Grow Your List the Right email Way

Written By:
Jenni Williams, iContact Senior Product Marketing Manager

How you grow your email subscriber list matters. Grow it the wrong way, and you’ll risk being marked as a spammer, significantly harming your reputation and email delivery rate.

List growth methods fall into three buckets: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Stick to the Good, and you’ll see increased delivery rates and achieve better results from your email marketing campaigns because you will be reaching people who are interested in hearing from you.

The Good: Permission-based

When building your contact list, you must have permission from each and every contact on that list in order to send them emails. When you don’t have permission, your email qualifies as spam. When gathering permission, use an opt-in method, preferably with a double opt-in, where subscribers confirm their intent to join your list by clicking on a link in a confirmation email. If you don’t receive permission via opt-in, then you wander into Bad territory.

The Bad: Automatic Registration or Co-registration

Automatically opting a subscriber into your list after a purchase or transaction does not count as getting permission. Co-registration is having an opt-in on another publisher’s page to generate email subscriptions. These methods may seem acceptable under the assumption that permission is implied, however, without explicit permission, your email is still likely to be marked as spam and increase your complaint rates. As a result, most email service providers – including iContact – prohibit these practices.

The Ugly: Buying or Renting a List

Under no circumstances should you ever buy or rent a list of email addresses. This is the number one reason for high complaints, blacklisting, and reputation-pounding bounces! The subscribers on the list have not given permission for their email addresses to be sold, and they will not appreciate receiving an email from you.

Grow Your Good List into an Even Better List

The key to growing your list is two-fold. First, offer your customers plenty of places to sign up for your list, and second, promote the value of signing up for your email program – include examples of the deals, discounts, white papers, etc. that your subscribers can expect to receive (think about what is in it for them if they sign up, then articulate that benefit).

Following are some good ways to promote your email program:

• Include a sign-up form for your email program on your homepage within the header, footer, and/or navigation bars. Give this critical email marketing tool the real estate it deserves.
• Online retailers, promote your email program via cart checkout with an opt-in checkbox.
• Brick-and-mortar businesses, promote your program at point of sale – gather email addresses electronically (if you are able), keep a fish bowl and paper sign-up forms by the register, but make sure you clearly message to customers that they are signing up for your email program.
• Offer sign-up opportunities via social media marketing. Include a sign-up form on your Facebook page; send tweets about the benefits of joining your email list with a link back to your Web form, etc.
• At events and tradeshows, offer a giveaway for stopping by the booth and dropping in a card or swiping a badge and joining your email list (just be clear that registering for the giveaway also signs a customer up for your email program).
• Include messaging for your email program as well as the Web address for your Web form on your product packaging, brochures and other print materials.
• Train your customer service team to sign customers up for your email program.
• Include a forward-to-a-friend link in your emails to encourage your recipients to forward the content to someone they think might be interested in it. Make sure you include an opt-in form in your email to make it easy for friends to sign up.

Once you get new subscribers, be sure to embrace them immediately by sending a welcome email that thanks them for joining your list. You may even include a subscriber-only discount or coupon in the welcome email to help increase engagement. Follow these tips and principles, and you’ll be on your way to a more successful email marketing program.

What are some ways that you’ve found to be particularly effective for growing your list?