The cardinal rule of email deliverability is to never borrow, buy or rent an email list. Doing so could cause you to end up on a blacklist, permanently crippling your deliverability.
To boost the size of your email list, review every interaction point a customer has with your company, and consider implementing a program for each one. Possible options include:
- Point-of-sale at a bricks-and-mortar retail location
- Online
- Phone or call center
For small businesses in particular, the fastest way to grow an email list is to offer a strong incentive to join. Consumers typically have a few concerns when deciding whether or not to join your list:
- What’s in it for me?
- Will my email address be shared or sold?
- Will it be hard to remove my address or unsubscribe?
These concerns should be addressed up front by email marketers. Reassure potential subscribers that you will not share their email addresses and that they can unsubscribe at any time. Then focus on the incentive; some examples include:
- Private sales
- Birthday club benefits
- Instant discount for signing up
- Free membership in a benefit club
Many email marketers use spamassasin, a free service that will tell you if your email is likely to end up in the bulk folder. When it comes time to actually send the email, you have two options – sending the emails through your own list or using a hosted solution from an email service provider. Most email service providers have a built-in spam checker tool, so you can see if your email will be flagged.
By developing your own email list, offering incentives to join and addressing customer concerns up front, you’ll see improvement in email deliverability.
About The Guest Author: As the President of ReachMail, John Murphy continues what he’s been doing since 1999 – helping marketers improve their email marketing campaigns. As a Vice President at InfoUSA, John managed email marketing programs for leading companies and organizations such as Sun Microsystems, Citrix Online and the University of Wisconsin. Since joining ReachMail as President, he’s been instrumental in making ReachMail the leader in email deliverability and usability.
Hi
Some great tips about Email marketing. We do virtual assistant services for small business owners and do email marketing for them and with these tips we can improve our services and do better.
Thanks for sharing them with us.
“The cardinal rule of email deliverability is to never borrow, buy or rent an email list. Doing so could cause you to end up on a blacklist, permanently crippling your deliverability.”
Are you saying that you can never do a new business campaign using a purchased list? Or are you saying you must use an email marketing service? I understand what I can’t do but not what my remaining options are.
#1 and #2 issues with small businesses and email marketing are capturing and connection, not renting or buying lists. Very few offline small business owners understand e-marketing, hopefully John can change that.
Since he is the leader in the industry, we should be seeing more of him and his firm.