Once you begin building your list, you will begin making sales if they are responsive and that will begin to earn you money on a weekly basis. Now, you may be wondering how you are supposed to get these responsive people
Many marketers peg acquisition-based email response rates at
historically low levels,
primarily due to the high volume of messages in
everyone's inboxes these days. Some believe that allocating any
percentage of a marketing budget to acquisition-based email is waste.
However, this is not true. Although the true response rates for
acquisition are typically lower than those for retention-based email,
renting lists to win over prospects and grow a customer base can work
wonders, if you do your homework.
Here are some guidelines that can help in buying or renting lists
for achieving high ROI.
- With email, just like direct mail, how precisely the list is
targeted to the marketer’s offer is critical to the success of
the email campaign. The marketer will need to test a variety
of email lists in order to find the most responsive names for
their offer. Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value are
important within email lists. Thus, where applicable, focus
on lists of recent online buyers or registered users.
- More importantly, when researching email lists, focus on the
origin of the list to ensure compatibility with your offer.
Make sure you obtain names from branded, well-recognized
sites or sources. Since an outbound email announces to the
recipient, in the form of a header, exactly where they gave
permission, a well-recognized source would lend more
credibility to the message.
A frequency cap can ensure lists aren't over mailed. If a list
manager can't provide the details on mailing frequency, look
elsewhere. That organization probably lacks the control, technical
expertise, and reporting basics. Also ask about recency selections.
Newer names offer access to new subscribers.
Frequent uploads of new names and instant suppression of
unsubscribes are a must. Your brand will be associated with spam by
those who unsubscribed but still receive mailings before their request
is processed. Lists that are housed and resold by multiple managers
are probably mailed more frequently. This negatively impacts
performance, brand equity and deliverability.
As email filtering becomes dominant, you must make sure list
managers are up to speed on delivery techniques and processes. ISP
relations and white listing are critical. Check all available blacklists for
the list manager's IP addresses. List managers should be able to
monitor delivery of their campaigns and ensure messages are
delivered to the inbox, not a bulk mail folder.
Finally, the best-performing lists provide the most ability to slice
and dice the file to find the right people for your offer. Sorting based
on demographics, psychographics, and even specific stages of the
buying cycle will almost always outperform untargeted mailings.
