Do you currently run an email list or subscription that you feel is underperforming? Are you looking for ways to leverage your current email list to grow your client base and business?
We know from experience that running a successful and active email list can be more complicated than it looks, but our experience has also taught us that it can be done smartly and efficiently!
We hope this article will allow us to share some of our expertise and help you develop a real and effective plan to revitalize and make use of your cold email list!
What is Email Marketing Really?
For so many of us, email is just one more bit of busy work in our day, and we tend to think of it that way when it comes to the role that email plays in marketing - it's just a secondary bit of paperwork that needs to be done.
As we'll come to see throughout this article, the opposite is closer to the truth: email is a central part of our modern digital lives and is, therefore, a critically important tool for growing, rebuilding, or expanding businesses, small and large alike.
Before we go any further, let's take some time to get on the same page and answer the central question of this article — "what is email marketing really?"
At its heart, email marketing is all about making thought-out, intelligent use of email to:
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Directly connect with your potential client base.
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Establish trust with your clients by sharing relevant and actionable information.
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Build that trust into a strong professional relationship.
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Raise your customers through the Buyer Value Journey.
Know, Like, Trust
Having a community of active subscribers who value your input and seek out your professional expertise is central to leveraging a robust email list to build your client base and grow your business. Subscribers who know you professionally and trust your work will keep you at the top of their minds when considering hiring a specialist and are more likely to recommend you to people they know who might benefit from your services.
The only way to build this kind of community is for your readers to come to know you and then develop that relationship into one where your subscribers like and trust you. This article will demonstrate some specific strategies on how to build or rebuild an email list, but while you're reading, keep this central idea in mind:
Your email list and email marketing strategy are meant to lead your readers towards purchasing your goods or services, but for it to be effective, people must genuinely want to open and read your emails! Follow the strategies below to make a relevant and successful email marketing campaign to bring your customers to you and expand your business!
10 Steps to Reinvigorate Your List of Email Subscribers
Here we'll begin to walk through the steps towards building your email list into a useful tool for your business. First, let’s take a look at the three groups these steps can be categorized into.
Foundational Steps
Foundational steps are the necessary first steps of a new email campaign. These steps can also serve to clean out inactive members and remove the dead ends from your subscribers before you start rebuilding an existing list.
Rebuilding Steps
Rebuilding steps specifically focus on how to revitalize a currently underperforming email subscription list by regularly engaging your subscriber's attention and bringing new customers on board.
Best Practices
Best practices are all general steps that should be kept in mind and adhered to in any situation!
Foundational Steps
1. Set Long Term Goals
One of the most common mistakes that we see when it comes to maximizing email campaigns is that many folks simply don't have an effective plan to start with! An excellent way to begin either building or rebuilding an online subscription list is to set specific goals to work towards.
Short-term goals such as hitting a certain number of new subscribers are essential to establish and set limits on your project, but you also need to set long-term goals.
In the end, your email list has to organically and sustainably draw in and retain new readers and clients - that means you need to build an online community that can run efficiently without too much effort from you!
2. How Long Will Your Campaign Run?
If you run a regular email update, you'll want a setup that allows you to produce emails indefinitely. However, if you're running a single email campaign, there are several benefits to setting a clear timeline - it gives you a deadline to motivate you and prevent the project from running on while also setting an end goal to work towards.
If you plan ahead and give yourself extra time, you can test your campaign on a smaller scale in order to work out the kinks before you spend money and time on advertising. Ninety days is commonly seen as a standard amount of time to develop, test, and run a strategy.
3. Define Inactive Members
Many people are looking to revamp or improve their current email lists, and in that case, one of the most important first steps is finding and making a plan for the inactive members of your subscription list.
Generally, a client is considered "inactive" when they haven't responded to, opened, clicked on, or acted on one of your emails within the last six months to a year. It's important to know who is actively engaging with your content. You don't want to waste time and resources building a list of 10 thousand names if only 2 thousand of them are actively reading what you send them!
4. Purge Your "Inactives" List - Re-Engage or Remove
Now that you know who is active with your emails and who isn't, you'll want to pick up potentially receptive clients and remove the uninterested from your list.
The best way to do so is with a simple poll. The survey should focus on the reader's relationship to you, but it should also include a small incentive (e.g., a $5 gift card, a mug, or T-shirt) and a choice to either continue or stop receiving emails from you.
The reward will draw in people who might be open to keep on subscribing to you and generate data about how your current readers feel about your emails.
You can attract previously ambivalent clients, while the truly uninterested people can remove themselves from your pool, saving you time and effort.
Rebuilding
5. Reconsider Your Content
It's important that the emails you send out only contain information that is useful or valuable to your readers - they should want to click on your emails after all!
Therefore your emails should only contain directly useful information your clients can act on or directly benefit from.
Depending on your field, there are different options for what to include, from news about deals to tips and how-tos. Good content builds trust and your image as an authority in your field.
6. Offer Special Events
Whether you're planning a single event to rebuild interest, or if live streams are a regular part of your digital community, live events can serve as an important draw in bringing people to your subscription list and keeping them there.
You can use targeted advertising to send information about the event directly to friends or contact lists, and the excitement of a one-time live event that can be missed helps draw people's interest towards you.
7. Actively Re-Engage or Remove Inactive Members
We've mentioned the idea of turning inactive users into active customers. Once readers become inactive, you'll want to send them an email to offer them a chance to opt back in or to unsubscribe. You should:
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Give them a reason to re-engage. Again, a small gift or incentive can immediately buy back the attention of a good chunk of your readers.
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Update them on what they've missed. If you're re-launching or re-branding your emails, give an update on what's new.
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Offer Actionable Information. Give them a chance to unsubscribe if they really want to, but offer something of interest as a freebie to indicate to them that they'll be missing out by unsubscribing.
Best Practices
8. Give Your Clients Options
Where possible, give your readers options. For example, your subscription choices could involve receiving daily updates about breaking news in the field, or it could provide regular links to reviews of interesting new products instead. You'll learn which kind of information your readers prefer, and keep your readers more interested.
9. Make Use of Automation
You may have noticed that many of the steps on this list entail sending out a lot of emails! Your email provider should have means of automation built-in, and you can use it to send out individual broadcast emails with specific information or, more importantly, set up auto-responses.
These pre-written responses can be tailored to many situations, from a reader subscribing, registering for an event, or abandoning a shopping cart. Automating these kinds of messages saves you a ton of work and can give the right message to the right customer.
10. Don't Press Too Hard!
To cap it all off, a very important tip to remember is — You don't overdo it! There is no worse reaction to seeing one of your emails than "Oh no, not another one!". Be sure to give your subscribers a break from your messages now and again, so you don't overstay your welcome.
Final Steps
If you've made it this far into this article, the odds are that you have an email list that is struggling to take off, and the odds are that the main problem is that you don't have a real strategy.
Not to worry, because even though managing business emails can be tedious, and it's often easy to undervalue the importance of a clear strategy behind an email campaign.
That's where Selworthy can make a difference in your life! We are experts at handling issues like email campaigns, and we make use of best-in-class tools to ensure your success in the digital marketing space. Contact us for answers to your questions, for help running your next advertising campaign, or for anything in between!
