Are you maximising email acquisition opportunities?

Are you maximising email acquisition opportunities? If not, you should be as email data and list growth is a key part of any email marketing strategy. Building a list of engaged subscribers will help you to reach and communicate with more people. Whether your objective is to promote and share content or sell more product, finding more and more opted in subscribers is a must.

So bad news first – there is no easy way to get subscribers. Much like most forms of marketing, you need to market to people to get their attention and there isn’t a list of ‘my exact target subscribers’ that you can get hold of.

And now for the good news – there are lots of ways to ensure that you get interested people to sign up as they come across your content, collateral and communications. If you have taken the time to build a website, push content across blogs and social media, run an SEO campaign or get business cards printed, then the below is a must!

Newsletter sign up form on your website…

It’s stating the obvious but I’m amazed at how many sites I see without these, as it is the number one way to start an email acquisition strategy. Our platforms create these for you so there really is no excuse at all. And where to place it – on every page and somewhere in view. Forms can even be placed in home page sliders to quite an effect. Every bit of content push or product/service description there should be a sign-up box – “like this, get more by signing up here.”

Newsletter sign up form on Facebook…

OK, you have a Facebook – great. You have 5,000 fans – great. Do you have a tab to sign up for a newsletter? Is it screaming out at the top of the page. Hey you like us, so why not sign-up and hear more of what you like? Again I’m amazed at how many Facebook pages don’t include a sign-up form. It’s so easy to do and places data acquisition outside of your known universe. Use an HTML app, like StaticHTML to create a tab on your Facebook page. Copy and paste your sign-up form into the tab. Easy. You can dress it up and add an image to the tab to make it stand out etc. Point people to your signup. And here comes the easy bit – send people to your sign-up page. Again when the chance arises link to it. Every article, every product – want to know more, sign-up here. It’s about using every possible opportunity to grab engaged visitors and convert them into subscribers.

Incentivise sign-ups with offers, information or competitions…

It’s an Indian gift maybe, but it works. Sign-up today and get entered into our prize draw, or if you are offering white papers, e-books and resources, point people to a sign-up form in order to download them. Of course you have to make it known that these are available for subscribers, but interested parties are normally happy to engage and communicate so give them the opportunity.

Preference Centres…

And now for the big one – Preference Centres. It may seem like pointing out ways to easily unsubscribe is a negative, allowing your recipients to drop-out like flies is a stupid thing to do. However this is not the case.

1. If customers and subscribers aren’t interested in what you have to say, there is no reason to have them anyway. They aren’t opening or reading anything you send.
2. If they are only interested in some of the services/articles you offer, then sending them everything is pointless as they have to find the one point of relevance amongst the areas of non-interest. This again leads to poor engagement rates.

A preference centre allows subscribers to choose what they want to receive, by opting in to different mailing lists or updating their data records with profiling information that allows you to send specific, relevant content to the individuals – a key strategy for effective email marketing. In fact in most cases, a good and easy to use preference centre will reduce the unsubscribe rates as it allows subscribers to choose to receive only the content they are interested in and therefore have more reason to subscribe, open, read and engage with your emails and beyond. Preference centres are easy to setup and surprisingly effective so take a look at your unsubscribe link and change it to ‘manage your subscription’ today.

Bespoke sign-up landing page for offers, promos and competitions…

Another great acquisition strategy and a way to increase sign-ups is to have a bespoke landing page for promotions that asks people to sign-up to hear more, or promotes your incredible newsletters in a way that encourages sign-ups. Landing pages can contain any number of design elements and forms, so you can go to town here and check the performance via your sign-up rates against your page drop-outs. The conversion tool in an analytics program such as Google Analytics will help here. You can also learn more about our landing page tool here.

QR Code to sign up page…

Ever thought about QR codes? They can point to any page you want so why not a sign-up page? I’d be interested to know of anyone doing this and the success level of this practice, but it could be a great way to provide a quick and simple process. Scan the code, enter your email and you’re a subscriber. Obviously you have to point out what the subscription is, but it’s a quick process and potentially quirky enough to engage.

Link to newlsetter on everyday email traffic…

One of things we have done with some success is to include a newsletter sign-up link on our everyday emails. We send hundreds of emails a day to all kinds of people, so why not maximise on this opportunity. Every one we speak to could be a potential subscriber, so for a newlsetter containing practical advice or great offers, it’s a great way to get in front of a lot of people. Imagine having an acquisition strategy that every member of staff was effectively promoting and participating in every hour of every day!

Exhibition sign-ups…

Its not difficult to have a sign-up form on an iPad at your exhibition stand. People are more likely to do it if they are in front of you asking for information, so what a great opportunity to acquire data and subscribers. They simply enter their details and are put straight into the list, and you need nothing more than a tablet open on your web sign-up form.

Making sales calls?

OK, last one I promise. If you have a sales team making or receiving calls, successful or not with the sale, it’s easy to add to the end of the conversation something like.. “By the way, one of things I have been asked to do is to get people to sign up to our newsletter. Would that be OK with you?” Then describe the content and explain about an easy unsubscribe process and bingo.

There is no magic trick for acquiring data to boost your campaigns, and real money is spent on visibility and optimisation to get in front of people and gain web traffic, however not maximising on simple acquisition opportunities is hugely derogatory to these efforts, and in fairness could be the most cost-effective promotional activity available – even before you start paying for SEO.

Have a quick look at what you’re doing to maximise acquisition opportunities and if you need any help or advice give us a call on 020 8736 0036 and we’d be only too happy to help.