This article was published on May 29th, 2013
If you are new to internet marketing, then one of the first things people who have been doing this for a while will tell you is that… you need to build a list!
No, not a guest list for your next BBQ, or even the list for your daughter or son’s forthcoming birthday, communion, bar/bat mitzvah etc… but an email list!
And due to form, every blog, every site now features these pesky “Subscribe to Our Newsletter” forms, with offers of “free” this, and “free” that just so you might be persuaded to put your name and email down in exchange for all this free stuff!
Problem is that according to a survey:
- 77% of US online consumers say they’ve become more guarded about giving their email address over the past year
- 18% say they never open email from companies
Still, in spite of these numbers, a large number of visitors will subscribe to email lists adding their names to a growing data base worth its size in gold..
And gold is the appropriate way to characterize a well built and well run email list because quite simply, this internet marketing media is highly successful.
I subscribe to a number of such lists and I can tell you from experience that email marketing DOES work! I suspect you would agree as well!
Indeed, in spite of my so called “nous” I have personally been guilty of pushing the “Buy Now” button for a number of “must have” products or services “recommended” to me in frequent emails which the owners of those pesky lists I have subscribed to send me at regular intervals. I am so guilty in fact that some of these products are still waiting to be opened in my “TO DO” folder!
So to recap here is the deal:
- As the owner of a website, you create a must have product that you are willing to give “free” in exchange for an email.
- Visitors to your site find your offer simply exquisite and too good to turn down and duly subscribe to your list.
- After a confirmation process, you receive your very first email containing the product that you signed up for.
- You read (or not) said product.
- A few days later you receive a second email commending you for the first step you took and whilst at it, recommending that you might want to have a look at this “highly affordable, one in lifetime” offer and you decided to do… nothing!
- A few days later, you receive a third email telling you about success stories of people just like you who bought the product your passed on and how you should really, really reconsider. Still you do… nothing! After all you are not one to be swayed so easily by a sales pitch..
- After a few other email, you end up buying said product…
- There then ensues a period of quiet, during which you do not receive any email
- …
- …
- until…
- You receive one! With yet another product on offer.
This whole process is called “Email Engagement”. The key to “Email Engagement” is to nurture your subscribers so that they maintain their interest and “heaven forbid” do not decide to do the unthinkable which is of course to… Unsubscribe from your list!
You can have a closer look at email engagement in an excellent info-graphic put together by the folks at litmus.com or right here.