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Six Secrets to Grow your Customer Database By Josh Perlstein, President Response Media
This document brought to you by The Email Experience Council, LLC
A Proud Sponsor of the Dec. 3-6, 2006, Park City, UT www?emailexperience?org © 2006, Email Experience Council, LLC all rights reserved
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Six Secrets to Grow your Customer Database By Josh Perlstein, President Response Media In surveys conducted about Internet marketing over the last few years, email to a marketer's own database is consistently ranked as the #1 or #2 most successful, most profitable marketing tactic. A recent Shop.org study found that 66 percent of retailers consider email campaigns to their house list as either effective or very effective, more than any other online marketing tactic surveyed, including affiliate programs, banners and pop-up ads. Such success is due to email's effectiveness in driving revenue, developing customer relationships and promoting your brand-- and users find it an amazingly effective communication service. This is no surprise to long-time direct marketers who know that their house file is their gold. Still, not all online marketers have success with their email marketing efforts to their own database. Their lack of success is typically due to multiple factors, including sub-optimal email strategy, frequency, content or execution. Often, we find that poor email house file returns are caused by poor email acquisition practices. Today, more than ever, email marketers are challenged to find ways to successfully scale their email efforts to responsive, willing prospects. Over the last 10 years of optimizing our clients' online media campaigns, we have established some best practices for profitable, successful email address acquisition and email database growth. At the core of these best practices is permission-based email marketing, which continues to be the de facto standard for both acquisition and retention messages. Key best practices to help you leverage your permission-based email marketing include: 1. Ask for your customers' or prospects' email address prominently, on every web page. Each of your site's pages is a potential touch-point for prospects and customers. Because there's no guarantee every visitor will enter your web site via the home page, you can make it easy for prospects and customers to sign up for offers and begin to engage with you by simply adding a Sign Up Now element on every page of your site. 2. If someone wants to get email from you, they'll ask you for it. Consider the use of double opt-in as a way to further qualify a subscriber. When prospective subscribers submit their email addresses, and then receive confirmation requests to which they must reply in order to join your list, they are less likely that to report the message as SPAM.
23 1 5 5 M e d l o c k B r i d g e R o a d . N o r c r o s s , G e o r g i a 3 0 0 7 1 . P h 7 7 0 . 4 5 1 . 5 4 7 8 . F x On the topic of email appends and compiled "partner" opt-in lists, we say Just Don't Do It. Sending to a rented or purchased list may promise additional leads or sales, but will certainly generate anger and ill will from recipients who see your message as no different from all of the other junk in their inbox. 3. Use the most efficient online media tactics to acquire qualified email addresses, such as co-registration, search and in-ad data capture via rich media. Only use non-incentivized sites and networks that tell you which specific sites are running your offer. Then take the time to actually check the quality and email usage of those sites. Jupiter Research reports that co-registration costs are driven by the quality of leads being generated and placement of an organization's brand within the co-registration web site. Jupiter also recommends that marketers "Seek out firms that specialize in email acquisition, such as Response Media". 4. Send your first email within 24 hours of a signup to maximize lead value. MarketingSherpa reports that the initial interest expressed by users who sign up for your e-newsletter languishes within the first 60 days of sign-up. Afterwards, 10% of users report even opted-in emails as SPAM, so marketers beware: SPAM is in the eye of the beholder! 5. Nail down your email strategy before you begin asking people ... [download for more]
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