Here are some tips from James Diamond’s Session at SMX Melbourne 2011 Online Marketer Boot Camp at the Hilton Melbourne.
Topic: Email List Growth
Learn how to build your Membership base via Opt-in Sources, Motivators, Online vs Offline Registration and writing great “Welcome” message for your new List Members.
Speaker: James Diamond – Regional Sales Manager – AU & NZ, Experian CheetahMail
The welcome email is the highest converting email you will ever send
Email is still growing but its share is not growing
Important to make sure dialogue flows, not just pushing products down their throat
Ways to make them Opt-In:
– Ask
– Force – you don’t get access to this content unless you subscribe. Content behind closed doors. The value to effort ratio swings around
– Trick – Most of the time if you show someone a registration form, they perceive the effort will be more than the value. Conversion higher if you make it a survey or something else and tag on the opt-in
Ways to capture email
– Lightbox – whole website will fade away and box comes up with name and email
– Sidebar
– After Content
– Bottom
Capture Friends of Friends
Example – Catch of the Day
Did viral program, saying like one of these, and the one with the most likes we will sell next week at clearance:
– Xbox 360
– Sony Playstation 3
– Nintendo Wii
Exposed COTD to over 3.5million people through Facebook
Can also have refer a friend / email a friend forms
– Says due to compliance laws on Australia / NZ, best not to have people entering 30 emails, they restrict it to 5 friends on a refer a friend campaign
Incentivize your staff that face customers
Like a lead generation contest, some retailers have done this well
Emails from Facebook
Facebook now enables us to put registration pages on Facebook, using tabs can have competitions or email registration forms, great way to put mechanisms in place where the eyeballs are, Facebook can pre-fill these forms out with the information you have on your account
You can just iframe a web page registration form into Facebook
Polls and Surveys
Customers love giving their opinions
Hold a competition
Works very well in Australia, Australians love free stuff, in America they are more sceptical and think what are you going to do with their info or whats the catch.
You enter the competition via registration
Offer free information
Put them behind certain walls of registration processes
Loyalty Programs
Some think the perceived effort to start a loyalty program is complex
But has worked on the big end to maintain market share. Joked that Qantas share price would be 20% of what it is now without the loyalty program.
Ask for emails at Point of Sale
Jeans West do a very good job of this, staff are trained to say when you give me your credit card give us your drivers licence so we can check your name, address and then ask for their email. Takes away some of their effort, plus now you have their age, postal address, everything.
Welcome emails
Vistaprint says – go back into our website and get 20% off. A large number of people after getting the welcome email go back into the website and buy. Encourages click throughs back to the website to buy products that you didn’t buy the first time
Says Free Shipping is the single biggest thing and online- tell them their first transaction has no shipping, often they will go straight back into your website and buy
Timing – Best times to send emails
Best time around 10-11am mark is what they are seeing across their customers
You want them to just see your email pop up
Don’t want them coming back after a break or night and seeing a whole stack of old emails with yours mixed in, will just all get deleted
Catch of the Day model is middle of the day – 12midday on the dot
They do Brands Exclusive – they want to send out 730am in the morning, now 630am, they want to be that first email of the day before that chunk of emails comes in the morning.
Remember – spam laws force you to maintain record of where they subscribed
