Email marketing is quickly becoming one of the most popular forms of digital marketing, but what are you doing to ensure you’ve got a receptive list of potential customers ready to receive your next send out?
While the emails you send play a huge part in keeping those names on your lists, it’s also important to ensure you’re doing enough to earn the sign ups!
What are you doing to grow your list?
Where is your sign-up field situated? For best possible visibility, somewhere out of the footer would be the ideal. This could be under the homepage banner, just above the footer or even in the main header itself.
It's a little intrusive, but if you want to guarantee that your customers see your newsletter, a pop up is the way to go. We don't recommend these are always active, but they are useful for when running promotions to engage with new subscribers. Remember: offering a sign-up sweetener could sway new visitors to join.
But it doesn't stop there! Use your website as your main tool in driving more customers to sign up by offering them variety. Separating out your mailing list will make your marketing more targeted than ever.
By showing new lists to your customers, it gives them the opportunity to hear from you relating to specific departments/topics, ones they might have a keen interest in. This is a fantastic way to get to know your customers. Lack of choice could have been what’s stopped them from signing so far.
Are you giving customers any insight into what they can expect from your marketing? A sign-up form alone will suffice, but why not drop in some additional information to this page about the kind of campaigns you run and how often they can expect to hear from you. With it being harder for consumers to connect with you now, it’s important to give them extra incentive.
Finally, does your mailing list page have reCAPTCHA? These are often added to prevent fake sign ups and if your sign-up page doesn’t have a reCAPTCHA form, you might find you're emailing robots!
Incentivisation
So you're already doing all of that? No problem! There are several low cost, simple solutions to growing your list.
Offer discounts to people that sign up - Our powerful system gives you the tools to create a variety of offers, from fixed price and percentage discounts to multi buy savings. They can easily be linked to products, categories, brands or customers! Include the promo code in your newsletter sign up to encourage newcomers.
Run competitions! Zone1 has a competitions feature and It works exactly as you would expect. It takes the customer to a page where they can enter a contest with the prospect of winning a prize. When completed, a customer’s entry is sent to the enquiry email recipient and you get a new sign up! You can promote your competitions with direct links included in news items on the site or by sending newsletters.
So, you’ve built a strong list, now what?
With new personal data laws coming into play as of May 25th 2018, it’s crucial that your website is compliant with the new requirements. It’s now essential that you can prove each person on your mailing list has actively opted to be there, be that from last week or last year. This is where third party email marketing software such as MailChimp can make this easy to manage with double opt in emails and pop up forms, but if you’re not familiar with this platform, simply adjusting the wording on your sing-up page could make all the difference too.
- Have you thought about whether the opt in box is pre-ticked on your website?
- Have you stressed the importance of customers updating their preferences and made it clear how they can unsubscribe should they wish too?
- Is your privacy policy up to date?
These are all minor changes to make, which could help you to avoid quite major fines.
If you’re still feeling uneasy about the compliance laws, get in touch.
We are currently offering GDPR audit’s to ensure you are comfortable with these changes ahead of May 25th and our team would be happy to run through what is included as a part of this at any time.