Tips for List Building: Tip #5
Seek opportunities with partners
After maximizing all the resources within your company to build your email list, you can look externally for list building opportunities.
If you can offer value to your partners’ customers, then you offer value to your partner.
With that in mind, it might be possible to have an opt-in for your email list on your partners’ websites. Consider these locations:
- Partners’ website registration page (especially if they don’t have a newsletter themselves)
- Partners’ shopping cart page
- Partners’ email sign-up page if their emails are substantively different than yours
- A page on your partners’ sites where they list links, neat things, and/or their partners (hopefully your company)
List building strategies for you and your partner:
- Create co-registration pages with partners during limited time only promotions. This works really well on micro-sites created for specific promotions where several companies are involved.
- Hold a contest with a partner for the sole purpose of having a contest-entry page where email sign-up for both companies is solicited.
- Swap content. If you and your partner both have email newsletters, but the content is substantively different yet compatible, provide a small section of content for your partners’ newsletters (and vice versa). Who doesn’t want new, fresh content for their email publications? Be sure to include a link under the content you provided for “more info” and link to your email sign-up page. If you have a prominently placed subscribe box on your home page, you could even forgo the direct link to your sign up page (some partners won’t be agreeable to this) and just link to your home page (this is usually acceptable).
- Swap ads. Again, if you and your partners’ email offerings are essentially different, place a small graphic ad on your partners’ sites that promotes your email list as its own standalone valuable product. If you do the same for them, it’s an even trade.
- Send a co-marketing email through a partner’s list. This practice works well when accompanied by strict management of customer opt-in consent and careful propagation of unsubscribes among partners. (Think global opt-out list that both sides must respect: ensure that customers on a global opt-out list are not mailed to in the first place and that any new unsubscribes are removed from the active email lists of both partners). By presenting your brand or information through a partner’s email list you gain brand exposure and sales. Normally this email would contain a special offer (of high value to their customer) with a clear message stating more offers like this are available by signing up for your email list.
Next blog: Tip #6 - Don’t ignore your existing list