Ten Tips for Building Your Email Database Organically

September 12th 2013 | By Sarah McInerney

Relying on purchased lists to build an email database is increasingly becoming a bad idea. No one volunteers to add their email addresses to a list to be purchased, so inevitably these lists often contain bad email addresses that are incorrect or defunct.

As purchased lists contain email addresses from people that haven’t opted into receiving your emails, this means they don’t want to hear from you and you instantly create a bad impression by contacting them without being invited.

Purchased lists have a low quality rate and so using them will have a negative effect on your bounce, unsubscribe, spam and delivery rates which will all hurt your email reputation and future deliverability.

Building an opt-in database takes time and effort, but the rewards will be worth it as you should experience better KPIs like higher response and conversion rates at a lower cost.

10 Ways to Build Your Email List:

1. Make your email sign-up form visible from every page on your website. Use either the form or a logo for people to click through to a dedicated page where web visitors can sign up. Make sure that it’s in a prominent spot above the fold.
2. Offer key benefits for signing up to your emails, such as exclusive content or a regular offers.
3. Offer an incentive for signing up to your emails. This could range from a discount, an e-book or 30 minutes of free consultation, depending on the nature of your business.
4. Make the email sign-up form easy and compelling to use.  Don’t request information that isn’t necessary as a long sign-up form requesting too many details will put people off.
5. Include testimonials on your sign-up page so that new users will feel secure.
6. Drive more traffic to your website to encourage more people to sign up for emails. This can be done in several ways such as by creating regular blog content or through PPC.
7. Promote the email sign-up page on your social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.
8. Create a Thank You Page and a Welcome Email. Once people have signed up to receive your emails, send them to a thank you page and / or send them a welcome email that either reminds them of what they will be getting or showing them something relevant and humorous. Include social sharing buttons on this page so that people can easily share with their friends.
9. Add a link and call to action within your email signature so that your outgoing emails are directly promoting the benefits of signing up.
10. Vary the type of emails you send. If every email is a sales pitch, you will lose contacts quickly. Vary the content by promoting trends, talking about industry news, referring back to your blog, etc.

Building an organic email database where contacts are happy to hear from you is essential in driving business, building relationships and converting sales. Using a purchased list can be detrimental as it creates bad feeling and seriously damages key KPIs.

Contact us if you need help with any aspect of email marketing, including growing your email database.