Authored by Phil Cohen
Why E-mail Capture Matters for Businesses
In order to sell your product, your business needs to have a strong following of some sort. Whether it be social media, snail mail, or e-mail, there are many ways to get your business information out there. In this blog post, we are going to discuss how to grow your e-mail following. If you are just starting out and haven’t started building yet, I will also go over how to get started!
Starting Out:
If your startup is just beginning, the best thing you can do is create solid content. Create a white paper and promote it on social media. In order to receive the white paper, the readers will have to provide their e-mail address. This way you will be able to keep it for future use on all of your future marketing blasts. Using Twitter and Facebook will get the word out about your company. If you write a solid piece that is going to help others learn, you are guaranteed results. Quality is always better than quantity in this case. It is important to come off as “spammy” to consumers. Ensuring that you have quality content on your site is important. This will drive your time on site up as well push more traffic to your site.
Form a Contest:
If your business is not suitable for a white paper, do something as simple as running a contest. There are many apps that can be used to run a contest through either Facebook or Twitter and utilize e-mail capture as entries for a contest. This a very simple way to build up e-mails. You simply need to offer a prize that will be valuable to readers. Whether it be a gift card to your store, general gift card, or discount on services at your establishment, there are many options that are available. Quizzes are also a great way to get e-mails. Create a beneficial quiz for consumers to take with the answer/solution awaiting for them via e-mail once they submit. Be careful how you set up your contests, though. Social media sites have strict guidelines in which you must follow in order to post your campaign. If you don’t follow them, your post will most likely be taken down.
Promote Your Business on Social Media
By promoting your business on social media, you are able to promote your newsletter, coupons, or any other reason why you want to get e-mail addresses for. Twitter and Facebook are the easiest platforms to get your business out in the open. Post your content out on social media to grab the attention of potential clients and entice them to sign up for e-mails. Remember, you don’t always have to promote something. You can post a funny joke, share an article, picture, anything. Less is more. Utilize hash tags, and follow trends that are popular on Twitter. Create organic conversations.
Invest in the Right E-mail Service:
Whether it be Constant Contact, MailChimp, Marketo, or any other type of e-mail service, make sure you get the perks! If you are investing the money in order to get a safe and secure e-mail address, you should also look into whether or not they offer A-B testing, or any other type of monitoring. This way you can see how many people are opening your e-mails, how much they have read, etc. E-mail services are also great for drip marketing campaigns that can build up relationships that were built off a a simple e-mail subscription sign up.
DO NOT Buy Email Addresses
I repeat, DO NOT buy e-mail addresses. Although it maybe tempting, not only is buying e-mail addresses and spamming them with content illegal, it can ruin the integrity of your brand. Many companies who buy e-mail addresses can get themselves into a lot of trouble with the law. Aside from legality, your e-mails will most likely be pushed through spam filters and won’t be seem by consumers anyway. In addition, if Google gets wind of it, they will de-index your site and ruin all the work that you have tried to build up. It’s just not worth it.
Offer More Than Just Products on Your Site
Viewers to your site will be turned off if the site is too salesy. By all means, promote your products and services, but the more spammy your site looks, the less e-mail sign ups you will get. It is important to have tools and things people can actually get knowledge out of in order for them to move forward and (hopefully) sign up for your newsletter. It can’t hurt to also put a disclaimer about how often e-mails will be sent. No one likes daily e-mails cluttering their inbox.
Host a Booth at an Industry Specific Event
No matter what industry your business is in, there are always tailored events surrounding it. Pick an event to throw up a booth at to display your products and services. This way consumers can walk around and learn about your business. Those interested can get their ID badges scanned by you which goes into a collection of contact info that you can use to follow up with them after the event. Everybody wins.
Progress Comes With Time
Building up your e-mail list for your business will take some time. There is no quick fix to getting a strong e-mail following. Any quick fix you may see online can lead to getting marked as spam and even receive punishment from Google. So be careful with your choices! The best thing to do is try to achieve REAL organic e-mails from people who are actually interested in your business. Otherwise, you will have a bunch of junk e-mail addresses from people who won’t open your newsletters. That would defeat the whole purpose, right?
If your company needs some extra funds to make these marketing efforts happen, we can help. We offer many financial solutions for business that have slow-paying clients. Fill out a form on our website or give us a call. We can help you grow your business.