Email marketing is a very cost-effective way of managing relationships with clients/prospects. Developing a high-quality list is a big challenge for marketeers, but it is an important obstacle to overcome if your email marketing campaigns are to be successful.

Here are some ideas on how to grow your email marketing list:

Promote your email services on your website

The best way to encourage people to sign-up is to advertise your email services on your website. It should be clearly promoted on your home page but also on all web pages that a client is likely to see during their time spent on your website.

Sign-up incentives

Continuing on this theme you may consider offering a similar incentive to people who sign-up on your website. Depending on the outcome you want will depend on the type of incentive you offer. If you are interested in numbers and want to recruit hundreds of people, then it is best to offer something that appeals to a large audience e.g. a plasma TV. If you would rather get responses from a more select group then your offer should be relevant to the target audience you hope to attract i.e. a white paper on email legislation.

Forward to a friend

You should include a ‘forward to a friend’ link in your emails to your existing client list. ReportMail allows you to add a message to send with the email being forwarded. Make the most of this feature by including a link in your message to sign up to your email services.

 Email signatures

Include additional messages in your email signature. Some companies advertise their products in their email signature, so why not their email services? Direct people to your email services registration page using a link in your signature.

Networking

Go to plenty of networking events and start building relationships. If they offer you a business card, ask permission to add them to your email marketing list. The worst that can happen is they say no!

Suppliers

Ask your regular suppliers if you can add them to your email marketing list. They may be a valuable source for new business leads if you have a good relationship with them. Also sign-up to their email services so you can return the favour in the future.

Application forms, contact forms and pre-pay reply cards

Include an email address field on application forms and contact forms. Make sure you have a tick box so people can opt-in to your email services.

Another option is to send out pre-pay reply cards with any mailings so contacts can fill in their email addresses and post back. Again, depending on the number of contacts you have, this could be an expensive exercise.

Telephone calls

During telephone enquiries ask contacts if they would like to receive email updates and make a note of their email address.

Alternatively, contact everyone on your database by phone and ask for their email address and if they would like to receive email updates. This is likely to be an expensive exercise but over time it will save you money.

Data matching

List providers can match your contact database against their data to see if they can fill in any missing blanks like email addresses. However, there is no guarantee how many email addresses they will be able to match for you.

Viral games

Viral games can be used to promote your brand and encourage known contacts to forward on the game to new contacts. New contact’s details and the option to sign up for your email services will be captured at the entry step. A prize draw will encourage contacts to enter.

You could arrange to run a joint branded promotional game in tandem with an online resource ifaonline.co.uk to increase exposure.

Online advertising

Creating a data capture banner ad will help you to capture email addresses. This works best by offering incentives.

Solus emails

Online publications such as Citywire and iii can send out Aberdeen Solus emails to their contact lists. This could promote a particular product but also contain a panel encouraging investors to receive information via your email services on a regular basis.

Blogs, forums and networks

Join some online networking websites such as LinkedIn or Ecademy to build relationships with other members. Ask them if they would be interested in receiving your newsletters / emails. They may not require your services directly, but they may know someone who might.

Blogs are another way in which you can promote your email services. Comment on relevant blog articles and promote your email services if the timing is appropriate.

Conclusion

A lot of what has been discussed here relies on building relationships with people. On that note, it is also worth mentioning the people you already have on your email marketing list: don’t forget to treat them with the same respect you would give a new prospect or you could end up with a lot of unsubscribe requests on your hands!

The most important piece of advice we can offer is to never add an email address to your email marketing list without permission.

Permission based marketing is becoming increasingly important as people are becoming more aware of their rights in terms of email marketing. Why not read our article on permission based marketing?