MarketingProfs

A guest post by Paul Turnbull.

Keeping in theme with Valentine’s Day, I’ve pulled together a list of tips to help marketers nurture their customer relationships all year long. These tips may seem like relationship advice from Cupid, but they should also be taken to heart when it comes to email list building and maintenance.

Incorporating these simple tactics can strengthen the value of your email program long after the images of flowers and valentines are stored away until next year.

Tip #1: Target the heart of your affection.
Like Cupid’s arrows, your email campaigns should be targeted. Don’t send the same valentine greeting card to both your date and your mother. Relationships vary in degrees of love, and they vary in business as well. Use different sign-up forms to track each contact source, and test different approaches to see what works best for each. Over time, by reviewing the level of interaction your email campaigns receive, you can see which sources generally have the most engaged contacts and segment future campaigns accordingly.

Tip: #2: Make sure you’re on the same page.
Build your relationship with your audience by setting expectations up front. Don’t subtly try to trick people into opting into your list; instead, make it clear and compelling. Getting more or different emails than expected is a typical reason people unsubscribe—or worse, mark your emails as spam later on. Make it easy for subscribers to adjust their email preferences or let you know what they would like changed or improved to make your emails more valuable, ideally before they unsubscribe from your mailings.

Tip: #3: It’s the thought that counts.
Purchasing or harvesting a list will never yield the same quality as a permission-based list you build yourself. When building a quality mailing list, it is just as important to maintain the list to ensure it performs well. Just like personal relationships, your email list needs attention. Remove inactive recipients as they can negatively impact your reputation over time. One of the many metrics a reputation system uses to evaluate reputation is engagement. A high amount of interaction creates a strong signal to the ISP that your email is wanted, anticipated, and appreciated. Therefore, it is in their (and your) best interest to place the email in the inbox.

Tip #4: Keep the love alive.
Re-engaging inactive subscribers is easy. First, determine what an appropriate period of inactivity is. Depending on the nature of your business, frequency of your emails, and the expectation you’ve set with your subscribers, this amount of time will vary. For instance, a “daily deals” sender may want to re-engage inactive subscribers after four months of inactivity basis whereas a monthly newsletter sender may want to wait 12 months.

To re-engage, send a survey request or a simple email asking them to re-confirm their subscription by clicking on a call to action. The call to action is a tracked link pointing to a page on your website that thanks them for re-confirming and provides additional information, such as white listing instructions or a mailing schedule, so people know what to expect. Following 10 to 14 days after sending the re-engagement email, remove people who did not click the call to action.

Paul Turnbull is the product manager for Campaigner and is responsible for product design and providing an easy-to-use email marketing solution for SMBs. He can be reached at paul.turnbull@j2global.com.

Tags: customer experience, customers, Email Marketing, Marketing, Strategy and Tactics