“An email list is only as good as its quality.”
One of the most important digital marketing channels for any brand, email marketing helps usher potential customers from the consideration phase through the purchase phase while building a loyal community of followers. There are four key elements to any successful email marketing strategy that include: growth, segmentation and automation, deliverability and design, and performance.
In a past blog post, we covered 7 ways to improve email deliverability. Today we’re going to take a look at growth and how to build a community of loyal followers and potential customers that will engage with your email marketing campaigns and support your brand for many years to come.
When considering ways to grow your email marketing database, continual incremental growth of subscribers is the name of the game. Rapid growth for growth’s sake costs you more in the long run and ultimately hurts email deliverability. Focus on targeting the right people and be sure that your encouragement is sincere, seamless, and most importantly– value-laden.
Ready to optimize your email marketing database growth strategy? Let’s look at three successful tactics.
Website Footer
Add an email sign-up form or box in your website footer to capture the most eager and engaged potential customers. Web visitors who seek out your newsletter sign up in the website footer will be some of your most loyal subscribers.
Tip: Be sure these subscribers are tagged and segmented appropriately. They should then receive an automatic welcome email as part of a welcome sequence tailored to their sign-up location.
Social Landing Page
Enhance the effectiveness of your social media and email marketing channels by creating a landing page using your email service provider that encourages newsletter sign-ups and can be easily shared across your social platforms. This tactic aligns these marketing channels while amplifying their effectiveness. You can include additional questions on this landing page that allow people to self-identify their activity and product interests for enhanced segmentation and personalization down the road.
Tip: The URL generated from your email service provider can be long and unsightly, so use a URL shortener like Bit.ly to create a custom link for your brand before sharing it across social or via email. See an example in the post below.
Website Pop-Up
Create a time-based pop-up on your site to usher new website visitors from the awareness phase of their customer journey into the consideration phase. Grab visitors’ attention while they browse your site and encourage them to sign up with incentives such as discounts, free shipping, or becoming an insider and finding out about sales and new styles before they’re announced publicly. Additional benefits of a pop-up include:
- Enhance segmentation of your newsletter audience by allowing the website visitor to self-identify into predetermined groups.
- Encourage e-commerce consideration by providing an incentive and a distinct call to action like 15% off your first order or gift with purchase.
Implement one (or all three!) of these email marketing tactics and start seeing your subscriber list grow with loyal followers who are opening and engaging with your newsletters. Feeling overwhelmed and unsure where to start? Learn more about how the Darby Comm team can help you manage your email marketing strategy to maintain relationships, engage your audience, and ultimately increase online sales.