Enabler provide best practice advice utilising your email marketing templates for list building within B2B and B2C communications, from a multi award-winning email agency.

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Six reasons why buying data for email is bad

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As a marketer, one of your top priorities is likely to be drumming up leads to pass on to the sales team, and you may feel under a lot of pressure to bring do this in large quantities. So we completely understand that buying an email data list might seem like a quick win – access to thousands of new contacts at the click of a “pay now” button sounds like a no-brainer, especially when the lists are advertised as targeted, verified, accurate, and opted-in.

Unfortunately though, the reality is less assured. A purchased data list is very unlikely to provide you with high quality data that enables you to promote your business effectively, and can cause you a whole host of problems which will impact your ability to email legitimate leads in the future.

Here’s Six Reasons to Remember Why Buying Data Is Bad:

1. Quality Is Not Guaranteed

First and foremost, it’s pretty likely that a list you buy will be littered with old or incorrect email addresses, incomplete names, and other problems affecting the deliverability of your email.

2. Bad Delivery Rates = Bounces

The deliverability issues caused by these incorrect / old email addresses could cause your emails to have a very high bounce rate, which will in turn damage your sender reputation by potentially marking your IP address as that of a spammer, further impacting the deliverability of your emails. Read our blog post on spam filters to help avoid getting caught in this vicious circle.

3. Nobody Knows You

It’s likely that the contacts on your list have never heard of your company before, which immediately lowers the chances of them opening your email. You should be sending to people who are already interested in what you’re sending them, such as existing customers who have engaged with your brand and those who have specifically opted in to receive messages from you.

4. Less Engaged Recipients

A recent analysis of a company’s email marketing activity found that business areas emailing to opt-in lists achieved open rates 82% higher than the areas emailing to purchased lists. That’s a significant difference! It’s basically not worth your time emailing people who are unlikely to engage; channel your energy into people who want to hear from you.

5. Shared List = Fed-Up Contacts

It may well be the case that other companies have bought the same list as you, meaning that the recipients are already annoyed by all the emails they’re receiving before yours has hit their inbox. You don’t want to join a crowd of ignored competitors.

6. You May Fall Foul Of The Law

Your communications need to be in line with the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (UK) or CAN-SPAM Act (USA), or you could face hefty fines. Unfortunately your email itself may follow the legislation to the letter, but if the email addresses were harvested illegally in the first place, you’ll still be breaking the law. Additionally, from 25th May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into force, meaning that the way companies are allowed to store and process personal data will change. Here’s our GDPR guide to help you get to grips with the new regulations.

 

Okay, – so what should you do?

Now we’ve talked you out of buying a list, let’s discuss the six best ways to source your data instead…

1. Attract An Audience With Engaging Content

Produce content that you know people are going to want to read, and make sure that when it goes live it’s been optimised for SEO so that your audience can easily find it (get in touch if you’d like help with this) . The content itself may be blog articles, white papers, a series of top tips, opinion/advice pieces, reviews, templates, or anything else you think would be engaging.

2. Include a Gated Asset

If it’s not enough for people to be reading your content and hopefully contacting you as a result, you can set up a data capture / sign up form that people have to complete before they can view your content. This gives your content a feeling of exclusivity, and also allows you to grow your leads

3. Create a Lead Magnet

Following on from the above, you could also create a lead magnet – this means an irresistible incentive for the customer to give you their contact information, and often comes in the form of a discount code.

4. Use a Reputable Email Service Provider

Doing so will help to protect your sender reputation, and ensure that you’re adhering to spam legislation by providing the tools needed to offer an unsubscribe and process it within 10 days. An email service provider like Enabler is also able to offer comprehensive reporting and testing facilities, allowing you to optimise your emails, and keeps your database up-to-date by logging unsubscribes and bounces and removing them automatically from your mailing lists.

5. Encourage Sign-Ups

Include a sign-up box on every page of your website to offer people maximum opportunity to subscribe to your emails. Keep it simple and quick to complete – all you really need is an email address, but if you must you can also include fields for first and last name.

