Truth #2: Your
subscribers are using throwaway email accounts
It’s the dirty little secret of email
marketing: everybody has at least one throwaway
email address they use to subscribe to email
newsletters and announcement lists, especially
when they don’t know or trust the company
offering it.
Hotmail
accounts are, by and large, throwaway email accounts.
Yahoo accounts are often used for the same purpose.
Statistics show that the vast majority of Internet
users have at least one of these accounts, and
many users have several. And today, large ISPs
like Hotmail and Yahoo are actually offering
throwaway email accounts to their users to give
them increased email privacy.
Chances are, if you’re marketing to end
users, the majority of your email list is actually
made up of these throwaway email addresses!
Yet
while subscribers are gladly giving you one email
address to send your newsletters and offers to,
they secretly have another email address that’s
their real email address. This is the address
they use at work, usually, or the one they give
out to close friends.
This is the email address they really read.
And this is the email address you want.
Because
if you don’t get it, that throwaway email
address will eventually be tossed. There’s
a 30% turnover each year, across the board, with
these email addresses. This means you’re
losing almost a third of your email list every
year! If your in-house email list is vanishing
right before your eyes, this is probably the No.
1 reason.
What you really want, as a high-integrity permission
marketer, is to earn the trust of your subscribers
and give them a good reason to volunteer their
real email addresses.
How
to get their real email addresses
There are no tricks, no shortcuts, no magic
bullets to this. If you want their REAL email
address -- the one they pay attention to -- you're
going to have to EARN IT.
And once you earn it, you've got something
of real value: their "permanent" email
address. This is the address that's least likely
to change, and most likely to be read.
How
do you earn it? Here's my four-step procedure:
- Establish trust. At first, you'll only have
their throwaway email address. Honor that address
by protecting each subscriber (don't sell or
rent their emails, because permission sold
is permission lost). Don't slam your list with
an endless stream of emails, and don't pollute
your email messages with overly commercial
content. In other words, keep it clean. You
have to earn this trust, you can't force it.
- Ask for their work email address. In every
one of your outbound emails, ask, "Is
there a better email address to reach you?" And
provide a clickable link they can click to
go to your website and update their email address.
Be sure to flag these subscribers (the ones
who actually update their address) as "loyal" subscribers
who should be eligible for special invitations
for surveys, coupons, and so on. By giving
you their new email address, they are establishing
a high degree of trust with your organization
and, in a sense, sticking their necks out a
bit. Be sure to let them know they made the
right decision in doing this.
- After you've established trust over time
(6 - 10 weeks), send a special email campaign
to your Hotmail.com, AOL.com, and Yahoo.com
addresses. The entire message should simply
ask if there's a better email address they
might be willing to offer you. Ask for a work
email address. Offer an incentive, such as
a 10% off coupon on their next purchase, or
the free download of a valuable report. Give
them a reason to volunteer their best email
address.
- From an email campaign management point of
view, capture email bounces and keep mailing
them anyway. Any good email marketing software
will automatically capture bounces (my own
firm's software, Campaign Enterprise, automates
this process). But don't make the mistake of
thinking that a couple of bounces means the
person can't be successfully emailed in the
future. Their email account might have been
full, or their POP server might have been temporarily
down. I recommend keeping them on the list
until they reach a total of 10 bounces, at
which point you should stop attempting to mail
them.
Follow this procedure and you'll stave off the
vanishing of your in-house email list. It's a
goldmine, after all, and there's no use watching
it disappear right before your eyes. Get these
procedures in place and you'll see fewer bounces
and BETTER RESULTS because now you're reaching
your readers, subscribers or customers in their
best inbox!
NEXT:
FOOLED! WHEN EMAIL MARKETING SUCCESS ACTUALLY
RESULTS IN DISASTER
It's one of the most common mistakes in email marketing:
using the "S Method" to get subscribers
and, ultimately, new customers. At first it seems
like it's going extremely well... all the numbers
are up... everybody's happy. But then disaster
strikes. Nobody's buying! What happened? What
went wrong?
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