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Business Development

Email Marketing, how to get started collecting data

Email Marketing has to be one of the key ways to get your business name out there, stay in the forefront of clients mind and connect with them on a regular basis. The question I often get asked is how do I build a list, where do I start? This has to be the most important part of an email marketing campaign, if you have no addresses you can’t market to anyone and if you aren’t trying to collect what chance do you have? Below are my top five tips to start building that email list.
1. Make it simple
Put your sign up form at the top of your website or make sure it’s in a side menu and after every news article – basically you want it to be really easy for people to go ‘I like that, where do I sign up for more’? You can sign up for my monthly enews below.

2. Guarantee the users Privacy
This has to be key, promise you won’t sell the data, trade or do anything else dodgy with it, no body like spam, also why no tell people when they sign up how often they will hear from you?

3. Give Something Away
This is getting more and more popular, you give me your email address and I give you ‘X’ an ebook is the usual freebie, but don’t forget things like a discount code or competition entry, all can work just as well and be less time consuming to produce.

4. You must always remember how you got into business in the first place – face to face
This means people who you meet at networking events, or who buy something from your shop or trade counter, why not ask them there and then ‘ can I add you to my email list, I only send info from my company’?

5. Don’t Spam
To put it simple make sure you have someone’s permission to email them, there is nothing worse than being deluged with email you never asked for or wanted, this can and does have the reverse effect for any potential client or customer.

Follow these top 5 tips to get you started and you will be well on the way not just to collecting email addresses but also collecting emails from people who want to be contacted, now what is better than that?

Related posts you may wish to read:

  1. 5 Top Reasons for using Email Marketing
  2. Time for a new Email Signature?
  3. How a small business can get started on Twitter
  4. How to get started with Stumbleupon
  5. Why consider affiliate marketing for your website?
  • Tracy Temple

    Thanks for this Alistair, I have to say though that I would really like a bit more detail – this is a bit basic but i guess you do need somewhere to start from. Thing is if you have done these things where do you go from here? also i would like to know what good response rates are for emails i send out, i have such a varied click through rate i don’t know whether it is good or bad or even what % i should be happy with. Have you any thoughts on this?

  • Tracy Temple

    Thanks for this Alistair, I have to say though that I would really like a bit more detail – this is a bit basic but i guess you do need somewhere to start from. Thing is if you have done these things where do you go from here? also i would like to know what good response rates are for emails i send out, i have such a varied click through rate i don’t know whether it is good or bad or even what % i should be happy with. Have you any thoughts on this?

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