Email Marketing: The Advantages of Creating and Managing a Contact List
- August 23, 2021
A marketing contact list serves as the key to any B2B organization and is one of the first things any business should do.
The Basics of a Marketing Contact List
Ideally, a contact list contains everyone to whom your product (or service) was sold or those who showed interest, but -for some reason- didn’t buy.
Once you have a reasonable number of people in your contact list, you can start communicating your message, initially, with the goal of creating brand recognition and afterward generating potential customers or up-selling opportunities to the existing ones.
Building a Contact List
1) We’ve already mentioned that whoever bought your product or service should be on your contact list! In addition to this, you should also add people of interest who digitally or physically (networking) provided an email.
2) The most important thing you can never forget is that you need the contact’s approval in order to send an email and store his personal data. There are many ways to garner this contact information, although in all cases, you should be careful to ensure that your product or service is relevant.
3) If it’s the first contact, present your product and show several reasons why this new partnership could benefit both.
NOTE: Don’t forget to give the contact the opportunity to unsubscribe from your Email Marketing list!
Existing Contacts
Remember to update your contact list with contacts you already had: past and current customers, personal information, and also if your product is right for them.
A good practice would be to call all of your old customers to confirm that they are happy and willing to receive and find out about your new product/service.
Website
On your website, it’s super important to have a field where you can collect information from your visitors – such as a form or a newsletter subscription field. Offer something like a bargaining chip in exchange for their email address.
Did you know that you can sell products on Telegram?
Getting in touch from the contact list
Once you’ve, finally, built a good email marketing list (or database), you can start sending emails. Email marketing is very cheap, and there are several types of services on the internet that provide this type of product for a few euros a month.
Email Marketing
When it comes to sending your message regularly to all the contacts who have accepted to receive that communication, nothing beats the good old-fashioned email.
You can send different emails to different groups of people – if you have your contact list well segmented.
We are not going deep into how to write the perfect email for your customer or potential customer, but our advice goes like this: keep your contact list up to date! Remove bounced and canceled emails, or you could be flagged as a spammer. If this happens, you will have the misfortune of all your emails being bounced or ending up in spam filters.
To go deeper into how to create successful campaigns, you can read this step-by-step guide to getting started with your email marketing strategy.
Content
Ironically, mailing a letter has some costs associated with it, depending on its size, weight, and content. So, there should be no problems at all at hiring an efficient team that manages your Email Marketing and writes the email – they are professionals who know how to develop a message and where to place the correct CTAs.
Segmenting the contact list
The more contacts you get, the better the organization should be. Make different lists of…
Customers, potential customers and onlookers
You will certainly want to separate your existing customers from “potential customers” and “curious customers”. Potential customers are those with whom you have already had a conversation and who have shown interest. A “curious” is just a name on the list, someone who we suspect might be interested, but with whom we haven’t had any interaction yet.
So, you may want to send communications more often to people who have recently expressed an interest in your offer, using a drip marketing campaign.
Discover how Marketing Automation segments your contact list, according to the criteria you define.
Contact List and Marketing
As with all marketing activities, building a contact list takes time, and you shouldn’t expect a massive influx of leads and sales when you make your first contact. But over the years, as your contact list grows and people become more familiar with your brand and product, you may be in for a positive surprise!
Continue reading- Marketing Reporting: what metrics you should ask your agency
