In Top Strategies To Use E-mail Marketing for Lead Generation part 1, We discussed how you can choose a good e-mail service provider, we also talked about how to be compliant with industry regulations and why you should avoid using a purchased list and a few ways in which we can build a list, moving ahead let’s see how you can improve on your e-mail marketing lead generation efforts.
List Building Continued…
In our previous post we discussed how using 3rd Party Newsletter can help you, there are a few more reasons why you should try and develop relationships with Newsletter partners
1.It increases the chance that the company is a good steward of their list
By not giving you the list but sending on your behalf, they control the frequency of messaging, the type of messaging, and can (and should) have a central opt-out for people to remove themselves from all potential 3rd parties.
2.It protects your reputation
They’ll send as themselves on your behalf. That way, the email is coming from a familiar domain/name, they know why they’re getting it, and it still carries your brand. Also, if someone reports it as spam, etc. it’s on your vendor/partner to address those concerns.
3.High chances of being compliant
This method is much more compliant across the board with the various anti-spam laws (I don’t know the regulations associated with your audience, but it’s very important to follow best practices to be safe).
E-mail Deliverability
So, you are ready with your list now, you want to generate new leads, but for your e-mail marketing efforts to work towards converting the earlier acquired prospects into a lead, you will need to take care of one important matrix and that is INBOX DELIVERABILITY.
We are in 2015, where at least 5% of all email never reaches the inbox. This means no matter how much you try, you won’t be able to reach 5% of your list. Still, there are best practices that you can follow to comply with most of the ISP requirements and don’t get bounced off.
I suggest, you clean-up your list, checkout for any SPAM TRAP email addresses on your list, remove any invalid e-mails on your lists. If you are using an SMTP server I suggest you take care of DKIM and SPF authentications. Here is a great link from Google which should help tackle and address deliverability to Gmail through their bulk e-mail sending guidelines document, which also helps your deliverability across major ISPs (Internet Service Provider). Gmail’s bulk senders guide. You will need to closely monitor your bounce rates both hard and soft and ensure you identify and make amendments to your lists from this data.
Ok, so here were some ways in which you can build your e-mail marketing list using e-mail marketing itself, for more optimized list building results, I suggest that you try to create an integrated list building approach utilizing all communication channels. Example, if you talk to your customers on phone, just ask them for their e-mail, do webinars through an e-mail gated form, embed an opt-in link in your YouTube video are a few of these approaches.
We will have list building taken up in detail in another post, where we discuss how we can build a list for the best response. In the end I would also like to conclude that you should focus on knowing your audience and adding value to their business and lives and I am sure you will have a positive response most of the times.
Best of Luck!
