An email marketing campaign is one prong in an effective marketing strategy. Email marketing lets you get the word out to clients and potential clients. The email format is especially conducive to sharing and referrals. It allows you to have a conversational interaction with your target market.

Making your email marketing campaign effective relies on a good email marketing list. The quality and size of your list directly impacts how effective the campaign is going to be. Building your email list, however, isn’t necessarily easy or intuitive. You might put up a sign-up form on your website, for example, and the find yourself discouraged when no one has signed up after several weeks.

If you want to build your email marketing list, there are some specific things you can do to speed up and increase your success:

1. Make it obvious. Put the sign-up form for your email marketing list smack dab in the middle of your website’s homepage. You want to capitalize on every little bit of traffic you can, and putting it off to the side just won’t do. If you really want to have a successful email marketing campaign, you need to make it a priority on your site.
2. Don’t compete against yourself. Realize, of course, that if you’re operating a retail site you could be drawing views away from your store or sales process in order to pull someone into your email marketing list. For online retailers, using a secondary website to generate buzz for your primary site is a better place to put that marketing list.
3. Incentivize signup. Give something away to people who are willing to sign up for your email marketing list. This should be something of real value, not simply a worthless token. Free reports are common incentives, as are discount coupons and contest entries. Just be clear about the fact that, in order to get the freebie, they’re also signing up for your email list.
4. Ask for permission. Email marketing lists are most effective when they’re opt-in lists. That doesn’t mean you can’t use your existing list of email address, but it does mean you need to ask them to confirm any kind of subscription. It’s been proven over and over again that spammy email marketing campaigns that don’t use an opt-in are most often failures. Not only that, there are some pretty specific federal laws you need to be familiar with when it comes to spam, as well.
5. Leverage real world resources. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, get your walk-in customers to sign up for your email list. Some of the most effective email marketing campaigns consist primarily of customers who have already visited your real-world store. Bring a signup sheet for your email list when you participate in community or networking events, as well.
6. Be relevant. It’s one thing to get someone’s name on your email marketing list; it’s quite another to keep them on that list for more than one or two mailings. If the campaigns you’re using aren’t truly relevant and useful to your customers, they’re going to ask to be removed.
7. Offer value. In addition to relevance, you need to offer real value to your list. If a customer gets some genuine use out of a mailing, they’re much more likely to share it with others. Word of mouth is a powerful way to increase subscriptions.
8. Put social media to work for you. Your Facebook page fans and your Twitter followers should also be email marketing list subscribers. Those formats are great for building authority and rapport, and for interacting with your customers. Your email marketing list, however, is all about increasing sales.
9. Follow all of the rules. Again, there are plenty of anti-spam rules out there. Know what they are, and follow them carefully. Violating those rules can be expensive, and even having to defend against a single accusation can take a sizable chunk of cash. Include unsubscribe information as well as real-world contact and identification information with each mailing.
10. Honor unsubscribe requests. Although you hate to lose people from your email list, you need to respect their wishes. You’re using an opt-in model, which by its very nature means you have to allow them to opt out.

Email marketing can be one of the most effective types of marketing for your business. Making an email marketing list work for you means putting these methods into practice and doing so with both integrity and diligence.

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Author’s Bio:
Dominique Molina is President of the American Institute of Certified Tax Coaches, an organization of tax professionals who are trained to help their clients rescue thousands of dollars in wasted tax. In addition to her blogging and speaking engagements, Dominique provides tax training and accounting marketing as a registered educator with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA).

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!