Email Marketing: 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Audience

At a recent Blue Sky Factory email conference, the talk was all about ways to grow your audience. Many businesses already have some kind of email marketing strategy in place, but most haven’t spent a lot of quality time improving it.

Here are 5 tips from Blue Sky for growing your audience.

1. REFINE YOUR EMAIL FORMS

This includes your opt-in form and your opt-out form.

Opt-in Form

• Locate it above the fold, preferably top right or consider a lightbox to increase conversions – see Rob Bailey’s post on how the lightbox works for him
• Provide an incentive for people to fill it in – a monthly product giveaway, an e-book, a free phone consultation
• Be clear about what you’re offering (“Email-only discounts on our best-sellers!”)
• Provide a visual sample (have a look at my post on the power of the thumbnail in email sign-ups)
• Keep your fields to a minimum – name and email should be enough at this stage of the sales process
• Make sure there’s an email sent immediately after to confirm they’ve opted in

Rob Bailey's Lightbox

Opt-out Form

• Be polite, but see if you can persuade people to opt-down instead of out
• Give them a choice of having emails sent only on certain dates (monthly) or times of the year (holiday)

2. INTEGRATE ONLINE EFFORTS

Share Buttons

• Embed a share button in each email
• Provide an incentive for people to share – $10 off their next order if they forward it to 5 friends
• Combine seasonal reasons – e.g. let regular subscribers create a holiday wish list and send it to their friends

Facebook

• Add a sign-up form to your Facebook Company page
• Offer a monthly giveaway or free app for Facebook fans only
• Tempt readers with hints of your exclusive email-only offers
• Better yet, try Facebook Connect for seamless integration

Mobile

• Make sure your emails are mobile-friendly in layout and length
• Integrate email campaigns with text messages, as Obama did in the 2008 election
• Give mobile users a one-touch system to opt-in
• Manage and send campaigns with mobile apps

3. THINK OFFLINE

The web isn’t the only place you’re interacting with potential customers. Trade shows and phone conversations, sponsored events and at points of sale – there are many opportunities to snag the public’s interest.

• When on the phone, your company should always ask if they can receive the person’s email. Remember to keep the offer short and note what kinds of benefits the person will be receiving.
• At the point of sale, always ask if they would like to sign-up for email news. Combine this with an example of what they could win in the monthly draw.

4. SEGMENT YOUR LIST

Many businesses have lots and lots of subscribers, but very low open rates. That’s probably because:

• You’re holding on to a lot of subscribers who delete you immediately or leave you in the spam box
• You’re not segmenting your list

No two customers are alike, but they often fall into identifiable email categories.

• If you’re worried about overwhelming people with too many options in the initial sign-up, Rich Brooks notes that you can segment email subscribers later
• Follow-up with an email asking for more info about what your new subscriber would like to see
• Conduct a survey of long-time email subscribers (using easy multiple choice + a field for more comments) to identify where you can improve

5. IMPROVE YOUR CONTENT

Remember that emails, websites and social media all have the same goal:

To provide quality content in exchange for customer interest

Which means, you’re only as good as the design and text you provide…

Subject Lines

• Personalize the subject with targeted offers (this is where segmenting helps)
• Keep it short <41 characters
• Earn respect fast
• Simple is beautiful
• Be honest – your subject line = email content

The Email Subscriber’s Wish List

1. Don’t waste my time
2. Don’t annoy me
3. Don’t break my trust
4. Give me useful stuff

Test Content

Things to test include:

• Subject lines
• Personalization
• Segmentation
• Greeting
• Headlines and sub-headers
• Body text / style
• Images
• Price
• Call outs such as Free Shipping
• Colors (text and background)
• Calls to action

The list goes on and so do I…

LOOKING FOR MORE IDEAS?

Give me a call at 1 978 309 3196 or head on over to www.squamcreativeservices.com to see what I can do for your business.

Tagged: best email marketing ideas, email forms, email marketing ideas, email subject lines tips, opt-in forms, opt-out forms, segment email lists, testing email content

Posted in: Email Marketing, Online Marketing