It’s no secret; e-mail marketing remains our favorite communication tools. Some people think it’s passé, but trust us, it really isn’t. Tons of brands continue to rely on e-mail marketing and are achieving phenomenal results. Pinnacle is one of those; we get our best leads of which many generate valuable business opportunities from our weekly newsletters.

E-mail marketing is a bit more difficult than say Social Media Marketing though. Because there’s room to say a lot more than a quick post here and there, it takes a lot more effort to build a following and maintain momentum.

The content you share via e-mail marketing has to be primarily self-generated, fresh, relevant, researched well, and written even better. (Have you ever seen a newsletter that’s sharing what other people wrote? Not likely.) Most importantly, it has to be in-depth and of high value. Anything else, and you will see those opt-outs coming in faster than you’d like.

But how to write newsletters is material for a future article. For the sake of this one, we’re going to focus on the most important element; how you can grow your mailing list into numbers that make the entire endeavor feasible.

Your own business contacts

During the course of your daily business activities, you come across lots of people you meet and communicate with. Start getting into the habit of capturing contact details into a database that you can use for multiple purposes. It’s a bit of a pain, but it’ll pay off.

And the more information you capture, the more marketing power you will have at your disposal in the future. For example, in addition to the basics, you may also want to capture when you met that person, what you talked about, and what areas she/she had a particulars interest in.

Promote sign-ups extensively

The best contacts are those that sign-up and double opt-in. Those are the ones you rarely lose, provided your content remains of value to them.

Since you and your team are sending out tons of emails each day, take advantage of this outreach and include a short statement and link at the bottom of each e-mail (right after your signature) encouraging recipients to sign-up to your mailing list, and why they should do so and what they will benefit. You are already in contact with these individuals, and they know who you are. Why not capitalize on that?

Mailing lists you can get your hands on

This is a tricky – and even shady area. It’s not really considered best-practice to import massive contacts into your e-mailing system and start bombarding them. The law differs from country to country, but one thing is for sure, it’s certainly frowned upon in most regions.

However, sometimes it’s just too tempting. Some entities – such as Chambers – publish their lists of members that are nicely categorized into sectors, paid-in capital, cities, and what have you. Those sometimes amount into the tens of thousands. A true-blooded e-mail marketer will simply go ballistic when seeing such a piece of beauty!

So how can you really resist importing those and get started? You probably can’t. So make the best out of the situation and play by the rules. We did just that recently, and we got excellent results.

But we followed the rules. We personalized each message, and explicitly provided easy-to-follow instructions for how they can opt-out from our mailing list so they won’t be bothered again. This is far from our beloved double opt-in acquisition tactic, but it certainly lets people opt-out hassle free.

Paid services

There are lots of paid services that provide access to a wealth in information. Our favorite source is www.kinz.jo. There’s hardly a piece of information about a particular company you won’t find in there.

The data is continuously updated, and you can build targeted lists that are based on very specific parameters. For example, if you need to send out a promotional email to administrative managers that work in the industrial sector and in companies located in Sahab and have more than 100 employees, it’ll take you but a couple of minutes to build a list and save it as a favorite. You can use their e-mailing system to send out targeted and very focused campaigns to market this or that to particular query or saved search.

Browse the web

We make it a habit to keep searching the web for relevant contacts and locating at least ten each day. This doesn’t sound like much, but it’s hard work and builds up slowly to an impressive list.

If you allocate someone to spend about half an hour each day to search and acquire contact details of particular market segments (and groups those as such), you have a small, but very promising mailing group that will be very interested in reading a newsletter you compile specifically for them.

To demonstrate how effective this can be, let’s assume you’re in the business of providing clients with outsourced social media marketing services. So how do you go about acquiring leads? You can search Facebook for pages that have really low numbers, look up their contact details from their websites, and segment this group in your mailing system so you can send them a periodic newsletter about how you can help them outperform their competitors in record time by using your unbelievable services.

Always observe the rules

Whatever you do with your mailing list, be nice and play by the rules. Always give recipients the chance to opt-out with the click of the mouse, honor their requests immediately, and never send them anything again unless they choose to rejoin your mailing list. Don’t overdo it, and keep it at one e-mail shot per week at the most. Send people only relevant content, and never ever share their contact details with anyone else outside your organization.

Happy e-mail marketing!

 About the Author

Pinnacle Business & Marketing Consulting is a results-driven boutique consulting firm that specializes in providing clients with practical and pragmatic solutions to their business and marketing challenges.

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