Sorry to start this blog with some bad news, but unfortunately, it’s true. An email marketing database degrades by about 23% every year.

There are various reasons for this and include people opting-out of your communications, moving to another employer, (so the email address is removed from servers), or just decide to stop using an email account.

So, it’s really important to regularly engage your contacts and grow your list at the same time.

I’ve complied some tried and trusted ideas that could help you grow your email marketing lists too.

  1. Include a forward to a friend link in your marketing campaigns. Most people are inclined to just hit forward in their Outlook inbox, but this could break the email content, so it’s better to include the Forward to A Friend link in your marketing campaigns to keep the contact intact.
  2. Include a link to sign up to your e-newsletters in your Outlook signatures. Just link the image or text to your sign-up form. In CMAdvantage, you can do this easily by using our subscriber forms. By the way our subscriber forms can be embedded into your websites too.
  3. Include a light box or pop up on your website to encourage sign up. We can help with this too if you’re not sure how to create it. However, don’t have this appear the second someone lands on your website, allow around 10 seconds so as not to discourage them from browsing.
  4. Create a lead magnet across all your social media campaigns, giving a taster of the type of content people could receive by signing up.
  5. Use the share buttons in our CMAdvantage Drag and Drop editor allowing readers to easily share your content with their friends and family on their own social media accounts to encourage sign ups.
  6. At the bottom of your campaigns include a ‘Sign up for your own newsletter’ in case someone has forwarded on your campaign.
  7. At any events that you may run, capture new email data via your apps and forms. You could use CMAdvantage’s data capture forms to achieve this and send automatic notifications upon sign up too.
  8. State your sign-up page on any print material.
  9. Create opt-in incentives such as exclusive subscriber benefits, discounts or extra special offers.
  10. Ensure you are sending emails regularly at your chosen best frequency, as this will help to keep your subscribers engaged and hopefully looking forward to the next communication.
  11. In addition to an opt-out link, you should include a preferences link so your recipient can opt-down instead of opting out altogether. Also allow them to update their details such as contact numbers and this should help to retain your subscriber for longer.
  12. Include the sign-up link in your social media profiles.

One last tip I suggest is that your sign-up forms should only collect the essential details, as by having multiple fields to complete, this might deter the user and they might be put off and abandon the sign up.

For more ideas and inspiration get in touch at info@campaignmaster.co.uk.