6. Cross-Channel Promotion

Make the most of your other marketing channels, such as social media and your website, to promote the content of your emails and why people should sign up for them. For example, if you were soon to send an email featuring “Five top tips for x!” you could tweet something along the lines of “Sign up to our emails to discover five top tips for x!” ahead of time.

 

Most of these techniques are targeted towards acquiring new leads, but remember that it’s also super important to retain your existing customers. Firstly (and obviously) your existing customers are likely to repurchase if you look after them, and may also create new customers for you through word-of-mouth and recommendation. You could tap into this by rolling out a refer-a-friend campaign, with a form to capture friends’ details and offer incentives to both your customer and their buddies. There are loads of other ways to build your email lists explored in our Email List Building blog post.

Hopefully you can see that it simply isn’t a worthwhile investment to buy a data list for your emails. There are too many pitfalls and too few chances of success. Instead you should focus on growing your database organically, and maintaining a positive sender reputation. If you’d like help in your email endeavours, give our Enabler team a call on 0207 099 6370, or drop an email to enablermail@pancentric.com.

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Email list building: why and how? (part 2)

The key mistake marketers make with data is clinging onto every email address they have for dear life… forever. Holding onto data is only useful if you’re getting something out of it. But how do you tell where to draw the line between a useful and cold contact?

 

Step 1: Check your data

Filtering is your friend here. There are a number of ways you can filter but the main three are:

Behaviour type

How have your customers interacted in terms of opens and clicks over time? You could also consider using factors such as onsite behaviour and purchase behaviour but for starters, opens and clicks are a good way to go.

Frequency

You may want to consider longer or shorter timeframes for inactivity. For example, this could be based on your sending frequency. If you’re a brand that sends daily deals, you might determine an inactive subscriber as someone who has not opened or clicked on an email within 90 days, whereas a brand sending monthly newsletters would probably need to consider a longer time frame (e.g. 6-12 months).

Lifecycle

If your customer lifecycle is longer than average, you might want to consider a longer time frame within which to measure inactivity.

A good starting point is to filter your data based on anyone who hasn’t opened an email in a certain amount of time. Recommended timeframes for this are the last three months, six months, the last year and the last 18 months. Segregate these customers from the rest of your list, and keep an eye on them over the next few sends. You might find that your three to six monthers end up opening once in a while, at which point you could re-enter them into your regular list.

The idea of keeping these people separate is to monitor their behaviour and work out if they are worth having in your list. But how do we get these people involved with your campaigns again?

 

 

Step 2: Try running re-engagement campaigns

This is a popular tactic – mainly because it works. Re-engagement campaigns can take many forms. I’m going to show you a few of my favourites.

Pinkberry

If free froyo doesn’t say ‘don’t leave us’, I don’t know what does. This is an email which perfectly

demonstrates an excellent re-engagement campaign. This incentive will… well… incentivise your audience to come back to your brand.

The other really great component to this campaign is the expiry date. Not only is it offering something enticing, it’s also putting some time pressure on the action.

Habitat

This is an interesting tactic from Habitat. In this email, they acknowledge the (in)activity of their users and recommend another channel (social media). They may have got to a point with their cold list testing where they concluded that these users are not receptive to email marketing.

Suggesting a social media alternative means they can keep their communication lines open, in a way that better suits the user.

 

 

Starbucks

Here they are, with the good old guilt trip. But it’s not just any guilt trip, it’s a guilt trip where the customer feels like they lose out if they don’t interact with the brand.

Smart Starbucks, very smart. Not only is it a guilt email, they also offer a reward with it! The other great thing about this email is that it keeps it short and sweet.

Step 3: Test, test, test

A key part of running a successful re-activation campaign is identifying why your customers may have become disengaged with your emails and then trying to resolve this. One way you can approach this is by mixing up your content. If you send offer-based emails, why not try something editorial. Or vice versa.

For example, personalised promotional codes go down really well for brands who primarily do editorial content. The point of this is to show your subscribers that they may have underestimated what you, the brand, can offer them. It’s especially important to test which content works. A/B split testing is very effective for this, and will enable you to roll out your most successful campaigns to the largest group of people.

