Building
your Mailing List
Mailing
lists for use in your email marketing campaigns are excellent ways
to keep in touch with your customers and promote your company and
your products both to them and potential new customers, whether
you are selling to other businesses (B2B) or to individual customers
(B2C).
While
you can buy mailing lists from 3rd parties, this can become expensive.
Perhaps more importantly, with the ever increasing amount of SPAM
in all our mailboxes, you need to be very certain that the list
you are buying is one which has been cleaned, vetted and built using
double opt-in methods. Although the email laws are not yet as stringent
in the United Kingdom as they are in the United States, we are moving
in the same direction. In any case, quite apart from any legal issues
which you will want to avoid at all cost, there is the added (and
perhaps more costly) damage to your company's reputation.
The
best way to avoid any issues of this sort is to build your own email
list and then use it as a central part of your emarketing activity.
This should not only be done on-line but should form part an essential
part of any marketing activity where there is contact with potential
customers.
As you
start to set up and build your lists, a key element is to decide
right at the start what information you require for future campaigns
and consequently what you are going to collect. This will differ
from company to company and from one business sector to another.
You also need to be clear that you have clear opt-in agreement from
the individual (ideally double opt-in) before adding them to the
list and that each of your "collection points" has this
element clearly built in.
Some
of the possible "collection points" which should be considered
from the outset are:
- subscription
form on the website (online method)
- viral
marketing (online method)
- 3rd
party newsletters or websites (online method)
- trade
shows (offline method)
- sales
visit (offline method)
- order
forms (offline method)
There
are, however, many others which can help to quickly build up a strong
email list which will have a powerful effect on both ongoing sales
activities and customer retention.
If you
are uncertain about how to go about building a strong and successful
email list and would like to ensure you start correctly, then call
Rosetta Alba and we will guide you through the process and point
you in the right direction as well as look at how to use the information
and contacts that you have gathered.
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Rosetta Alba Services Limited 2003 - 05