Email marketing Strategy: Buying lists… Should you?
Best practices of permission marketing indicate that you should not buy lists, but there are always exceptions to this rule. Nevertheless, there are serious providers that offer lists from people that have opted into their lists and have accepted to receive offers and news in their inbox. But if you do not know the supplier or you cannot get references, you would better not do it. A bad list could be detrimental to your email marketing strategy . Your email efforts could be tagged as spam and your company could be identified as a spammer for sending unsolicited emails.
In a recent paper from Hubspot, they suggest: “If a company has a list that you know would be beneficial to your marketing efforts, request they send an email on your behalf. It could be an introduction to your company with a call-to-action to subscribe to your eNewsletter or download content. Most online content sites and trade associations have email sponsorship opportunities so you can purchase space in their email marketing programs. This is a safe and valuable method to leveraging third-party email lists”.
As social media tactics grow, there are innovative ways to capture lists, you can do it through LinkedIn or Facebook; LinkedIn allows your to export your contact list so there you can get additional contacts from people that voluntarily connected to you or your company; you could ask your sales people to provide you with their contacts so an institutional campaign can be targeted to all of them on their behalf. You can install an auto responder in your Twitter account to direct to your new followers to a contact form where they can opt-in. An there are many other innovative ways to generate new contacts to your list.
If you want to test contacts that you get from a directory ro from purchased lists, you should send an initial email presenting your company and introducing you or your company, such email should direct the interested recipients to an opt-in registration to your database where you offer certain value added like a subscription to your eNewsletter, a link to a whitepaper posted on your site, to your blog, etc. If the visitor opts in, he will be part of your database and then you can send them more emails.
You can use a professional email system to send the first email and then, once the interested people opt in, then you can import them to your CRM database or integrate then into your main database in the email system.
Our next post will be on: Email Strategy: The CAN-SPAM Act. A regulation you must consider in your Internet Marketing strategy. …Come back later!… To be on top of email marketing info, follo @3emailmarketing in Twitter.
