbox. With the many emails you probably receive in your inbox, you do not have time to open them all, and you most likely end up prioritizing the emails, you either know they have a good content, that you usually like, or you choose to open the emails that come in during the period of the day when you have time to check your emails.

One research has shown that a person receives on average 100 emails per day – It gives a lille insight into how unlikely the tough competition is about getting attention in the inbox.

The typical situation is that most people check their emails in the morning when they meet at work, they check emails at noon, then again at the end of the working day, and for families with children often from 20h-21h in the evening, when the children are put to bed.

It is recommended to look in the analysis tool in your Email Marketing platform to see when your Email Marketing campaigns perform best.

As far as weekday broadcast is concerned, the situation is typically somewhat more diverse and will often depend on the industry you are in. It is recommended to look in the analysis tool in your Email Marketing platform to see when your Email Marketing campaigns perform best.

Look after Open Rate, Click – Through Rate, unsubscribes and use your analysis tool such as Google Analytics to evaluate when your emails are converting best.

One thing is when your recipients open your emails – the next is when they actually convert. Remember, it is not everyone who ends up buying from your newsletter the same day they receive the email. They may bookmark the link from your email campaign that they found interesting, and then it may be that the next day at work they end up using this link and make a purchase at your webshop. Therefore, remember to look for the assisted value from your newsletter as detailed in this article.

If you find the right time to send out your email campaigns, you will experience greater engagement, more sales and fewer unsubscribes, and therefore maintain a healthy email marketing list.

 

Use segmentation

By segmenting data when you send out your Email Marketing campaigns, you achieve significantly greater chances of success while maintaining happy recipients. By sending targeted content to the individual on your email list, you have a greater chance of getting conversions, and at the same time, you are less likely to appear as one, who just spam people with irrelevant information.

If you have a business with many different types of products, it is quite logical here to divide into segments. Even if you only sell one product, there may be a good reason to split your recipients into segments.

Your recipients will be different in their own way and should be divided into buyer personas – what characterizes the individual customer. For example, there may be the difference between where your email subscribers are in the buying cycle.

If you have data on whether the subscriber has only signed up for your Email Marketing list without actually using your website, or it is a registered person who has moved around the page, showed an involvement by either buying or placing goods in the basket, or seen a number of important pages, the person has previously downloaded material from your website etc., you also have the opportunity to use this in the segmentation process.

It may also be that in the first step, when you sought the lead for your Email Marketing list, the person checked which type of information he or she was interested in. Then it is obvious to segment your emails according to this content.

 

Use personalization

If you have collected information on the subscribed as name, date of birth, gender or something else (see further up in the article), you can advantageously use this to make the email personal.

Start your email with “Hello (name)”, send a birthday greeting card with discount code only on the day, and send segmented content according to the gender specified, or start already in the subject line with a text such as, for example, “(Name), it is the last chance of discount today!”. If the subscriber gets the idea that the email is actually written directly to him/her, you will experience a far greater commitment and loyalty.

If the subscriber gets the idea that the email is actually written directly to him/her, you will experience a far greater commitment and loyalty.

When sending personalized emails, it is very important to think carefully. If you send an email that is very personal, but where the content does not hit the target, then the effect of the email will be the opposite of the intended.

Carefully consider how you would like to receive a personal email. How would it be set up, how should you be appealed, what content would you like to have? What usually has the greatest effect on you when you receive an email?

 

Send emails with fixed frequency – When the recipient would prefer to receive a newsletter

If your subscribers receive emails at random, undefined times without correlation, it may be a reason why the subscriber no longer wishes to receive and/or read your Email Marketing emails. Therefore, be very consistent around broadcast times to maintain a good, healthy list of recipients.

Therefore, be very consistent around broadcast times

Ideally, when you have picked up the lead for your Email Marketing campaigns, you have already asked how often they want to receive your emails. Is it several times a week, once a week or once a month?

If you have not received this information, it is again a matter of thorough analysis. If many people started unsubscribing from your newsletter (Read this article: Avoid unsubscribing from a newsletter), when you changed your tactics with broadcasts? You sent only 2 emails a month before and now suddenly 2 times a week. Have engagement and sales increased or has engagement declined while experiencing more people unsubscribing to the newsletter?

Be very careful not to take longer breaks in your broadcasts or drastically change broadcast behavior. People tend to forget that they have signed up for a newsletter among the huge amount of emails they receive, and it can often cause annoyances and sometimes even complaints. And maybe ultimately result in the person no longer opening your emails or completely unsubscribing from them again.

 

Send interesting and relevant content

The point here may seem quite obvious, but nonetheless many fail in this discipline. Either because you do not have good enough communication with your recipients, that you do not have segmented content – or opportunity for the same, or because you have had a plan to send at certain times, but just have not had the time to make interesting and relevant content.

Many people sometimes experience running out of good ideas. Here you can read about 25 good ideas for the newsletter.

Make sure, based on your people and segmentation groups, to send the content relevant to your audience. Be sure to follow up on how the different people and/or segments have responded to your content and use it as learning for future emails.

Never take the easiest route possible because eventually it ends up costing you your subscribers.