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Email Marketing Defined
Email marketing is a valuable tool for any business. Promoting your business, whether it be products or services offered, by sending monthly emails to your email contact list is essential for growing a successful business.
Thus, the building of a strong contact list is of the utmost importance. However, oftentimes, this is where business owners have difficulties. We have the solution: Viper Mailer, an email marketing software service, would like to share with you the top 5 ways to build an email marketing contact list and how to do it legally.
Email Marketing Contact Collecting Don’ts
It’s important to note the legal aspect of email address collecting before you begin. The CAN-SPAM Act makes certain ways of collecting email addresses illegal. Therefore, it’s necessary to ask the permission of your email marketing contacts before sending them your business emails. Below are the 3 “don’ts” of email address collecting:
- Don’t purchase an email list from another company.
- Don’t collect email addresses from websites.
- Don’t use an email collection service.
The most essential thing to remember is to ALWAYS make sure that you have permission to send your clients/contacts an email. The best way to have proof of this is to have your contact fill out a form with a box to check (yes or no) in regards to receiving emails from your company in the future.
Creative Ways to Build an Email Contact List
Now, that you know what to do to legally collect email addresses, you need to know how to find ways of collecting those email address to begin building a large contact list. Viper Mailer’s client base has chosen over the years to share their successful, creative email address collecting ideas with us, and now we want to share that information with you.
Below, find some creative and successfully proven ways to begin building the contact list that will cause the client base of your business to grow rapidly.
- Birthday Incentive Program
This is where you send special offers/coupons on their birthday to those that sign up/fill out your contact permission form.
- Referrals
Offer your current, valued clients a discount incentive for referring their friends, clients, and/or family to you by having them fill out the email marketing permission form.
- Business Card Offers
Put a special offer on the back of your business card that will create a “call to action”. By offering a special discount or service for signing up for your free email marketing contact list.
- Swap Meets, Farmer’s Markets, or Malls
Speak to the owners of the above mentioned facilities (or any additional ones that you can think of), and ask if it would be okay to set up a giveaway contest. In return for filling out your email marketing permission forms, you will have a drawing to win a free item or package from your company.
- Host a Dinner, Party, or Event
Ask that those that attend your special event fill out the cards/forms (that you’ve provided on each table) to sign up for your free newsletter that will allow them to receive valuable information from your company. Not only will you receive valuable clients, but you may make some money if you charge a small entrance fee for your exclusive event.
Email Marketing Contact Collecting Do’s
Use some of the above mention ideas, or come up with some of your own. Either way, make sure that you:
- Do make good on any promises, discounts, coupons, and giveaways that you have promised as incentives. Make your employees aware of these as well.
- Do respect a contact’s wish to unsubscribe to your services. You NEVER want to send an email to someone who has explicitly requested to not receive your offers.
- Do make sure that you store your contact information online as well as keeping the original forms that the contacts have filled out in a file for proof and safe keeping.
For more information about growing your very own email marketing system, please visit our article library for a list of additional topics. |
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