How do you keep feeding the email list machine?

Here are some simple tips to feed the email list machine:

No better time to ask for someone's email address is at point of sale... They will if you incent them with promises of future discounts...

Encourage your Twitter followers and Facebook fans to subscribe...

Ask your customers to recruit their friends... most will but give it a kick with an offer or incentive of a gift or other reward...

Inactive Subscribers.... Mine That Gold!

Every email marketer has a portion of their list go inactive. Problem is you may never know what really happened to them. Did they sign up got what they wanted and then never unsubscribed? This happens all too frequently... How do you deal effectively with inactives?

Try some of these out....

Conduct a reactivation campaign - Reach out to your inactives with a special incentive for opting onto the list again.

Make contact via Social Networks - If you get a connection in a social setting... they will most likely pay more attention the next time they get an email from you.

Attempt offline communication - If you an address or phone number... Reach out and connect and verify email address.. Most times they changed it and didn’t bother to let you know.

Reduce frequency - Don’t delete from your list but market to them less frequently.

Triggered Emails is core to 1 to 1 Marketing...

Vidi Emi has has been setting up triggered message automation for many of our customers for years now.

Triggered Messages fall into 3 categories.

Time Based – Where someone comes to the site and that starts the clock that sends the emails out upon a day plus x factor.

Behavior Based – Someone visits your site and puts something in a shopping basket and abandons it.... Armed with that info you could send an email featuring that product.

Transaction Based – When a customer purchases something you can send a email with a special offer if they come back and review the product.

Hard part is taking the first step…. You won’t regret it!

Simple ways to increase brand loyalty! (and increase sales)

Get your customers to update their profile information for something in return. Nothing gets shoppers to want to buy like the word "FREE" as in Free Shipping or a percentage off their next purchase. All this new valuable info can be used to focus your marketing efforts down the line.

Bookmarks! Yes by allowing your customers to bookmark items gives your customers a valuable tool for future reference but also allows you the marketer to know what is of interest and that is strong marketing info that can't be beat!

Knowing and marketing to a bucket can make all the difference!

Every customer falls into some kind of bucket.... Knowing your audience and focusing on that segment will pay huge dividends....

What are the segments you want to focus on?

Acquisition  /  Conversion   / Growth  / Retention  / Re-Activate

Acquisition  - POS Capture / Web Capture
Convert - Nurture / Abandon
Grow - Up-Sell
Retain - Cross-Sell
Re-Activate - Re-Engage / Win Back

12 Days of Holiday Email Tips #12

Be relevant.  Leverage available demographic and/or click-through data to send messages that your customers will want to receive.

SEGMENTATION is key! You dont want to send snowboarding product emails to people who never go to that part of your website... Send snowboarding specials to snowboarders and send golfing specials to golfers. You will get Higher ROI on each campaign and less opt-outs.....

12 Days of Holiday Email Tips #11

Test!  If you have an important campaign ahead, experiment with different subject line approaches using smaller test groups then send the winner to the rest of the list.

Smart marketers test all the time........ a little work upfront pays off every time!