Email Marketing – Building an Email List

Why is email marketing so popular? Depending on how you do it, email marketing can be inexpensive. Email marketing messages can be highly customized, making for a better response rate. And with over two–thirds of North Americans online, an effective email marketing campaign keeps your name relevant and familiar to them.

Email marketing is often confused with spam, but there is a clear distinction between the two. Email marketing is done with the permission of the recipients. Spam is not. If you conduct an email marketing campaign without the permission of the people you are sending to, your campaign will be interpreted as spam and will not succeed. If you have buy–in from your audience, your campaign will stand a much greater chance of success.

To avoid the "spam" label, you must create an e–mail list of your own. Do not buy or rent a list of strangers. It takes time, but by building your own list of e–mail contacts, your email marketing campaign will begin from a position of strength – the people you send mail to will have met you or proactively sought out contact with your business, making them more likely to respond to your messages. Remember that marketing is all about quality of leads, not quantity.

Every contact you make represents potential for building an e–mail marketing list. Before learning how to add names to your list, here are a couple of tips on creating the right environment for it.

• Have a clear privacy policy. Ensure people that you will not sell or exchange their email addresses. Let them know how, why, and how often you will be using their email address.
• Go slow. Don’t ask for too much personal information too fast. Start with a name and email address. You can gain further insight into your customers as your email marketing campaign progresses.

Adding Addresses to your Email Marketing Database

Use your Web site and other promotional materials to collect e–mail addresses:

1. Contests – Offer a free giveaway in exchange for an email address.
2. Discounts – Provide a discount on your products or services if people sign up for your email newsletter or respond to a form on your Web site.
3. Free downloads – If applicable to your business, collect email addresses by offering free downloads.
4. Polls – People love to give their opinion. Create a poll on your Web site to get responses from interested prospects.
5. Subscriber registration – Appeal to people to join your newsletter for tips, advice or other great content.
6. Collect business cards – For retailers with a storefront, place a bowl at the front of your store and offer a draw for a prize. You’re sure to collect a lot of business cards and potential contacts.

You can also gain a great number of email addresses from networking events and tradeshows, but remember that people exchange business cards as a courtesy. They do not necessarily want to be a target in your email marketing campaign. If you leave one of these events with a pile of cards, you can attempt an email and gauge the response. If the person welcomes your message, take that as a sign to continue contact. If not, do not alienate the person with continued, unwanted contact.

In all efforts, ensure that people are aware their addresses will be kept for future contact and point them to your privacy policy. Remember that email marketing should not be forced – always offer people a way to stop receiving your emails.