Tips for Effectively Managing Your Subscribers
Your email list is the group of contacts you depend on for purchases, growth and community, so it's important you treat them (and their inboxes) properly. Remember: They're people, too!
We asked two, full-time email marketing gurus to share some wisdom, so you are equipped to show your email list you value them.
Research your Audience
Claire Judson is a Senior Associate of Email Marketing for uShip.com - the world’s largest marketplace for shipping services. She has managed uShip’s email campaigns for two years. She offers:
The first question I ask myself when planning a campaign is “Who am I sending this to?”
"In our case, uShip.com is live in seventeen different countries, each with localized email campaigns. If you are working internationally it is especially important to research local business practices and SPAM legislation.
Last year, uShip went live in India, where most Internet transactions take place in English. Rather than re-using the same US-localized content for India, my team researched local business communication standards prior to launching our India-targeted email campaigns. We determined that our general activation copy needed to be adjusted to include highly formal copy and to focus more on building trust with our customers."
Deliver Quality Content
Daniel Burstein of MECLABS looks at marketing as a science. MECLABS is a research-based resource for business leaders specializing in marketing and technology. Daniel is the Director of Editorial Content at MECLABS (which includes Marketing Experiments & Marketing Sherpa).
"Some people compare email marketing to direct mail. I think a more apt analogy is a newspaper. My hometown newspaper, The Florida Times-Union, gets the permission to deliver a newspaper on my driveway because of the quality of its content. Then, within that newspaper, there are offers for products. You should look at your email list the same way.
If you're only sending direct mail-type offers and just trying to sell, sell, sell, you will not earn the permission to be in your prospects' inbox or to be opened. Delivering quality content is the price of admission, then you can include relevant direct response offers."
Email Karma
Remember, inboxes are sacred space and your subscribers are human. Try and fill inboxes with emails you'd like to receive in your own.
Making these subscriber tips part of your email marketing philosophy is a step toward elevating the quality of your emails.
