In order to do any e-mail marketing we need to collect an e-mail list, and the rules on how we can collect data change from country to country. It is also not just a matter of following the rules, but really about following best practice in order to assure the quality of our lists and avoid annoying our target audience. Like many things in digital marketing, we tend to get distracted by volume when carrying out e-mail campaigns, and the question often asked after each campaign is ‘How many e-mails have we sent?’ and ‘How many people are on our lists?’. What we should really be focusing on is the quality of our lists and the actual results our campaigns get. We actively don’t want people on our list who don’t want our e-mails, otherwise we are just creating a negative touchpoint that will damage our digital branding.
I’m sure you can think of at least one company that keeps e-mailing you with irrelevant or overly sales-based content, and over time it creates a negative impression of that brand.
Best practice in regard to opt-in is to follow a ‘double opt-in’ approach that is, to allow someone to fill in a sign-up form (more on that below) and then send them an e-mail that they need to click on in order to confirm their opt-in. This might sound like a slightly laborious process but most ESPs will fully automate this process for you. Also, the fact that the user has filled in a form and bothered to click on a link achieves two things: 1) they have self-qualified by showing they are actively interested in what you offer, based on the fact that they have actually made some effort to sign up; and 2) this sign-up process gives you actual evidence they have signed up, otherwise anyone could take your e-mail address and sign you up for any e-mail list!
The first way is to have a website full of great content that is useful to your target audience. This will draw in search engine traffic and you can then offer access to even more content if they sign up to your e-mail list. This is an ongoing approach that should be present in all websites to allow interested parties to register their interest. It always bewilders me as to how many sites make it hard or even impossible to sign up for an e-mail newsletter.
The other, more direct approach is to use a pay per click (PPC) ad on a search engine or social media site to encourage sign-up. The basic process for collecting e-mail via PPC works like this:
Step 1 – target the ad according to where it will be shown. For a search engine it will be by keyword; for Facebook by interests, location, age and so on; and for LinkedIn it will generally be around location and job role.
Step 2 – create an ad that offers something useful for free on a relevant topic for the target audience. For example, if I’ve searched for ‘Digital Media strategy blog’ you could offer me a free e-book, podcast, report or similar piece of content.
Step 3 – when I land at your website I am presented with information on all the benefits of the offered content and then asked for an e-mail address in exchange for the content.
Not everyone is going to sign up, but those who do have qualified as being actively interested in the topic, and if you continue to e-mail them content on similar topics it will have a great positive impact on your digital branding.
I’m sure you can think of at least one company that keeps e-mailing you with irrelevant or overly sales-based content, and over time it creates a negative impression of that brand.
Best practice in regard to opt-in is to follow a ‘double opt-in’ approach that is, to allow someone to fill in a sign-up form (more on that below) and then send them an e-mail that they need to click on in order to confirm their opt-in. This might sound like a slightly laborious process but most ESPs will fully automate this process for you. Also, the fact that the user has filled in a form and bothered to click on a link achieves two things: 1) they have self-qualified by showing they are actively interested in what you offer, based on the fact that they have actually made some effort to sign up; and 2) this sign-up process gives you actual evidence they have signed up, otherwise anyone could take your e-mail address and sign you up for any e-mail list!
Sign-up forms
Rather than trying to collect huge amounts of data at the point of sign-up, which will be a barrier to getting opt-ins, I generally recommend that you keep the amount of information you ask for initially to a minimum. You then have the opportunity to prove the value of your e-mails and then ask for more information by using surveys, questionnaires or polls on an ongoing basis. You also need to consider the types of data you may want to collect, whether you will really use that data and if your ESP is capable of storing it and using it. You may also want to think about how you are going to move this data between your ESP and your CRM. The two key things that concern people when they are signing up to an e-mail list are: 1) what you are going to do with their data; and 2) how often you will e-mail them. Ideally, at this stage you will clarify both points with a statement along the lines of ‘We will never pass on your details to anybody else and we won’t e-mail you more than once a week’. You can also have a link through to your privacy policy that outlines clearly what you do with data, but in my experience very few people actually read these.Buying in data and collection tactics
It is possible to buy in lists – but my general advice is don’t! I should caveat that and say, if you can find a list on a niche group from something like an industry event or a controlled circulation magazine, you may have some success, but generally the results from bought-in lists are poor. Anyone on an e-mail list that is for sale is likely to be getting a lot of e-mail; also, it goes against our principle of focusing on data collected via double opt-in. There are plenty of other ways to collect e-mail data, and although building a list will take more time, the results should be very much better.The first way is to have a website full of great content that is useful to your target audience. This will draw in search engine traffic and you can then offer access to even more content if they sign up to your e-mail list. This is an ongoing approach that should be present in all websites to allow interested parties to register their interest. It always bewilders me as to how many sites make it hard or even impossible to sign up for an e-mail newsletter.
The other, more direct approach is to use a pay per click (PPC) ad on a search engine or social media site to encourage sign-up. The basic process for collecting e-mail via PPC works like this:
Step 1 – target the ad according to where it will be shown. For a search engine it will be by keyword; for Facebook by interests, location, age and so on; and for LinkedIn it will generally be around location and job role.
Step 2 – create an ad that offers something useful for free on a relevant topic for the target audience. For example, if I’ve searched for ‘Digital Media strategy blog’ you could offer me a free e-book, podcast, report or similar piece of content.
Step 3 – when I land at your website I am presented with information on all the benefits of the offered content and then asked for an e-mail address in exchange for the content.
Not everyone is going to sign up, but those who do have qualified as being actively interested in the topic, and if you continue to e-mail them content on similar topics it will have a great positive impact on your digital branding.
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