List Building Strategy and Mastering Email Communications

Email isn't new. It has been around for decades. Some people may argue that- "email is dead." But it isn't! In fact, email is still very much alive and should be an important tool in your marketing arsenal. Matt Rouse shares that since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, some sectors have seen a 450% increase in their email open rates. It turns out, when stuck at home, people were more willing to open those emails either our of boredom or because they were looking to connect with other people and brands. Email started to become a more vibrant and popular channel once again. In reality, email has never really slowed down and continues to be a relevant communication platform for businesses. Despite its popularity as a communications tool, many businesses have still not maximized their reach because of poorly formatted emails and weakly constructed messages. 

The problem is, one quick look at your inbox confirms how poorly many emails are and how inundated we all are with SPAM. It's unfortunately because marketers are generally pretty good at communicating with their customers, but they lose their edge when it comes to email marketing. Too often, the message is simply -"Buy my stuff." Generally, this is not what customers want to hear from brands. Yes, there may be some exceptions but on most occasions, abrupt sales messages that don't add any value rarely work as intended. Envato Tuts+ shares with us the eight qualities of an effective business email: 

1. The email is focused on the recipient 
2. It stimulates attention even before it is opened
3. The email uses kind and respectful words and tone
4. The email is grammatically correct and is easy to read.
5. It makes the reader feel good
6. It is clear and direct to the point; leaves a little room for interpretation
7. The email has the right length (not too long, not too short)
8. Has a clear call to action

How do Companies Start a List Building Strategy?

In order to execute email marketing campaigns, you have to have names and email addresses. One area where companies often stumble is they don't have a good process in place for collecting email addresses. Rouse suggests that web visitors have the option of adding themselves to an email list or subscribing to your monthly newsletter. It doesn't have to be called a list; it can be called an email club or something similar. The interesting part is that businesses could probably get 20% to 25% of visitors to join their lists if the opt-in is appropriately presented and offers perceived value. 

According to Rouse, if companies want to provide the most value through email communications, he would recommend segregating them into very specific lists. Having well-defined lists allows companies to establish the frequency of email being sent (weekly, monthly, quarterly) and matching the subject matter to the recipient's interests. The volume of email should also equate to how active the person is with your organization. 

If for example, the newsletters being sent out weekly are a compilation of interesting stories and tips about marketing, and somebody wants stories and tips about marketing, make that an obvious choice to entice visitors to subscribe. If you are in a country where GDPR is a requirement, then you want to make certain that the box is unchecked and that they have to actively check it to get on the list. While this used to be just a requirement for Europe, now California is getting there too. 

Lead magnets are another way of getting people to sign-up for a list by offering incentives or rewards in exchange for signing up. There are many strategies that can be applied to encourage people to sign up. If you want them to give information,  provide them something that is of value to them by giving them something that will be instantly delivered to them once they have filled up the necessary forms. Often times, retailers offer a one-time discount for signing up to a list and these have proven very effective. Less effective are businesses that force you to create an account or opt-in before you can even get inside the site. 

Matt shares that another way you build a list is to use a software tool called GetEmails. If an online visitor visits a company's  website under the "Can Spam Act," this actually counts as them giving consent to email and contact them. The software will automatically identify their information and put their details on a list without you asking them directly for their email. Rouse adds that this application may seem fairly invasive and wouldn't want to use it in most cases, but this software exists and has probably around 25% to 40% accuracy. 

Are Your Offers Enough For Customers to Give Their Information?

There are many strategies for enticing people and providing incentives for them to give their email such as creating newsletters, giving away vouchers, free trials, and membership discounts. In general, people don't want SPAM so by giving up their email address, they believe they are getting something of value in return.  But even then, it can be a challenge.  Despite lead generation efforts and list building strategies, there will always be some visitors not interested in the offers or providing their contact details. Maybe they are on  a website to gather information but it's not always to start a transaction or conversation. 

Matt believes is not always effective to put a "Subscribe to Our Newsletter "block in their website's footer. This is often too hidden and indirect for it to be effective. To be more effective, Matt suggests that web designers put the subscription offer block on the top portion of your website to better promote engagement. 

Pop-Ups for Subscriptions?

Sometimes pop-ups can be annoying and can push people to leave a website. That said, they can also be very effective when used at the right time and place. Pop-ups can be very invasive but statistics show that having a pop-up on exit intent is a fairly decent way to collect names. Compared to a static box, the chances are better that someone will sign-up using a pop-up. However, once they've given you their details, don't take them away from the page they were viewing. Give them enough time and space to explore the rest of the content.  Also keep in mind that every field added is another point of resistance. Don't pressure them by asking too much personal information; as much as possible, start with just their name and email. That's all the information required to begin your list building strategy. Progressive Profiling is a feature of many marketing automation tools that allows you to collect additional information on subsequent visits to further enhance your lists.

How Do You Craft an Email Strategy?

Now that the list building strategy has been set up, it's important to create compelling messages. The objective of these marketing messages is that they be strategically sent out to the right people at the right time. This is why it's important to develop different lists based on the needs or interests of your customers or prospects. What you want to avoid is sending the same message meant for existing customers to prospects. You're going to want to have your lists either segmented with tags, where a tag could be something like client versus prospect, or have tags to identify the resource the person downloaded or their entry point onto the list. This helps you identify what messages to send to the right list of people.

Keep it Simple

Matt encourages businesses to keep their email messages simple. You don't want to bore the receiver with a long narration of the company's backstory, mission, vision, and all that. It's recommended that your email be constructed in a way that it speaks to customers directly. Companies are on the right track when customers reply to their email and start to inquire more about your products or services. Rouse tells us that you don't want to send a marketing email labeled with "DO NOT RESPOND" because that's not a conversation. That can be interpreted as yelling at the customer or prospect with a megaphone telling them that the organization has so many customers to attend to that you don't have enough time to deal with their concerns. Customers want businesses that can help them and make them feel special, not just enterprises that make them feel that they are a burden. Organizations need to create different approaches, headlines, and visuals to cater to their customers diverse personalities. 

Watch Out for Spamming

Another common mistake that companies can make when creating their list building strategy is either just spamming everybody or buying email lists of people who don't know the company and spamming them. What enterprises often fail to realize is that if they start sending out too many emails, people start unsubscribing and they can get blacklisted by  email service providers so that none of their emails get through. If business don't want to be blocked, reported, or blacklisted,  they have to be careful in their approach to email and cautious about emailing only people who have a reason to be contacted.

The Process of Cleaning Your Email List

Matt shares with us the process of cleaning your list:

1. Make it easy for people to unsubscribe- You don't want uninterested people to be part of your lists. Remember that companies can't force people to purchase products or services if they don't want to! Get them off your list if they aren't interested.
2. Segment your list-  Organizations should be able to identify those who are actively interacting with email within the last six months or so. Take anybody who hasn't opened their email messages and export them out of main list.  Keep a copy of those to use later for what's called a "win-back" campaign. 
3. Deliverability of Emails- Sometimes, businesses can reach a point where their emails are constantly being redirected to the spam folder. It might require changing email formatting to include less links or images to get around those spam filters.