News
 How
to Grow Your Email Marketing List
Email marketers are worried about growing their
email lists, as competition for email addresses has
been “stiff” – so states a recent report from
Silverpop, a permission-based email marketing
solutions provider. As a result, marketers are
saying they’d use list-building methods that haven’t
worked well in the past.
According to Silverpop, growing email lists remains
a top concern of email marketers. A strong, long
list of opt-ins is a key element to any successful
email marketing program, the report states. About 45
percent of marketers indicate that marketing to an
email house list is considered the best online
advertising tactic.
The survey also uncovered that while many companies
are utilizing established best practices to increase
list size, marketers with smaller lists or less
experience fail to put in place proven practices to
grow lists.
Here are more key findings of the report:
• Experience pays off. Many marketers think email is
the easy route – but it’s not. Respondents to
Silverpop’s survey who have been managing email
campaigns for more than five years were more likely
to control lists with more than one million names
than those with less experience.
• There’s a hole in the bucket. One of the
frustrations in growing email lists is a result of
churn. According to the survey, four out of 10
respondents experience as much as a 2 percent
opt-out rate each month. Growing an email list can
be likened to filling a water bucket with a hole in
the bottom. You have to add a steady stream of new
registrants just to maintain the level you started
with.
• The more you ask, the more you receive. There
remains a surprising number of companies that, for
whatever reason, fail to prominently position opt-in
requests on their Web site. The study found that 23
percent of companies analyzed failed to include
email registration requests on their home pages.
About 37 percent of companies said they position
opt-in requests on the home page, and only two out
of 10 firms place opt-in links on every page of the
Web site.
• Consumers are growing more irritated with what
shows up in their inbox. Nine out of 10 Internet
users say they want to control what they receive in
their inboxes. Yet, the survey notes that most
companies fail to give prospective recipients any
choices in the matter. Seven out of 10 don’t offer a
choice of mailing type like newsletter or alert, and
nearly eight out of 10 don’t offer a choice of
subject matter, nine out of 10 don’t provide options
on frequency.
The survey also notes the top four tactics of email
list-building that were very successful:
1. Online marketing/search
2. Offline advertising/direct marketing
3. Tradeshows
4. Cross-promotions
Here’s the top four tactics that didn’t quite work
for email marketers:
1. Viral marketing
2. Non-branded list rentals
3. Offline advertising/direct mail
4. List appends
Even though some of those tactics didn’t prove to be
successful, some email marketers plan to implement
the strategy anyway. Here’s the top four tactics
planned for use:
1. Viral marketing
2. Online marketing/search
3. Cross-promotions
4. Co-registration
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Melissa Data
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