Your email list is one of your most valuable marketing and promotional tools.
Unfortunately, people change jobs or ditch their Hotmail or AOL email address, leading email lists to naturally decay by 2 percent a month or 22.5 percent a year, according to research from MarketingSherpa. That means, with an email list of 2,500 subscribers, 560 of those email addresses would become obsolete in just a year.
You need to take steps not just to grow your email list but also to account for all those dead addresses (not to mention any unsubscribes).
- Customize Your Facebook Call-To-Action
If people are already using your “Contact Us” button, that’s great, but if it is getting few or no clicks, consider swapping “Contact Us” for a button that instead takes visitors to a landing page on your website where people can sign up for your email newsletter and, if you like, the print catalog.
- Create an Offer
Are you about to host an event, run a new course or open registration for the next term? Use these circumstances as opportunities to engage with customers and grow your email list. A registration discount, bring-a-friend free coupon or whatever you decide can be delivered automatically to the recipient’s inbox when they sign up. If your registration system allows for discount codes, you can enter that information and simplify the process even more. On Facebook, offers can be created from the Ads Manager or directly from your organization page. Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn ads can deliver similar results and should be considered if your organization gets more engagement on these platforms.
- Run a Contest or Giveaway
The same principles used for calls-to-action or offers can be applied to a special contest or giveaway that requires an entrant to provide his or her email in exchange for entering. It may seem like a no-brainer but more valuable and relevant the prize, the more email addresses you’re likely to collect. You can weed out some lesser qualified leads (and capture more detailed customer demographics) by requiring address, birth year, or other information in addition to an email address.