Four Ways of Keeping Contacts Active Using Email Marketing
November 19, 2009 by Rudy Barell
Filed under Internet marketing
The success of your email marketing is dependent on how good your list of contacts is. Email marketing industry research has revealed that three months after signing on to your mailing list your contacts begin to disappear off of your radar. This reduction in contacts’ interest should be anticipated with any contact list, however there are a few methods to ensure that this downsizing is kept to a minimum, subsequently making sure that the size of your high quality contacts is far larger. The following will provide you with four useful tactics that will assist your email marketing efforts.
“Important Client” Incentives:
As a retailer, using incentives can attract subscribers to continue their interest in your emails and services. Providing a simple promotion or discount for subscribers that haven’t opened recently can reactivate a dormant user. In addition, you can send these kinds of offers to in-active users so that they have the chance to update their contact information and preferences etc. This will help gather information on their continuing needs as a customer, as well as give you current contact information.
Questionnaires:
The most direct method of knowing why contacts haven’t been responding to emails is to ask them. Sending surveys through email marketing solutions will ensure that you are gathering information on exactly what the user wants and does not want. Keep the survey questions simple and to the point to make sure the survey isn’t too long. Customers are easily shied-away by too many complex questions. Also, be sure to include questions on their most preferred type of email message to receive, the best time to contact them by email, and suggestions and comments section.
Go Over Your Contacts with a Fine Tooth Comb:
By looking a little closer at your contact list you will notice some similarities with certain of them. By identifying the commonality you might discern what it takes to get through to them. You might find they all belong to a specific demographic previously un-targeted through your past email marketing campaigns. They might all be in a different time zone, or all older males, or teenage girls. Scrutinizing more closely may trigger an idea of how to get through to this previously unresponsive group, and give you an easy solution for getting them back.
Test Your Email Marketing Tactics:
Spending time on testing will help you find out if you can bring some of your ‘inactives’ out of hiding.
If you’ve always sent out email on the same day or time of day, try a few varied distribution times; see if it produces a different response. You can also change how often you’re sending your emails. If you’re accustomed to sending once a month, you may want to try sending twice a month, or once every two months.
Also, try creating different content. In your analysis of you contacts if you’ve noticed a trend among in-actives, consider packaging the content differently for this group. You can also mess around with the format of your email marketing software campaigns. Start testing the differences between text versions vs. more dynamic looking campaigns.
A major component is your subject line. Often all that is required of you is to change the subject line to bring back your inactive contacts. An inactive subscriber might have been reluctant to open your emails because your subject line is always the same or very similar to all the other messages sent. Your in active subscriber is likely making the assumption that if the subject line doesn’t change, neither does the content of the email marketing campaign.
Experimenting with alternative methods of sending out emails will recharge your dormant contacts, and more importantly will provide crucial information on what that user needs as a customer.
Experienced email marketers put the time in to work on their contact list. Now is your opportunity to ensure that you are getting the most out of your email marketing campaigns by putting in that added elbow grease so that your subscribers are aware of and listening to your messages.
Rudy Barell is a Senior Development Executive with Elite Email, the #1 email marketing used by businesses around the globe. Create eye-catching emails and track your success with detailed reports for your email marketing solutionsTry it free!
categories: email marketing software, email marketing, list management, list maintenance, list manager, marketing, contact list management, subscriber management, marketing, online marketing, email
Tags: contact list management, email, email marketing, email marketing software, Internet marketing, Internet marketing, list maintenance, list management, list manager, Marketing, online marketing, subscriber management