You can also test the overall style of your emails. For example, if you often send your emails from your brand name, why not switch it up and send a more personalised email. Even going from full blown HTML emails to plainer emails can work really well from a personalised perspective. It all comes back to giving something new. This email from WeddingWire is a great example of this – their Senior Customer Satisfaction Manager has used a simple email to promote a survey, intended to collect feedback from active subscribers.

Step 4: Know when to call it quits

You’re not going to be able to re-engage everyone. Even with strong re-engagement campaigns, you may well find that most of your inactive subscribers stay that way. After you’ve used all your charm on them, it’s probably best to send them an email to let them know you’re parting ways. Make sure this email includes a CTA, so if they realise they have made a terrible mistake, there is still a way in.

Step 5: Measure your success

It’s all very well deciding to take the step to try to re-engage active subscribers and clean your list, however it’s also important to be able to measure how successful you’ve been. A few key success measurements are:

Percentage of active users
Is this increasing? You can find this out by dividing the number of active users over total users. Make sure you keep monitoring this number as you go. If it is increasing, great. If not, re-examine your strategy.

Spam reporting rate
Is this decreasing? I’d hope this was happening; subscribers who regularly interact with your emails rarely mark you as spam. As you clean your data and only send regularly to people who interact with your emails, your spam and unsubscribe rates should decrease.

Deliverability rates
Are these increasing? Since you’re aiming for a healthier amount of active subscribers, your deliverability rates should increase. It might take some time before you can see a difference but it’s definitely something to monitor.

For the customers who are reliably interacting with your campaigns, make sure you keep sending them relevant, engaging content. No matter what strategy you end up using for retention campaigns, ensure you stay true to your brand and keep reinforcing the value of your offer. Customers who are a good fit for you will appreciate this and are more likely to keep interacting with campaigns.

So there you have it – follow these five simple steps for retention. Let us know how these worked for you and please do get in touch if you have any queries about Enabler software or our email consultancy services.

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Email list building: why and how? (part 1)

Did you know that your email marketing database can degrade by around 22.5% every year? Whilst this rings more true for B2B than B2C, due to people moving companies and changing email addresses, this is still a problem for the majority
of marketers.

For this reason, it’s more important than ever to keep your data fresh and current. Knowing how to do this without taking the easy route and buying data is a tricky business, so here are some top tips to help set you on the right path.

There are two main areas that you’ll really need to focus on to keep your data clean; acquisition and retention. If you’re focusing on acquisition, you need to work on strategies to gain new subscribers and generate new business through them. If you’re focusing on retention, you need to keep your current customers engaged and active. It’s only with a delicate balance of both that you’ll be able to achieve data harmony.

So, now we’ve gathered the ideas behind what you’re doing, let’s talk about the how of acquisition. How do you get new subscribers and make sure you nurture and maintain them?

 

1. Reel ‘em in with an offer or competition

This is a tactic that many brands use to encourage users to subscribe to their lists. Whether it’s a £5 voucher towards their first purchases or a chance to win a trip to the Maldives, incentives are a fantastic way to get additional subscribers.

They’re also especially effective if the incentive is consistent with what you’re going to be sending them as part of the subscription. For example, if you’re a beauty brand, offering money off a facial is not only a great introductory offer but also means they’re going to be expecting more beauty offers in the future, making them less likely to unsubscribe from future mailings. Keep it relevant and you’ll go far.

 

2. Social Media

Many brands are really great at pushing their social media through email but not so good the other way round. There are a number of ways you can use social media to promote your newsletter. I’ll touch on a few of them below but always be creative with how you use social media.

  • Use a simple sign up form. There are many ways you can add an email sign up form to your Facebook page. Facebook-specific sign up apps exist, as well as Facebook itself providing you with a newsletter sign up drop down option on your business page.

  • Use social media to promote the offer or competition you’re using to promote more sign ups. You can even incentivise using premium content.

  • Use Google hangout on air to host a webinar, making sure to share your resources as well as subscription links. Once people see what you have to offer in this arena, they’d be crazy not to sign up!

  • Create a sign up form and share across your Twitter followers.

The main thing to keep in mind when trying to use social media to gain more subscribers is what you can offer your new subscribers. If they’re already following you on Twitter/Facebook, what will you do for them on email that they can’t get on social media?

