Tips to Build Your Email Address
Database
WHY BUILD YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS DATABASE?
Gaining your customers' email addresses will:
Provide an additional channel for reaching your customers
Increase the ROI of your marketing investments
Significantly reduce your customer acquisition and marketing costs
Allow you to easily measure the impact of your marketing campaigns
Increase your customer participation and retention rates
With ongoing postal and telemarketing pressures impacting marketing
budgets for many organizations this year, email marketing could become the
"silver lining " for many marketers. But how do you create a successful
email marketing campaign if you do not have a substantial email database?
That question may be one of the largest Internet related challenges facing
companies this year.
Research shows that the majority of organizations have email addresses
for less than 10% of their postal files. So how do you level the playing
field and start to add quality permission - based email addresses to your
database?
Here are some tips that you can use to cost effectively build your
email address database and increase your customer participation and
retention rates:
START TO ASK FOR IT!
Every communication or touch point with a customer should start or end
with a request for an email address. By utilizing the four points below,
you should be able to add email addresses for 5% to 10% of your postal
file over the course of one year.
1. Direct Mail Collection
Think about how much time and money you spent for copy and design on
your last new direct mail piece. Most companies have started to ask their
customers for their email address information within these mailings. This
is a great step forward. However, companies need to look at one major
improvement if they want to increase their email address collection
rates.
To date, most requests for email address information have been pushed,
shoved or jammed into whatever white space remains. It should be no
surprise that the success rate has been less than stellar.
To improve on these efforts, you need to provide your members with a
reason to release their email addresses to you. E-newsletters, purchase
confirmations, petitions, and special discounts and offers are but a few
of the benefits that will encourage your members to come on board.
2. Web Page Collection
Many companies have an email address collection function in place via
the web. To improve your sign-up rates, add text below the email request
box that informs your visitors of the special email benefits that they
will receive (i.e. e-newsletters, purchase confirmations, delivery
updates, etc.) upon registering. You can also utilize a pop-up link to
inform users of these special benefits.
Finally, your email address request function should be available on
your home page. Don't make your users go and look for it. Every click
away from your home page reduces the chances of your users taking an
action and providing you with their email address information.
3. Existing Email Database Collection
Don't forget to ask the members of your existing customer base for
email addresses of their friends, family and associates. Viral marketing
is a powerful tool to use and is extremely cost effective! You could ask
them either to provide you with additional addresses or simply to pass on
your newsletter, email specific offers, or other information to others
they feel have similar interests.
4. Telemarketing Collection
Don't assume that your telemarketing agents are asking for email
addresses from potential customers. Ensure that your agents have an
updated script, which outlines the previously described benefits to
potential customers of providing their email addresses.
The suggestions above are a great start! Yet they really should be
viewed as a secondary plan for building your email database. To
exponentially and expeditiously grow your email database, please read on!
EMAIL APPENDING
Utilizing an email appending service enables you to add email addresses
for up to 25% of your postal file, all within 3-4 weeks.
Email Appending - is the process of adding an individual's email
address to that individual's postal record in side your existing
database. This is accomplished by matching the postal database against a
third party, permission based database of postal and email address
information.
Best Practices - Email Appending is not a prospecting tool. The DMA
(Direct Marketing Association) and its interactive arm AIM (Association of
Interactive Marketing) have guidelines in place that dictate that email
appending only be used to append email addresses to your existing opt-in
postal record house file.
The Process - Your opt-in postal file is securely transferred to an
email appending provider, who will do an initial gross email address match
of your file against its opt-in database of postal and email address
records. Your appending provider will then send these matches a
permission-based message prepared by you. All bounces and opt-out
requests will be removed from the list. At that point a valid
permission-based email address file of your customers will be delivered
back to you.
Cost - Less than the price of a postal stamp!
IN SUMMARY
The first step of any successful email marketing effort is to build a
permission-based email address list of your customers. The simplest,
quickest and most cost-effective way to do this is through email
appending, which will enable you to add email addresses for up to 25% of
your postal file. Secondary efforts of email address collection via
focused direct mail, web, viral and telemarketing practices are also
important and will enable you to add email addresses for an additional 5%
to 10% of your base on an annual basis.
Best of luck in building your email address database. As many
companies have already learned, the ROI and cost savings to be achieved
will far exceed your expectations.
Bill Kaplan
CEO
FreshAddress, Inc.
FreshAddress, Inc., The Email Address ExpertsTM, provides a
comprehensive suite of industry leading database and email deliverability
services to help companies increase their e-commerce revenues. For more
information on how we can help "Build and Update" your email list, visit
http://freshaddress.com/biz or email
biz@freshaddress.com.