Careers at Blue Ox

Email marketing can seem like an extremely tricky business, even though email has been around for decades now. And how do you even begin to approach building a list to start emailing to?

We’re sure you have a lot of questions, and hopefully this list helps you get started with your email marketing efforts. When you’re ready for the next stop, contact us!

1. Don’t Buy Email Lists

Email by geralt

There are two ways to get an email list: buy it, or build it yourself. In reality, buying an email list is as good as buying nothing at all.

First, if you’re planning to use a reputable email marketing service – i.e. MailChimp, Constant Contact, etc. – they will not allow you to use a purchased list. That should be a huge flashing neon sign that buying an email list is a mistake, but there are more reasons.

Second, good email lists aren’t for sale. The only email lists which are for sale are those which are being sold to a bunch of different companies, and have likely been stolen or forgot to uncheck a box when subscribing for something else. That means the owners of the addresses are being inundated with emails from companies doing the same thing you are: looking for an easy sale.

Lastly – though there are many good reasons – your email deliverability and IP reputation can be seriously harmed. Purchased email lists tend to have a lot of blocked email addresses which bounce instead of delivering. If you email to a bunch of bouncing email addresses, the IP address of that target email may begin to identify you as a spammer. Once you’ve been identified as a spammer, it can take months or years to build up your company’s reputation again.

2. Only Market To Those Who Subscribe

How would you like to receive an email from a company you’ve never heard of before? You’d probably delete it without opening it, or take one look and hit unsubscribe. People who haven’t opted-in to receive your emails are going to react the same way.

That’s why you need to build an email marketing list organically, so people willingly give you their email address because they’re genuinely interested in what you have to say.

How To Get Subscribers

Do this by offering webinars, ebooks, templates and other content behind a ‘gate’, where if they want the content they need to offer you their name, email address and possibly some other identifying information.

If you’re a software company, you might build an online tool people can use, but request their information before their first use.

Also, be sure to include a “Forward To A Friend” link at the bottom of all of your marketing emails, as people who already subscribe may be your best way of getting new subscribers.

3. Use A Reputable Service

Remember earlier when we talked about Constant Contact and MailChimp? These reputable email marketing services make it easy to generate and send out creative, eye-catching emails to your entire list, and manage your list as well.

Companies like these provide expertise and knowledge for you to lean on in their “Help” or “Knowledge Base” sections, which can be a boon when trying to navigate the world of email marketing without the help of a digital marketing firm.

4. Make It Easy To Unsubscribe

This might seem counterintuitive, but it’s important to make it easy to unsubscribe from your emails. If you don’t provide an unsubscribe link somewhere easy to get to on your marketing emails, that person might end up reporting you as spam which can hurt your ability to do any email marketing at all.

It’s much better to let contacts come and go in peace. They may come back when you have something of more interest to them one day, and you don’t want to ruin that relationship.

5. Implement Re-engagement

Now, if you have someone on your list who hasn’t opened an email from you in a long time, but haven’t gone through the trouble of unsubscribing. Even if they don’t report you as spam, if someone just immediately deletes your email this also hurts your reputation.

What you need to do is re-engage those subscribers. Do so by emailing those specific subscribers with an email acknowledging that they haven’t opened or clicked on your emails in a long time, and asking if they would simply opt-in again if they’d like to stay subscribed. This provides them the opportunity to stay engaged, and those who don’t opt-in can be removed from your list.

6. Quality Over Quantity

Remember, in email marketing it’s all about quality over quantity. A highly-engaged, small group of subscribers is infinitely more effective for your marketing efforts than a thousands-strong list of people who never look at your creative marketing emails.

Hopefully these tips can help you in managing your email marketing efforts. When you need additional help advertising your business via email, contact us!