 

3. Entry pop ups

Annoying, yet effective. Entry pop ups are shown to a visitor as soon as your page loads. Generally speaking, it will block the viewer from seeing the page they have clicked through to until they engage with the pop up. This means that as soon as a user comes to your page they have to do one of three things.

  1. Convert with you and sign up to the newsletter which will cause the pop up to disappear

  2. Close the pop up in order to view the web page

  3. Click away from the site and go elsewhere

Naturally, we’re aiming for scenario ‘a’ in this case. Before you freak out that ‘c’ could happen, consider this: while entry pop ups have the potential for turning people off your site, they also do something incredibly clever. Not only do they force your visitor into action, potentially resulting in an additional email subscriber, but they also prime them to take further action such as purchasing from your site.

If you’re going to go down this route (and personally I’d recommend you do, studies have shown that popups can drive 1,375% more captures when compared with sidebar opt in forms) then make sure you do a lot of testing first to make sure it’s right for your brand. It’s especially important to consider factors such as timing and messaging when making your decision.

 

4. Exit pop ups

These have a very similar concept to entry pop ups but are used with different intention. An exit pop up will… well, pop up, when a visitor is about to leave your site. It’s implemented using cursor tracking, where anyone about to click the close button on their browser will be detected by the pop up app, triggering the pop up. Exit pop ups are a last ditch attempt to get a subscriber before the user leaves the site.

Exit pop ups are definitely something to consider, as they can salvage a bad situation (when a user has been on the site but not completed any action you want them to. A really effective way I’ve seen this done is with shopping cart abandonment, where you can combine an attempt to make a sale with an attempt to gain a subscriber.

In this example, the brand has offered a discount code for items already in the basket, whilst simultaneously attempting a data capture. Now in all likelihood the user will do one or the other. They’re either going to go back to their basket and apply this discount or enter their email address. This one in particular is smart, because it implies that the user can come back later and use the discount… but only if they let the brand email them. It re-piques lost interest and has the potential to grow the email list.

 

5. End of content sign up

This one is especially good if you’re a company that blogs. A user may have come to your site with the intention of reading an article. The logic runs that if they enjoyed the article, why wouldn’t they want to read more of what you have to offer? Sign up forms at the end of content that suggest more of the same content will come to the users inbox if they subscribe, is often very effective.

 

6. On site forms (contact, side bar)

The best place for these types of forms are somewhere near the top. With this method, you’re looking at catching people who come to your website, and catching them quickly. You want this sign up form to be one of the first things (if not the first) that they see.

Another really great place to put them is at the bottom. If people are making it to the footer of your website, the chances are, they’re engaged with your content. If they’re engaged with your content, why wouldn’t they want more?

There’s absolutely nothing stopping you from using both these methods. Alternatively, you can use something that many brands have great success with, which is called the ‘Hello bar’ (inventive, I know). It’s right at the top of the page, so users aren’t going to miss it.

 

7. Use current email subscribers

This is something that a surprising number of brands miss out on. People forward emails. I’ll forward an email to someone if I see something in it I like or that I think they might be interested in or benefit from. This happens both across both B2B and B2C audiences.

B2B occurs more with industry event invitations but can also happen within a business if someone sees an article they think a colleague would like. B2C tends to happen with consumer products such as tech and fashion. Just this morning, I forwarded an ASOS email to a friend who’s getting married, because ASOS have just started a wedding line and I thought she might be interested.

But what’s happening to those people being forwarded the email by their colleague/friend? Currently, I’m going to assume that they’ll click through the email, get what they need and then leave, never to hear from the brand again.

We don’t really want this. Instead, why not provide them with an option within the email creative to subscribe. Copy I’ve seen that works really well is ‘Was this email forwarded to you? Click here to join the mailing list’. Congrats, you’ve just created a subscriber out of another subscriber, with very little additional effort on your part. It’s digital word-of-mouth.

So, now that we’ve covered acquisition, keep an eye out for my next blog which will be about retention. If you have any questions about email marketing or want to talk about what we do at Enabler, feel free to get in touch. Happy email building and I’ll see you soon!

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