5 ways to build email lists

Start with your customers

Many companies overlook the most obvious source of potential revenue – selling further products or services to people or businesses that have already bought from them.

Make sure that your customer records are kept properly up to date including the key contacts and their email addresses.  You need a way of storing a number of contacts within a company, and of recording which of your products or services each contact might be interested in.

Assign the responsibility for keeping your customer records up to date, so that everyone is clear who has the authority to ask for records to be properly looked-after.

Newsletter sign-up

Your web site is the perfect place for you to collect the email addresses of people who are interested in hearing more about your products and services.  You can provide this information via a regular newsletter, which might contain press releases, new product information, and perhaps special offers.

Think like a publisher

There is a growing trend in consumer and business buying behaviour – people want information before they show interest in buying.  This information can be in the form of white papers, surveys, customer feedback, product comparisons, and a whole range of other information types.  Consider  offering  useful, informative content on your web site – in exchange for a name and an email address.

Pick up the phone

If you are in business-to-business marketing, your target market may be relatively small – perhaps a few thousand companies.  In this case it is perfectly feasible to run a project to gather the names and email addresses of the key decision-makers in these target companies.

Referrals

Ask your existing customers to ‘recommend a friend’ or a business contact to receive your email correspondence.  This can be included on your regular customer newsletter, or as part of a regular customer service phone programme.

Building your own email marketing list will improve the results of your campaigns. We have suggested five ways in which you can build up a list of email addresses to which you can market your products or services.  Make the acquisition of email addresses part of your routine so that over time you build a valuable resource for your business.

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