Re-Energize Your List: Get Updated Information
Another way to breathe new life into an email list with a fair number of inactive members is to send targeted emails. You can target a sub-set of subscribers on your list that have something in common or to whom you want to present the same offer—they purchased from your website in the last week, or they live in the same city, or they have the same profession, for example. Normally the offer in a targeted email is something especially relevant to the targeted group of subscribers and might not even be something you’d offer list-wide.
You have probably already collected information on your sign-up form that you can use for targeting. Information like: Date subscribed to list, Zip Code, City, State, Country, Date of Birth, Source of sign up (web page, convention, trade show, etc.). But you might find you need to collect more information from your subscribers to effectively market to them.
State may not make a difference in the products you market, but gender might. You might want to market according to your subscribers’ hobbies or preferred vacation destinations. You can make categories for the different types of products you sell and ask your customers to choose the products (categories) that most interest them. Realtors can make categories for the number of bedrooms or sizes of houses for sale and ask customers to select the options (categories) that fit what they’re looking for. Once you have this useful information you can send emails to your customers that are relevant and valuable to them.
Here are some ideas for getting your subscribers to update their profiles to give you the additional information you need to market more effectively:
- Opt-in Form. Start with a good opt-in form—don’t ask for too much information, but ask for enough. And only ask for information you intend to use.
- Contests. Hold a contest and post a contest entry form on your website. Link to this form from an email promoting the contest and require that the form be filled out entirely in order to enter the contest. Go ahead and require all of the fields—it’s not too much to ask for information in exchange for an entry into the contest. Make sure this new information is passed onto your email database through APIs or otherwise and that it can update the current email subscribers in the database with the additional information. If you promote the contest on your website (not just exclusively to your email list) remember that though you can ask for an opt-in to your email newsletter, you cannot require the opt-in in order to enter the contest.
- Send Periodic Info Update Emails. After the initial welcome email, send an email soliciting more information. Some kind of message that engages the customer to help you know what information to send them: “let us know what you’re interested in so we can send you emails you want to open,” for example. This can be especially useful if you don’t collect subscriber info upon sign-up (when you use a subscribe box on your home page, for example).
- Customize the Content. If you can customize the content of the email based on your subscribers’ preferences, let them know! Put a note near the content that can be customized mentioning that the information displayed can be customized by city, state, preference, etc. next time they receive the email if they update their preferences. Provide a link to your subscriber update page with this note.