Email List Acquisition Strategy:
A Top-Down Approach
By Ross Kramer, Chief Executive Officer
Among the various programs in your marketing mix, email marketing surely has the potential to deliver the highest level of return on your marketing dollar investment. In fact, this measurable ROI success rate has helped email marketing gain attention not just from online marketers in the trenches, but from higher level executives as well. Are you helping the higher level management in your organization understand the ROI potential of your email program? Have you asked for their commitment to support efforts to capture email profile data at every customer touch point, online and offline? Here are some considerations for why you need the support from the top.
As your company continues to invest in ways to maximize its email marketing strategy, it is important to take inventory of your assets associated with your email program. Of all things that work synergistically in your program, such as the system from which you send, your email team, the frequency or type of communication being sent, or the offers or promotions you deliver, it is your list of subscribers that is your key asset. In fact, recent studies and reports have provided ways to calculate the exact dollar value of each name on your list based on response and conversion rates, allowing you to monetize this asset. However, efforts solely from the online or email marketing team to grow the subscriber assets are not enough. There needs to be a holistic approach to organically grow your email list through efforts from the entire organization, with a commitment supported and communicated from the top down.
In order to effectively grow your subscriber list, you will want to look at some of the obvious ways your organization is already acquiring subscriber data, like on your website, and incorporate new ideas to maximize this capture point even further. Also in your online efforts, you will want to leverage new technologies and strategies which help to drive increased traffic to your website. And finally, you will want to consider the alternative ways that your organization reaches out to customers and prospects besides your website at all points of contact, including offline communication. These proposed enhancements may require additional effort, budget and work for individuals within your organization that otherwise may have nothing to do with executing your email program. As the online marketer responsible for email programs, the responsibility falls to you to provide to management the ROI potential and importance of the efforts to maximize the assets. Then, the responsibility falls to top level management to prioritize the budget, staffing, and re-training efforts needed to cooperatively incorporate online and offline lead acquisition and organic email subscription growth strategies.
Here are some ideas you can easily implement:
- Enhance subscription efforts on your website. Visitors to your website have already expressed some level of interest in your products or services simply by making it to your site, so it is critical to engage them to the next level of communication by inviting them to subscribe to your email program. A good website subscription strategy will include the subscription invitation and form on multiple pages with strategic locations throughout your website. It is also important to carefully consider the fields used in the opt-in form and implement a strategy for collecting further profile information later after the initial subscription, using auto reply, thank you/welcome emails, and a double opt-in strategy, both for CAN-SPAM compliance and for growing a strong and engaged list of subscribers.
- Drive increased traffic to your website. Don’t overlook the importance of SEO (search engine optimization) and other web marketing strategies to drive and track new traffic to your site. Other online marketing tools such as co-registration and email append strategies may also be important help you to expand your acquisition efforts.
- Get buy-in from other departments to help grow you subscriber list. There are many different points of contact with your customers and prospects through your organization. Don’t overlook ways to acquire data for your online marketing via your offline marketing efforts such as tradeshows, printed advertising, lead referral programs, newsletters, telemarketing, customer service, contests/sweepstakes, printed advertising and point of sale or retail channels. By leveraging additional data captured at each of these points to enhance your subscriber data base, and coordinating efforts through a centrally-accessed CRM, you will have the ability to send relevant and personalized messages to your growing list, further strengthening your acquisition and your list assets.
Many efforts to implement simple tactics such as those above are stopped in the water when e-marketers can’t get the needed buy-in from the various departments to work cooperatively. When you are able to use the powerful metrics of your email program to prove an enhanced email ROI and then monetize your subscription list as a key asset to your program, you will have the tools needed to present a solid case to management, enabling them to make prioritized commitments across the organization. The success of your email acquisition and your email program at large will ultimately come through support from the top down.
About the Author
Ross Kramer is a founder of Listrak. A serial entrepreneur by nature, Ross has started several marketing technology ventures, the first of which was a web hosting company in his Penn State dorm room. Today Ross serves as the President and CEO for two leading technology companies; Listrak and Vertex Internet.
About Listrak
Listrak is a leading provider of hosted email marketing software, allowing permission-based marketers to manage, send, track and grow their email marketing investment. We deliver email marketing intelligence through our intuitive web-based application. Leading marketers have come to rely on this intelligence to better manage email in their multi-channel marketing mix.
Listrak software helps companies, agencies and associations better manage customer relations in their marketing campaigns. Its web-enabled interface helps marketers engage their customers using an advanced profiling and personalization engine. Listrak’s world-class support and professional services assist clients with enterprise integration. Its clients include L’Oreal, Motorola, Jeep, PR Newswire, The Islands of the Bahamas, and the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
To learn more about the many ways Listrak can strengthen your email marketing campaigns, or to sign up for a 20-minute web-based tour, visit www.listrak.com.
