marketing, web development, graphic design blog

In previous posts we’ve discussed how to write winning email newsletters. However, If you’ve just started out in business or only recently started capturing email addresses through sign up forms etc then you probably don't have a big list to send your email marketing campaigns or email newsletters to. So what do you do?

Here are some inspirational ideas to grow your opt-in email marketing list:

•    Place your email newsletter signup form on your home page. Or if this doesn’t fit with the look and feel of your design then have a visual cue, or noticeable link to take users directly to the signup form page.

•    Link to your signup form from every page of your website (you might even add a link to your footer or side navigation).

•    Place a link to your email signup form in your email signature (ask everyone in your company to do the same).

•    Offer free giveaways to one lucky subscriber (it can be an exclusive promotional discount or a limited edition offer of some sort).

•    Post free whitepapers or helpful articles on your site. They'll get downloaded and hopefully spread around the web if you offer them for free and with no registration. Inside your whitepaper you could place your add or promotion of your newsletter and the benefits of signing up (see above).

•    Send out personal, one-to-one emails to all your clients who haven’t already opted-in and ask them to please sign up to your newsletter.

•    In your "Contact Us" form on your website, add a checkbox to "signup to our newsletter"

• Already Have a List of Customers?

  What if you already have a customer list with email contact details of people that you've been doing business with for years? Just because they're your customers it doesn't necessarily mean that they want to start receiving your email newsletters. For example, if you run a small consultancy business with a about 25 clients who are very close to you. If you just assume they'd want your newsletter and you automatically subscribe them to your list without their permission, you're just going to irritate a lot of them (or worse, get yourself reported as a spammer). If you've got an online store you're probably sitting on a huge email list of customers who have purchased something from you in the past. But if they didn't check a box for email marketing, or if you haven't emailed them anything in years, you shouldn't start sending them emails out of the blue. So what can you do? If you have a list of customer email addresses and you want to start sending them email marketing, but you don't have their permission yet, ask them for permission by sending a "Re-Introduction Email." It can be extremely effective in re-energising dormant contacts and will certainly help you on your way to increasing your opt-in subscribers.

Tags: email marketing, email marketing campaigns, email newsletters

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.