The Whitelist

Looking for Lists? Be Focused on Email Marketing Best Practices First

Last week’s DMA show gave us some insight into where some email marketers’ heads are at. It’s not all good: We had several people stop at our booth to ask about getting access to email lists.

Asking email marketing vendors about getting access to email marketing lists is not in and of itself a bad thing. But based on the number of inquiries we received, I suspect lists are a little too top-of-mind for too many marketers.

And that is a bad thing.

Email marketing has grown, evolved and matured over the years, but there are still some hold-out marketers—or maybe email marketing newbies—who think a successful email marketing campaign starts with the biggest list you can get your hands on. Nope. When it comes to lists, the email marketing best practice is to focus on quality over quantity. Growing a quality in-house email list takes a lot of time and effort. Renting a huge list doesn’t. But the quality list will offer the higher email marketing ROI, while the quantity list will offer the higher spam complaints.

Remember, a rented list is made up of names of people who don’t know you and didn’t ask to hear from you. Their names might be on the list because they opted in to hear from third parties, but that doesn’t mean they will be receptive to your message. You are more likely to get reported as spam as a result, and that can have a long-term negative impact on your online sending reputation.

And that’s a high price to pay! One that can decrease your email marketing ROI.

We’d all love a list in the millions, trust me. The thought of that many people getting our email marketing messages in their inboxes each week is enough to make any email marketer swoon. But for most businesses, the reality would be a nightmare because emailing that many people who didn’t ask to hear from you would mean you’d be blocked and couldn’t get into any inboxes at all.

Looking for lists? Look for email marketing best practices first instead.

Email Marketing Best Practices: “Make Me an Offer”

Go ahead. Make me an offer. Chances are, that’s the only way you’re going to get me to sign up for your emails. I consider myself a nice person, but my email address is mine, and mine alone. I don’t share it with every company I meet. It will take some incentive to get me to share it with you.

But guess what? I can—like every other consumer or business person—be bought. Offer me a fair trade, and you’ll get that email address of mine added to your in-house email list without a hitch.

My point is, email marketing best practices require you to offer people a reason to sign up. An email address is an item with value, just like money. I don’t give out money for no reason any more than I give out my email address for no reason.
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Here’s an email marketing challenge for you: Today, think of three ways to grow your in-house email list that are unusual, but still fall under the realm of permission-based email marketing . You know to use Forward to a Friend, you ask people for email addresses at trade shows, you have a prominent email signup link on your web site…but there are so many other ways to promote your email program and get people signed up.
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