Growing Your Email List

Your email address list is your precious crucible, to be kept in a velvet‐lined case, locked in a secure vault, behind the best security with lasers and private armies to defend it. Too far? Okay, then know this: the best email address lists are grown organically, from infancy to maturity, and are maintained with love and compassion. They are full of data that enable the email marketer to personalize each message and segment each send. And they are indeed protected from bad addresses that can infect your reputation.

If this sounds like a lot of work, it is—much like raising a child. And it’s rewarding.

Building a New Email Marketing List

The new marketing entity must build a list from scratch, one opt‐in at a time. Generally accepted practices to invite prospects to get on your email list include the following:

Offer valuable content: whitepapers, newsletters, guides, ebooks, and so on.
Offer discounts and deals.
Offer loyalty programs.
Offer exclusive notifications.
Use social media to promote your content.
Include an invitation in your email signature.
Include an invitation on your contact page.

Some brands use scroll popups or exit popups to put email subscription offers in front of visitors. Be careful with these because they can degrade your users’ experience and affect their perception of your brand.

When it comes to enticing new subscribers, it isn’t hard to get into the mindset of the visitors. Most are evaluating your reputation and your offer, trying to decide as quickly as possible, “Why should I give you access to my inbox?”

Attracting or Repelling Subscribers

It helps to imagine that everyone has a price for access to their inbox. Your job as an email marketer is to earn that access by making offers so attractive that your prospects can’t help but sign up, eagerly anticipating your next message. This is hard to do for most marketers and competition is everywhere. Do you want newsletter signups? Then share exactly what subscribers can expect in terms of content and frequency. Which message is more likely to earn signups?

“Sign up for our newsletter about investing,”

“Get exclusive stock tips from Wall Street giants who average 30 percent year after year.”

Testing is the surest way to know, but the emphasis on believable benefits is a good starting point. The barrier grows as reader’s inboxes fill up to capacity, so your offer has to be irresistible and easy to accept.

The Data You Collect

Each additional field adds value to your list and future messages by enabling personalization and segmentation. That’s a good thing, right? Well, yes it is, but not at the cost of conversions.

The more data you request on your forms, the higher the barrier to subscribers and the more likely it is your visitor will leave without completing the subscription form.

The less data you request on your forms, the higher the likely conversion rate. The highest converting forms simply ask for one thing—the email address. I like to also ask for the first name, which is a great start to personalizing the messages.

Where’s the balance? Well, the more attractive the offer, the more your audience will tolerate additional fields and questions. Offer a $1,200 analyst report as a free download, and you might be able to ask for more than a company name.

Ascertaining the balance takes a lot of work and testing.

Here’s a workaround solution: collect more data on subsequent interactions. For example, when your subscriber uses the same email address to purchase, you can add the collected data to the subscriber record. When the customer returns to download a whitepaper, you could offer to text updates or additional chapters via SMS to a valid phone number. Modern marketing automation tools can supplement your email list with implicit and explicit data collection.

Which brings us to two data categories that you’ll need to understand: Implicit and explicit data.

Implicit data are data derived from visitor behavior and available data streams, but not explicitly offered by a visitor. Examples include geo‐location as associated with IP address, pages visited, referring source, and time of each interaction. For example, if your subscriber has visited your water filtration product page multiple times, this can indicate interest in water filters. If your subscriber clicked on a link in your email content related to water filtration, this suggests or further confirms this interest. Some email and marketing automation systems track and correlate this data, adding it to records in your email list.
Explicit data are information that is knowingly provided by your visitor/subscriber, usually via form fields on subsequent interactions. This can also include notes and data entered by representatives of your company who interact live with the customer. For example, customer support, customer service, or sales reps can enter data in a CRM system in a structured format (e.g., “The customer is interested in water filtration systems,” or “The customer has received a quote.”). You may choose to mail water filtration content to the former and suppress emails to the latter, at least until a record in CRM indicates that the transaction is closed. Some email and marketing automation systems collect or correlate this data, adding it to records in your email list.

Knowing what types of data are available will help you plan your campaigns for success. Start with what data you can collect without repelling your prospects, and as you build value and trust, use that data responsibly to enhance the experience and conversation.

Personalization

When sorting through the waves of incoming emails, your recipient’s eyes naturally scan for something that qualifies an email for attention. One signal is that “the sender knows me.” The more signals we can put in that are specific and unique to the recipient, the stronger the “personalization” of the email is.

