The way we consume information is changing. More and more people are opting to get their news online instead of through traditional print publications. As a digital marketer, you must adapt to these trends if you want to engage with your audience and grow your business.
While it’s still important to get your papers and magazines, you must also establish strong online presences. Listening to and responding to your audience becomes essential. That’s why managing your email marketing lists and campaigns online is such a vital task.
Why Online Lists Are Important
Traditional email marketing lists were once considered a nuisance: people would unsubscribe after just a few emails or clicks because it was considered “spam” to send unsolicited marketing messages to people who hadn’t expressed interest in your product or service.
But today’s online lists are far from useless. On the contrary, they can be extremely useful for your email marketing, providing you with the perfect targeted audience, extremely efficient at converting, and much more.
Here are just a few of the perks of online lists.
1. They’re Perfect for Email Marketing
Let’s face it: with the bombardment of spam, junk mail, and unnecessary notifications clogging up our inboxes, it’s much easier to opt out of these types of emails than it is to keep up with the deluge and unsubscribe from the lot of them. Simply put, online lists allow you to segment your audience, target the right people, and send relevant messages to trigger action.
2. They’re Easy to Build and Manage
The advantages of using a CRM (customer relationship management) tool for your email marketing are many. But one of the biggest perks is that lists are built-in. So instead of trying to keep track of a myriad of email lists manually, you can simply set up a few email campaigns in your CRM, and begin sending out emails to existing and potential customers. Importing contacts from other platforms into your CRM is also easy.
3. They Have Plenty of Depth
While surface level information like names and emails are useful, knowing exactly who’s on your email list and how to reach them is what really makes them valuable. With that information, you can craft meaningful and valuable messages that they’ll find useful.
In addition to that, the information about what types of content they prefer and which platforms they prefer to consume content on allows you to tailor your messages to fit their needs. That makes all the difference in creating compelling content that’ll keep them engaged.
How to Build an Email List
Once you have a steady stream of traffic coming in from your website, the next step is to begin constructing your email list. You can do this either manually or with the help of a tool.
Manual means going through and collecting email addresses manually, either through forms on your website or by talking to people and asking for their email address. This is a time-consuming task, and one that you must do often to keep up with the demand for fresh email addresses.
You can make it a little easier by using a tool. There are standalone tools designed for just collecting email addresses, or you can find tools within your CRM to do it for you. When you’re in the process of building your email list, you’ll want to consider using a tool, as it makes the process much easier and more efficient.
The Best Tool for the Job
When choosing a tool for the job, it’s important to consider a variety of factors. These include how much work you want to directly commit to the tool, how much you want to rely on the tool to do the work for you, and how much you want to pay for the tool.
If you need something simple and quick, or if you want something that will allow you to keep up with the demands of managing a growing business, go with a free, open-source tool. These tools are great because you can tweak them to your needs and can be used for a variety of tasks. Most importantly, you won’t need to pay for these tools in any way because they’re usually available for download directly from the source.
On the other hand, if you need something a little more advanced or if you want to pay for the tool, make sure that the cost is worth it. Some of the more popular, more complex tools for list building and conversion optimization include HubSpot and Marketo. Don’t be afraid to use these tools if you need something a little more advanced. Just be sure that you set them up correctly and that you understand how to use them effectively. If you’re looking for a free tool, these are some of the best choices out there because they tend to be very easy to use and set up. And if you’re looking for something a little more advanced, you can always check out the documentation for these tools to see exactly how to use them.
Getting Started With Email List Building
Once you have a list of email addresses, the next step is to begin using them to send out emails. To get started, you’ll want to look into tools such as HubSpot and MailChimp. Both of these tools are extremely easy to use and will get you up and sending out emails in no time.
From a marketing standpoint, you’ll want to look into using email lists to target the right audience for your product or service. To do this, segmenting your audience based on interest, behavior, and demographics is crucial. Interest matching is when you target potential customers based on their interests. So if you’re selling sneakers, you would target people that are into fashion or design. If you’re selling furniture, you would target people that are into decoration or design. By doing this, you increase the chance of the message being received, and also allow you to engage with them based on their shared interests.
What happens next is a bit more complicated. After you’ve sent out a few emails, you’ll want to stop and analyze what’s worked and what hasn’t. You can do this by looking at metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates. These are all important, yet often difficult to quantify. That’s why you need to set up automated reporting so that you can track these kinds of metrics accurately.
Managing Your Email Lists And Campaigns
Once you have a small number of email lists, it’s time to start thinking about managing them. More and more people are getting tired of receiving spam and hate mail, which is why you must ensure that your emails are legitimate and that you actually send out useful content, or people will simply unsubscribe. Once you get a large enough audience, you can experiment with different methods of sending out emails and performing A/B testing to see what works best for your business.
Managing your email list and performing email marketing can be a task that’s not easy to master. But with a little bit of planning, research, and testing, you’ll be able to pull off effective campaigns that’ll help grow your business.