Tips to Build Your Email Address Database
by: Bill Kaplan
WHY BUILD YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS DATABASE?
Gaining your customers' email addresses will:
Provide an additional channel for reaching your customers
Increase the ROI of your marketing investments
Significantly reduce your customer acquisition and marketing
costs Allow you to easily measure the impact of your marketing
campaigns Increase your customer participation and retention
rates With ongoing postal and telemarketing pressures impacting
marketing budgets for many organizations this year, email
marketing could become the "silver lining " for many marketers.
But how do you create a successful email marketing campaign if
you do not have a substantial email database? That question may
be one of the largest Internet related challenges facing
companies this year.
Research shows that the majority of organizations have email
addresses for less than 10% of their postal files. So how do you
level the playing field and start to add quality permission -
based email addresses to your database?
Here are some tips that you can use to cost effectively build
your email address database and increase your customer
participation and retention rates:
START TO ASK FOR IT!
Every communication or touch point with a customer should start
or end with a request for an email address. By utilizing the
four points below, you should be able to add email addresses for
5% to 10% of your postal file over the course of one year.
1. Direct Mail Collection
Think about how much time and money you spent for copy and
design on your last new direct mail piece. Most companies have
started to ask their customers for their email address
information within these mailings. This is a great step forward.
However, companies need to look at one major improvement if they
want to increase their email address collection rates.
To date, most requests for email address information have been
pushed, shoved or jammed into whatever white space remains. It
should be no surprise that the success rate has been less than
stellar.
To improve on these efforts, you need to provide your members
with a reason to release their email addresses to you.
E-newsletters, purchase confirmations, petitions, and special
discounts and offers are but a few of the benefits that will
encourage your members to come on board.
2. Web Page Collection
Many companies have an email address collection function in
place via the web. To improve your sign-up rates, add text below
the email request box that informs your visitors of the special
email benefits that they will receive (i.e. e-newsletters,
purchase confirmations, delivery updates, etc.) upon
registering. You can also utilize a pop-up link to inform users
of these special benefits.
Finally, your email address request function should be available
on your home page. Don't make your users go and look for it.
Every click away from your home page reduces the chances of your
users taking an action and providing you with their email
address information.
3. Existing Email Database Collection
Don't forget to ask the members of your existing customer base
for email addresses of their friends, family and associates.
Viral marketing is a powerful tool to use and is extremely cost
effective! You could ask them either to provide you with
additional addresses or simply to pass on your newsletter, email
specific offers, or other information to others they feel have
similar interests.
4. Telemarketing Collection
Don't assume that your telemarketing agents are asking for email
addresses from potential customers. Ensure that your agents have
an updated script, which outlines the previously described
benefits to potential customers of providing their email
addresses.
The suggestions above are a great start! Yet they really should
be viewed as a secondary plan for building your email database.
To exponentially and expeditiously grow your email database,
please read on!
EMAIL APPENDING
Utilizing an email appending service enables you to add email
addresses for up to 25% of your postal file, all within 3-4
weeks.
Email Appending - is the process of adding an individual's email
address to that individual's postal record in side your existing
database. This is accomplished by matching the postal database
against a third party, permission based database of postal and
email address information.
Best Practices - Email Appending is not a prospecting tool. The
DMA (Direct Marketing Association) and its interactive arm AIM
(Association of Interactive Marketing) have guidelines in place
that dictate that email appending only be used to append email
addresses to your existing opt-in postal record house file.
The Process - Your opt-in postal file is securely transferred to
an email appending provider, who will do an initial gross email
address match of your file against its opt-in database of postal
and email address records. Your appending provider will then
send these matches a permission-based message prepared by you.
All bounces and opt-out requests will be removed from the list.
At that point a valid permission-based email address file of
your customers will be delivered back to you.
Cost - Less than the price of a postal stamp!
IN SUMMARY
The first step of any successful email marketing effort is to
build a permission-based email address list of your customers.
The simplest, quickest and most cost-effective way to do this is
through email appending, which will enable you to add email
addresses for up to 25% of your postal file. Secondary efforts
of email address collection via focused direct mail, web, viral
and telemarketing practices are also important and will enable
you to add email addresses for an additional 5% to 10% of your
base on an annual basis.
Best of luck in building your email address database. As many
companies have already learned, the ROI and cost savings to be
achieved will far exceed your expectations.
About the author:
Bill Kaplan, CEO , FreshAddress, Inc., The Email Address ExpertsTM, provides a comprehensive suite of industry leading database and email deliverability services to help companies increase their e-commerce revenues. For more information on how we can help "Build and Update" your email list, visit http://freshaddress.com/biz or email [email protected]