Email personalization is the process of using the data that you have to tailor message content to be unique and personal for each recipient. Personalization, when done well, builds trust and can improve the relationship with the recipient. At minimum it can show that you care enough to provide individualized experiences in your email campaign. The benefits of personalized campaigns include higher response rates, open rates, click rates, and retention (lower unsubscribe rates). Personalization can help create a more conversational tone as well.

Here’s an example message that some of you might have seen already; it uses personalization in the subject and on every line.

Subject: OMCA Certification dates for Nikola
Hi Nikola, About two months ago, you chose May 13 as your goal date for your OMCA.
That’s coming up soon, but it seems you haven’t registered for your OMCA exam yet—an important step.
Given that, I thought you’d like this stat:
Your LinkedIn OMCA course has a 92 percent pass rate when candidates sit for the exam within 30 days of course completion.
So… the sooner you take the exam after finishing the course, the higher the likelihood of your passing score.
This is the perfect time to register, get it on the calendar, and create some urgency to completing your OMCA goal.
And when you finish the registration, let me know and I’ll provide a free practice assessment voucher so you can move toward your certification with even more confidence.
—Rachel and the OMCP Team

This message content, which continues to be tested over the years, generates a 62 percent response rate at the time of this writing. The prior nonpersonalized messages generated less than a 5 percent response rate. Now, the data in the system behind this email are comprehensive. Each line is dynamically changed based on the recipient’s prior behavior and our records of what has already been sent to the recipient. For example, this message won’t be sent if the candidate has registered for an exam or received any other email from us in the past 24 hours. That’s a 1,200 percent (12 times) increase in response rate. Personalization pays off.

Personalization can include what you know about the recipient. Here are just a few of hundreds of possibilities:

First name
Time of signup
Last visit to the website
Pages visited on the website
Geographical region via GEO‐IP or provided address
Interests derived from past interactions (product, service, delivery preferences, and so on)
When your company last sent the recipient an email
When the recipient last opened or responded to an email
Whether the recipient has purchased a product/service
Plans as captured in CRM by sales representatives
Data from customer service interactions
Conditional phrases or words based on logic (e.g., liquid)
Many more

If you are just starting your email campaigns and data management, you can start small. The recipient’s first name is a good start. Knowing what’s possible for personalization helps you plan your data collection for the future.

Too Much Personalization

Avoid personalization that does not align with the voice of your company or that adds no value to the message. While writing this, I received a soliciting email selling website development services; it asked about the weather here in Santa Cruz, California, stating that it was cloudy and (52° F). That’s clever, but could be considered disingenuous since it is unrelated to the message. So it is a better practice to ensure that the personalization that you do use is relevant to the message and the user.

Segmentation

Email segmentation achieves a similar goal through a different process. Email segmentation controls delivery or inclusion of content in email messages based on data that you have collected. The purpose of segmentation is to ensure that only relevant messages are sent to each recipient on our list. The benefits of segmentation in campaigns include higher response rates, open rates, and click rates as well as higher retention (lower unsubscribe rates).

Here are just a few of many ways to segment your email list.

Past purchase history, e.g., toys for a 3‐year‐old
Activity on your website, e.g. content interest or site search history
Responses to past emails, e.g., opens or clicks
Stage of the sales funnel, e.g., Aware, Interested, In Evaluation, at Decision, as set in CRM
Time zones or geolocation, e.g., likely to be home from work
Inactivity, e.g., three months of no activity
Device and email client, e.g., Gmail on a Mac

Can you think of how each message would be so much more relevant and effective when only the most qualified people are receiving them?

Your list management system, be it CRM, an ESP, or even a spreadsheet for those starting out, can have data fields associated with each email address. These data fields are also used for personalization. The word “segment” can bring up images of cutting up a list. But the actual application of segmentation is usually additive. When you send a message about winter clothing, for example, you would add those addresses you know are from colder regions and have shown interest in jackets and hats. Some might exclude addresses that are from warmer regions. But instead of excluding addresses in warmer regions, some email tools can customize the email content specifically for those recipients who meet specific criteria. For example, recipients known to be interested in jackets and hats, but are from a warmer region, might get a paragraph about traveling to the ski slopes based on this data.

These types of personalization and segmentation conditions can become overwhelming very quickly. So if you’re feeling lucky to craft just one newsletter a day before the deadline, these techniques may have to get designed into future campaigns. At minimum, being aware of them can alert you to the possibilities and can define your list architecture and data collection systems earlier in your process.