Get The Most Out Of Your Email List

in most marketing seminar that I have attended one of the first things they teach you is to build a list ie a mailing list after all “The Money is in the List”.

Why build a list?

This has to be one of the most frequently asked questions ever, why is it important to have a list? You need to think about this from a sales cycle or sales funnel point of view; If someone has taken the time to give you their email address to you they have indicated to you that they like what they see and want to hear more from ie you have a warm lead. It is much easier to sell to a warm lead then to someone that is cold and probably does not know you from a bar of soap.

It take an average of at least 8 interactions between you and customer before they finally warm to you and convert. So it vitally important that you keep in regular contact with them.

I have my list but people are not reading them

You spend lot of time and money building building your list with great expectations that money will start rolling in.  However, like so many other small business owners that use email marketing you aren’t getting the return you hoped. How many times have you sent out an email to your customers only to be bitterly disappointed with the results? You and me, both!

According to Campaign Monitor Email marketing benchmarks fore 2019 you can expect :

• Average open rate: 17.92%
• Average click-through rate: 2.69%
• Average unsubscribe rate: 0.17%
• Average click-to-open rate: 14.10%
• Average bounce rate: 1.06%

There are so many reason why open rates are so low such as poor or irrelevant subject headers, delivered at the wrong time ie they busy at work or something else, too many emails from you and got email fatigue, etc.

How can I improve my email campaigns

Well, I got tired and got some help from the experts and here are the top 10 tips I picked up which made a lot of sense.

1. The number one recommendation from our experts is to re-send campaigns to those that haven’t opened them. There are lots of reasons why they did not read your email from didnt have time at that moment, subject was not interesting or just missed it., Whatever the reason give your subscriber a second chance.
2. Along with re-sending your email to people who didn’t open it the first time try it with a different subject line.
3. Our next email marketing strategy that our experts concur is to segment your list. Most people send the same email to their entire list, and maintain that list as one. Remember that you are dealing with people and not sheep, so take the time to group people on their needs basis.
4. Our experts suggest beginners to focus on understanding the needs of their subscribers from the day when they send them welcome email, this help segmentation and better engagement. Try sending out a survey to find out what they are interested.
5. See list building as sending value to your readers versus trying to sell something.
6. Beginners to email marketing should pay more attention to their email content. Your emails are directed at people who are already interested in receiving messages from you, so there is a very high chance that they will open your messages, so don’t disappointment with crap content.
7. Story vs Facts – people love stories and they are more likely to engage with your content.
8. Relevance is king: We all hear daily that content is king – so let’s take that one level further and point out that it’s not just the volume or brilliance of content that matters to your followers, it is how that content relates to them. If content is not relevant to them, it is nothing more than a waste of your time and a reason for the follower/consumer to take away permission for ongoing interaction with you.
9. Beginners avoid this rookie mistake and look at the sender name and subject line. There is no point in crafting an excellent email when nobody is going to open it. Start off by testing your sender name. Often people respond more to a “name” as opposed to a “company” or “business name”.
10. The one thing I think beginners get wrong when it comes to email marketing is that they try to sell too soon. If you’re just starting out, you need to build those relationships first
11. Focus on what’s really important: consistency. Send out emails on a regular basis, at similar times, on the same days each week. The alternative, sending emails sporadically, without a strategy behind them, will more than likely result in high unsubscribe rates.
12. If you have a lead magnet could be a valuable such as a pdf book or video class series you need to capture more than just their name and email address. You want to find out what type of customer they are in exchange.

OK, can’t count

If you look at these tips, really they are not rocket science when you get the time to think about it, but that is a major part of the problem for small business owners, when do you get the time to do this type of work.  With competing priorities, the daily business demands, family commitments and if you are lucky enough some personal me time – how do you get to do this work.  Well, you don’t have to do all by yourself – get some help from the experts or get someone to help you with the other task such as getting a virtual assistant.

What some of our customers are doing?

1. Automate – setup auto -responders to get information from your customers such as sending a welcome message when they join with a follow up to see what they are interested.  That way you can segment your list better and provide more relevant content.
2. Maximise your content – if you are posting content then send relevant content to your mailing list segment.