image for Web Podcast - Episode 12: Mailing Lists

Web Podcast - Episode 12: Mailing Lists

Since 2007 Matt Reid has delved into the depths of web development and since then built over 400 websites for clients New Zealand wide. He has a deep understanding of business and web development therefore can deliver effective solutions that generate results.



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What you will want to do is create a list of customers or clients, who have purchased through your business, and you can use their emails to remarket other products and services to them.

Most of us nowadays, (I’ve previously spoke about automating and having a CRM) we should all have a system in place that keeps track of our customers, not just in your accounting system for accounting but for everything else like marketing, sales, follow ups and other related areas of your business.

I’ll go into detail about that in another episode, but you need to have a list of your people as well as leads and prospects for marketing new products, if they haven’t yet engaged you.

There’s lots of different ways to collect email addresses, and it’s from the obvious things like sign up forms on your website, to other things such as recording their email if they ask for a quote.

If you’re doing a sign-up form on your website then it’s best to have an offer with it, you’ll see all the time “Get the free ebook if you sign up” or even similar with a podcast or webinar, get people to register their email to attend the webinar. Even something more simple like “Start today with our companies details or our latest updates”. That’s a good way of capturing emails.

The thing is if you do it the way where you’re offering a free ebook for the email address it appears spammy and can put a lot of people off. So, you will actually find that if you offer something genuine and to the point, that can often be good enough. Offer “Just register your email here if you’d like to keep up with our latest specials, we promise to not spam you”.
As I said, the sales orientated way can come off a little spammy.

So, it’s important to have a good list of people, not just their email address, get more information like the services or products that they’re interested in, if you’re selling a range of products. If you’re a stationery shop and you sell a range of goods like pens, books, bags, desks and chairs, then there will be some people who are only interested in art supplies. So if you can segment that list into art supplies only, then when you do your mailouts you’ll have a targeted audience.
Whereas if you send it to Joe Bloggs who wants computer desks, and he ends up getting newsletters about art supplies, it won’t be long until he deletes the email.

Also, the issue with that is if you’re sending irrelevant emails to your list, and not segmenting correctly, you’ll find a lot of people will unsubscribe because they’re not getting relevant stuff to what they require.

Keep with your email addresses, if you can, some idea of what the customer is looking for as well as their name and so on. That’s very important.

You should also consider how you use that list and the frequency in which you use it.
Some companies will send out emails every day. Personally I don’t think this is a good thing to do. If however, the person has signed up to course you’re running and they’re getting updates from you with professional advice or tips, then that’s okay.
If it’s sales material, do not send it out daily. You don’t want to overwhelm the clients inbox with lots of emails from you, especially if they just say the same thing over and over again. They won’t really see it anymore.
If you’re sending an email once a week, or once a month, it pops out too them and they’re more receptive to it. If it’s every day they’ll not find the time to read the email and they’ll unsubscribe.

People ask me “What is the best way to store this information?” and I believe the best way to store your email list is via software like MailChimp, where you can build your campaign, send it and track the open and click rate through there. It’s also easy to make campaigns too.

I don’t endorse, and neither am I sponsored by them, it’s just from my own experience.
If you have a CRM system, you can link it automatically through an API to MailChimp, that way you don’t have to export the list manually. This will obviously save time, and time is money as you all know.

So that’s my ideas for you guys, use MailChimp, it’s probably the best way to start and embed it on your website. Make sure you have a plan together first, then segment your list when you send newsletter campaigns so that you get the best results.

Cool, thats Matt from the RAZOR Web Design Wire Podcast, join us next time.