The
Top Five Questions and Answers about Responsible
Email Marketing
By Mike Adams
Question Two: How do I build
an email list?
Since you're conducting permission
email campaigns, this means you already have
permission from a list of subscribers in the first
place. You now have to build your in-house lists
from whatever number of subscriber you have now.
You may have zero subscribers today, or you may
have 10,000 or even 100,000 addresses; but, no
matter where you are today, the only way to get
where you want to be is to start inviting customers
to give you permission at every touchpoint of
contact you have with those customers or potential
customers.
Don't assume the only point of contact is the
web. You may be interacting with customers or
prospects on the phone, at retail locations,
in face-to-face meetings, through direct mail
or other means. No matter what the medium, you
always have an opportunity to invite someone
to give you permission to learn more about them.
In fact, that's how permission questions should
be phrased: not as permission for you to solicit
them with Orwellian-style approaches, but as
permission for you to learn more about their
needs in order to deepen the level of understanding
with that customer or prospect, subsequently
communicating with them in a meaningful way.
To translate this into more practical
terms, you can start building an email list by
putting a subscription form on your web site.
Of course that requires a bit of programming,
which you may or may not be up to, so there are
other tools available such as the one my own company
will be offering soon called Zeop. The
Zeop web tool allows you to add a permission
subscription form to your web site without using
any programming whatsoever. It allows you to build
an opt-in, 100 percent permission-based email
list without engaging in any programming on your
part.
You may have many other opportunities to ask
for permission from your customers or prospects
as well. You could ask for permission within
direct mail pieces or invoices or other billing
methods you might be sending your customer. You
can ask for permission following a phone order
placed by your customer, or you might have your
frontline salespeople asking for permission during
their face-to-face meetings. You may find the
best way to gain permission is to offer incentives
in exchange for customer permission. Give each
subscriber some reason to grant you permission
beyond just the opportunity to be marketed in
an interpersonal way. Give them a report, a coupon,
a free gift, or something of value to them that
relates to your or business or service, so they
will not only feel rewarded, they will also learn
that you are the type of organization that rewards
their participation.
When you're building your
permission email list, be sure to document the
IP address, subscriber email address, and subscription
date and time, when you accept each new subscription.
This is to protect yourself in case that person
forgets they subscribe and then later claims you
are sending them unsolicited email.
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