Email List Marketing Do’s & Dont’s

Growing a small business can be a painstaking process. At Buer Interactive, we understand the plight of building an online marketing strategy that stays consistent with your branding as well as continues to grow your client base. Although our company is based in Houston, website design and online marketing clients globally have benefitted from our services and we’ve noticed some strong trends in email marketing. If you’re here, you are likely searching for how to best optimize your email list, and we’re here to help. If you are in need of assistance or have any questions, our contact information can be found on the bottom of this article. Feel free to reach out with any questions and we’ll be happy to point you in the right direction. Now, get to learning!

You’ve done the groundwork for your online marketing; you tediously strategized your branding, you painstakingly researched the best web design before hiring your Houston web development team, and you’ve begun implementing search engine optimization so your business is more easily found. Finally, Houston locals are starting to recognize the name of your business online. Many online marketing tactics are largely based on searches, so how do you go about direct marketing to your owned media? Owned media is the platforms and audiences you have complete control of your reach with, such as your Facebook followers, Instagram followers, or the highly-coveted and all-important email list subscribers, and the latter is one of the most direct ways to reach current and potential customers.

Growing your email list is one of the most difficult things to do, yet a marketing technique yielding very high returns. Let’s start with the best ways to grow your email list. (As we will discuss below, buying a list is never a good idea.)

WordPress offers a number of Plugins that can help you organically grow your email list. These plugins are easily customized to the unique needs of your business, and come highly recommended by the professional Houston web developers on our team. Here are the top three WordPress plugins to grow your email list, as selected by Buer Interactive:

Thrive Leads: A highly impressive and extremely effective plugin with a wide variety of options, Thrive Leads gives you the ability to create different types of Opt-in forms from pop-ups to scroll boxes. Each form you choose has a plethora of templates to select from with easy drag-and-drop design customizability. You can create multiple forms for multiple pages and categories. Thrive Leads also offers a unique manner of split testing, giving you the option to test the different types of opt-in forms against each other. It is easy to see why Thrive Leads is one of the most popular WordPress plugins used to build an email list.
WOOBOX This plugin is a fantastic way to generate interest in your products and services as well as generate sales, as WOOBOX collects emails through online contests or sweepstakes. Simply select what kind of promotion you’d like to run, easily customize the template, and publish to your website. You can offer immediate discount codes in exchange for email addresses, which will generate sales more quickly as well as build an email list of people who are genuinely interested in your product or service.
OptinMonster OptinMonster began it’s life as solely a WordPress plugin and is still widely used on WordPress and is compatible with any HTML site. This is a great tool to use if you manage several different websites, as all of your information is in one central dashboard. You can edit your form, monitor your progress and start split tests all from within the OptinMonster app.

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow your business, as the people in your database have directly expressed interest in the products or services your business has to offer. Marketing to your email list has to be well thought-out and tactical. Here are 10 dos & don’ts for your email marketing strategy:

DO get express permission to contact the subscribers on your email list. Not only is getting permission the right thing to do, it helps to refine your audience to interested potential customers or repeat customers. Obtaining permission to send your subscribers emails also maintains the professionalism of your brand. Even if you have the best product in the world and everyone wants it, nobody wants to be spammed.

DO catch their attention with a fantastic subject line These days nearly everything is done online and our email inboxes are completely flooded with emails. Don’t let your email get overlooked! You have one shot to catch the attention of your email subscribers before they hit that “delete” or “ignore” button. Having a curiosity-piquing subject line means that your email is more likely to be opened. For example, what subject line looks more intriguing to you?

Subject 1: Buer Interactive:Houston Web Design
Subject 2: Three Ways Your Houston Web Design Can Build Local Business

The second subject line shows your that the content inside the email is relevant to you and offers you something of use.

DO build your email list as strategically as possible Build your email list in ways that will benefit your business. Anyone can collect email addresses by giving away a free vacation to Maui, but if your business is a DUI lawyer in Houston, it’s likely you won’t necessarily reach your potential clients. Ways to build your email list would be offering a free trial of your service/free sample of your product exchange for signing up for the email list. Another way to build your email list is to ask your current customers to sign up for your newsletter at the end of their transactions, or contact your Houston web design team and ask about implementing an opt-in on your website.

DO segment your lists Not everyone on your list needs to receive every email you send. If your band is going on tour in specific cities or you’re offering a special deal to subscribers in a certain zip code, you will want to send that email campaign to only people in those areas. Your email list software will likely have options built in to segment your lists automatically, or you can have people sign up with their zipcode, city, or state.

DO monitor bounce rates Monitoring your bounce rates will not only show you how well (or how poorly) your audience is responding to your email content, your bounce-rates must be kept in check in order to prevent your domain from becoming marked as a spammy or bad sender, which will significantly impact all of your email marketing efforts.

DON’T break spam-laws Yes, there are actually laws regarding email marketing! In 2003, Congress introduced the CAN-SPAM act which is enforced by the FTC. Businesses must be compliant with email marketing laws, such as not falsely advertising and including a valid postal address in your emails. More information and the entire guide can be found on government websites.

DON’T buy email lists Buying email lists might sound like a quick and easy way to grow your audience, but buying email lists is more than likely a waste of time and money. Buying an email list usually gets you a wide array of people with varied interests and demographics, not helping you specifically target your market and desired audience. Beyond that, your emails are more likely to be marked as spam which then impacts the deliverability of your emails.

DON’T send without testing Your email software offers you an option to send out a test email, so don’t skip out on the final check! Review your email for errors and have another set of eyes check it out if you can, as once your email is sent, they’re sent. Don’t let grammatical errors or layout issues affect your credibility.

DON’T forget to mobile optimize Nearly everyone has a smart phone these days, and checking email on the go has become the new norm. Don’t forget to mobile optimize your email campaigns. The more easily read and accessible your emails are to all subscribers, the higher your retention rate will be and the higher the chances of making a sale will be.

DON’T make it hard to unsubscribe Prevent yourself from being marked as spam (and looking bad in general) by having an easy option to unsubscribe from email lists, without multiple ‘are you sure’ follow up emails. This creates a positive association with your business, especially if people who have unsubscribed seek to do business with you in the future.

Email campaigns are one of the best ways to communicate directly with your customers. Keep those relationships as healthy as possible by using tactical and ethical email campaign strategies and your business will grow. If you have any questions on how to organically grow and email list, don’t hesitate to contact one of our Houston web designers at Buer Interactive with your project goals.

Buer Interactive – Houston Website Design, Web Development, and Search Engine Optimization
5850 San Felipe Street
Suite 500
Houston, TX 77057
(832) 699-3631