2018 August 15 Archive - EXEIdeas – Let's Your Mind Rock

In business, building an email list is a much talked about topic because there’s money there, but it’s not always spelt out clearly just why that is believed to be the case. After all, time is required to store email addresses and send out emails, to prepare each email message, and the content that is contained inside them. As such, there is a cost to the business with each email sent out. Therefore, it must provide a reasonable return on investment to make it worthwhile.Here are a few of the very real benefits to building a mailing list for your business.Gathering Contact Details For Website Visitors Who Opt-In:When people visit your website, you don’t usually know who they are. They come, they look around and they leave. You can know a few things about most of them through analytics data that provides information on their computing device, the country they’re (supposedly) surfing the web from, the page or post they arrived on, their time on site, and other useful metrics. However, it doesn’t tell you who they are.When a website visitor may decide to opt-in to an email newsletter and confirm they’re okay with receiving future ongoing messages (part of GDPR), at least their email address is now known. You may not know their full name yet, but it’s a good start! Using email list building, you can gather information on some of your website visitors and begin building a business relationship with them.Providing Marketing Messages Separate To What Is Shown On The Site:While the content on your site might be focused around providing information rather than trying to sell products or services, the emails sent to the people on your mailing list can be more direct. There are several advantages to this:By providing more of an information resource and less sell-sell-sell, website visitors are not put off when first visiting the home page.Other websites are more likely to link back to quality, non-commercially focused information than overly promotional online copy.More Persistently Marketed, Where Appropriate:You have the option of how often to send emails to your audience. The language can be more sales-oriented, if you wish. It’s up to you to decide how to approach the audience when they’re away from the website.Usually, sending out a weekly email with useful content and every 3rd or 4th week providing something more sales oriented doesn’t ruffle too many feathers. When you push too persistently with a sales agenda, this tips the balance to the side where some readers will feel they’re not being helped but sold to. This causes a higher unsubscribe rate. Therefore, it’s a balance that needs to be played around with to get the most revenue vs losing the fewest subscribers as you push your marketing agenda.Keep The Brand In The Mind Of The Customer:There are so many brands trying to get in front of the customer that anything you can do to stay in their mind’s eye is worth doing. Whether they’ve only previously visited your website once or visit several times a month, it’s never a bad idea to get your business brand stuck in the back of their mind. This way, when they learn to associate the type of product or service with your brand, you’re more likely to be the one they’ll reach out to when they need something in that category. When you’ve not become a memorable brand to them, they won’t think of the brand and will run to Google to find a different solution.Drive Traffic Back To The Website Without Google’s Help:Organic search traffic from Google is great to have, but it’s not ideal to rely on it. Google releases algorithm updates regularly now and positions for different search terms shuffle around erratically.When you have the email addresses of the people who are the most interested, then you can contact them when you’ve released a new blog post, have a discount sale coming up, or a new product release or a service offering.When you don’t have their email address, you cannot contact them at all! You’re reliant on them happening to re-visit your website during the time of the sale or when the new product is being launched, which is unlikely.Segment The List To Target Likely Customers More Specifically:Depending on what opt-in the site visitor used to add their email address, a different lead magnet (free eBook or other benefit of agreeing to receive a regular email newsletter) can be sent. They can also have a label or tag attached to them or get placed into a separate mailing list.If your site covers four different topics, you can note which part of the site they were on when they opted in. This is a good indicator of the types of content they’ll respond best to in an email. You can customise each email to tailor different versions for each mini-list which is likely to get a higher open rate.Email list building is an excellent tool to have in the box. It allows a greater degree of contact with some of the visitors to the site. This can lead to repeat site visits, the ability to offer special deals only to email subscribers and to promote new products directly to the people who’ve previously shown an interest.