Four Ways of Keeping Contacts Active Using Email Marketing
Email marketing solutions can only be successful if your contact list is first-class. Despite this, email marketing solutions industry research has enlightened those interested by suggesting that some three months after they’ve signed up, your contacts will begin to be unresponsive to your email marketing solutions efforts. This is something common and should be expected, although there are ways to be certain that the group of waning contacts is kept to a small number. This will also mean that the number of your high quality contacts is larger on average. This article’s focus is on four helpful tips to help you maintain a high quality email marketing solutions contact list.
“Important Client” Incentives:
Whenever you have something to sell to a customer, employing special promotions will keep your contacts’ attention on your newsletters and services. Giving a discount to your contacts that have not responded by opening emails in recent months can bring them back to the active column. Plus, sending offers to recently unresponsive contacts needs to provide them the chance to update their contact preferences etc. Gathering more data on what they are looking for as a customer and getting more current information will help you know your customer’s needs better.
Send an Email Asking Their Opinion:
The best way to discover why a customer hasn’t been opening your emails is to ask them. Using email marketing software you can create a survey (that is quick and easy to fill out) so that in-actives can provide you with feedback. This is valuable information on things to avoid, but more importantly will tell you EXACTLY what particular users need from you so that you maintain them as active contacts. The survey will have questions relevant to your services, but be sure to also include things like a “preferred kind of message” section, or “best time to contact by email” section and of course a “comments and suggestions” section.
Keep Closer Scrutiny on Your Contacts:
Often times you’ll notice that there are chunks of subscribers not responding to your emails that all have similarities. Through these similarities you might be able to determine how to get through to those groups. You might find there is a section of your subscribers that are all in a particular demographic that you haven’t been targeting in your email marketing software campaigns: young men, older women, single parents, or people in a different time zone, etc. By taking a closer look at your contacts you might get a lightning bolt idea as to why they have not previously responded and can easily remedy it so that your email marketing software yields even better results.
Change Your Emailing Strategy:
There is no harm in spending a little time testing-out different ways of sending to determine if it can attract a few more in-actives to the “good side”.
If you have made a routine of sending out your contacts at lunch (because that’s when you’ve found the time!) try varying blasting times. Keep track of if the different time of sending produces a change in reaction. Another suggestion is to modify how frequently you are sending out your email marketing solutions campaigns. If you’ve been sending once every two weeks, trying sending once every two months, or once a month.
Also, try creating different content. In your analysis of you contacts if you’ve noticed a trend among in-actives, consider packaging the content differently for this group. You can also mess around with the format of your email marketing software campaigns. Start testing the differences between text versions vs. more dynamic looking campaigns.
A major component is your subject line. Often all that is required of you is to change the subject line to bring back your inactive contacts. An inactive subscriber might have been reluctant to open your emails because your subject line is always the same or very similar to all the other messages sent. Your in active subscriber is likely making the assumption that if the subject line doesn’t change, neither does the content of the email marketing campaign.
Testing out different methods of sending out campaigns will activate the pulses on some of your more zombie-like subscribers, but will also give you valuable information on what their wants and needs are.
Experienced email marketers put the time in to work on their contact list. Now is your opportunity to ensure that you are getting the most out of your email marketing campaigns by putting in that added elbow grease so that your subscribers are aware of and listening to your messages.
Rudy Barell is a Senior Development Executive with Elite Email, the #1 email marketing used by businesses around the globe. Create eye-catching emails and track your success with detailed reports for your email marketing solutionsTry it free!
