Nine Tips for Building Your E-mail Housefile

All of my favorite catalogs (both business and consumer) regularly e-mail to me promotions or newsletters. It appears that today’s catalogers are taking e-mail communication seriously and devoting significant marketing efforts to regularly contacting customers and prospects. Indeed, a cataloger’s e-mail file is a valuable asset in building site traffic and sales. Following are nine tips to aggressively grow your e-mail list.

Prominently feature on your Web site’s home page an invitation to sign up for

e-mailed communications. Most catalogs offer a subscription for e-mail specials or newsletters; but they can be amazingly hard to find. Sometimes I have to scroll down below the “page fold” to find it. Sometimes it’s buried in a list box of features. And sometimes it isn’t even on the home page!

Be sure your invitation stands out. The upper-right or upper-left sections of your home page are optimal positions. Web usage studies have shown that those places are where the eye is likely to go.

One company significantly increased its sign-ups by moving the registration area from the bottom-left position to the more visible top-right area of its home page.

Keep sign-up simple. Ask for e-mail addresses first. When site visitors click “submit,” bring up a page that asks for first and last name and permission to communicate with them in the future.

Tip: Test carefully to see how many additional questions you can ask before the abandon rate escalates.

Capture subscriptions on multiple pages of your Web site. First-time visitors may reach your home page but not be ready to provide you with their personal information until they know more about your products and services. As they explore your site, hopefully, they’ll become more engaged.

Tip: Examine your site logs to determine which areas have the highest traffic, and include a sign-up area on those pages.

Create viral marketing promotions. Encourage customers and prospects on your e-list to pass e-mails along to their friends. Some catalogers create a specific promotion with a reward, such as a $5-off coupon if a list member passes the e-mail along to a friend and that friend registers with the site. Other catalogers include a button suggesting members forward the e-mail to colleagues.

These viral marketing techniques are effective and low-cost.

Tip: Keep track of which customers forward your e-mails on to others, and treat those customers well. These are your evangelists.

Consider affiliate programs. Many catalogers have found affiliate programs to effectively drive site traffic. The neat thing about affiliate programs is that you get to decide your main objectives and construct a payment system that rewards that behavior.

For example, you may want to pay only if someone registers at your site, or only if he or she buys from the site. Many catalogers work with the larger affiliate sites such

as BeFree, LinkShare and Commission Junction, while others appear to have created their own programs.

Test e-mail for acquisition. Some catalogers try to do too much with their prospecting e-mail efforts and undoubtedly come away disappointed. An e-mail prospect may be unfamiliar with your brand, products or services; as a result they’re less likely to buy immediately.

Tip: Try a two-pronged strategy. Include links to specific products and services, and links to your subscription registration page. If you capture prospects’ e-mail addresses and get their permission to continue a dialogue, you can nurture those relationships and later convert them to customers.

Try contests, surveys and other promotions periodically on your site. They add fun and interactivity. When visitors participate, be sure to ask for their e-mail addresses and gain permission to communicate with them in the future.

As you build your e-mail list, remember to manage permission. Permission is not a one-time event. List members can opt-out of future e-mails with a simple mouse-click, so monitor your opt-outs carefully. If the rate rises, your content may be off-target, or you may be communicating too often. You certainly don’t want your list size to erode.

Conclusion: It’s terrific that so many catalogers do e-mail marketing right.

As a catalog shopper, I certainly welcome the compelling and interesting content that’s delivered to me. I appreciate the distinctiveness in style and design, along with some of the great subject lines that get me to open the messages. I like the personal touches, such as addressing the mailing specifically to me and having it signed by a real person.

These catalogers certainly are cementing my loyalty.

Reggie Brady is president of Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions. You can reach her via e-mail at: reginabrady@compuserve.com.