This is the first episode from a series of videos that will tackle commonly asked questions about marketing. David Meerman Scott, a Marketer in Residence at HubSpot , responds to frequent challenges marketers and business owners face and offers tips to solve these issues. We encourage you to submit a question and subscribe to our Weekly Marketing Cast !
In this episode, David Meerman Scott offers insights about growing your email marketing list. How do you grow the number of people who have given you permission to communicate with them?
Keep Track of Unsubscription Rates
A critical metric in email marketing, David notes, is not necessarily how the number of "net new people" increases, but if the number of existing subscribers decreases. "As soon as you start to send too many sales-related emails, as soon as you start to take advantage of people's valuable time, they are going to delete the subscription," David says.
Marketing takeaway: Don't focus on building new subscribers at the cost of losing existing ones.
Provide Value on an Ongoing Basis
To lower your unsubscription rates, you will need to be providing something of value in each message that you send to your leads and prospects. Though you can promote one of your products "once in a while," make sure you use the majority of your emails to offer valuable information such as reports, blog posts and engaging videos. "I would never promote a product more than once in every 10 emails," says David.
Marketing takeaway: Make sure your emails are dominated by valuable and informative information and less sales-centric offers.
Focus on Sharing Capabilities
When you provide value overtime, you will encourage recipients to forward these emails to others who might be interested in the same type of content. Such peer sharing will help you grow your list and nurture prospects into leads and potential customers.
Marketing takeaway: Include "Forward This Email" or/and social media buttons that facilitate the email sharing process.
No matter what your distinct approach to growing your email marketing list, you will certainly need to make one commitment - show respect for your recipients. As David says, "Don't abuse the trust people have given you by allowing you to be able to talk to them."
Inbound Marketing Blog Feed
jill 2:06 PM on November 22, 2010
thanks for the information i will have to take this into consideration
Portland SEO Company 2:18 PM on November 22, 2010
The biggest challenge is the beginning. How do you go from 0 to 1 subscriber, and on from there. Social media is a great way to put your product and opt-in email subscriptions in front of potential subscribers.
Mitch Tarr 2:42 PM on November 22, 2010
The point about watching unsubscribe rates is an often overlooked statistic in email marketing. When you see a spike in unsubs you are being sent a clear message from your readers. Make sure you pay attention.
Scott Bush 4:30 PM on November 22, 2010
David,
While I completely agree with you that e-marketing (specifically newsletters) should be focused on providing tremendous content, does your 10 to 1 rule apply to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook?
Personally, I think the more content you can share (and entertainment) without asking for anything in return, is the best way to practice business, regardless of platform.
What do you think? I'd love to hear your answer.
Thanks.
aharon 6:36 PM on November 22, 2010
What if the content that we provide has to do with our products- without pushing the sale?
Shriharsha Bhat 5:43 AM on November 23, 2010
Really good advice. I used to use this tactic earlier for a different organization. The subscribers used to dig the fact that we were essentially giving out "free information", even though we used to include in a link or two about our products/services in the email...
David Meerman Scott 11:39 AM on November 23, 2010
Scott - it's not a "rule" but more like a guideline. I think with Twitter and Facebook I would do outward promotion of your companies products much less than 10% of the time.
Alun Maxwell 6:44 AM on November 24, 2010
I think the social media sharing buttons within your autoresponder signature are a very good idea. As for determining why unsubscribes happen, it's not an exact science. Some people like to have an 'unsubscribe fest' now and then to avoid getting swamped. It may not ne your content that's at fault. I would agree though that a series of sales-only e-mails is a little disrespectful to your list.
ANZOPTINLISTBUILDING 11:29 PM on November 24, 2010
Great Honest content, right on the mark. I think this approach relates well to Social Marketing where people have a tendency to be aloof to marketers accept in side panel advertisements, or at least that's the current buzz. I still see a stand off attitude even when content is king in social network environments. Overcoming this hurdle will mean valuable relationships as Facebook and twitter continue to gain ground on google as a traffic source. Feedback Curious....