Recent research by The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) ranks e-mail marketing as delivering the highest ROI. One statistic from their study that caught my attention is this: 66% of online Americans report making a purchase as a result of an e-mail from a corporate brand. That’s over three times the percentage of people who have made a purchase in response to a Facebook (20%) or text message (16%).
E-mail is effective, but you have to have the right list. Here are some steps to get you started building an e-mail database that will deliver results.
- Make sure your Sales and Marketing departments work together to develop a plan for how your e-mail campaigns will roll out as well as how they will be responded to and measured.
- Provide a good offer that has real value to your target market so those on your e-mail list will want to stay there, and those not on your list will want to sign up.
- Only e-mail to people who have given you permission to e-mail them. No one likes unsolicited “junk” mail.
- Make sure you take every opportunity to capture e-mail addresses.
- Make it easy to sign up for your newsletter, white papers, webinars, etc., so visitors to your website will want to sign up, and you can capture qualified e-mail addresses of interested prospects. Don’t ask for lots of information at this stage in the game. Also, have lots of call to action buttons on your site.
- Always test your campaigns to see which ones work the best and which ones are underperforming and shouldn’t be used. Test your headlines, subject lines, copy, offers, graphic elements, and calls to action.
By focusing on these six steps, you can build an e-mail database that has qualified prospects on it. That’s a powerful lead generation tool.
Digital Media Insider 