Email List Building is the first step in Online Business

Email List building is an essential step for every business whether they are doing business online or offline if they want to grow.  However, list-building online is a lot easier and cost-effective than manually or buying a list from the sellers. Even if you think the sellers have legitimately built the list you purchased.

I am a GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation 2018) consultant. When this regulation was rolled out, digital marketers predicted it would be the death of email marketing. However, email marketing went strength to strength. The Return on Investment, when using email marketing, is £42 for every £1 spent.

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Experian predicts that an email is on average worth £84.40. This statistic is from the research conducted in 2012.  I am sure this has improved.

If a business uses email marketing ethically and respectfully, then they can see results shortly. Email Marketing is a cost-effective way, and returns are high for any business to ignore. At the same, the business needs to be responsible when using this channel.

What is Email List Building?

Email List building is a methodology to collect the email and other information from the potential clients when visiting your website. In some instances, these details are captured without any freebies delivered.

Some of the details, collected are First name, Surname, Phone and email address. However, I always said, collect just name and email address unless you will use others in your marketing.

When you collect more information, it is hard to manage because as businesses are the managers of data, if misused or lost, cleaning up company reputation becomes hard. In post GDPR era, it is an offence, and you are fined.

Do’s & Don’ts of Email List Building

1. Don’t hold on to data which you are not going to use in the future.

When I was consulting to implement GDPR,  I saw at the data collected by businesses. I was amazed. They were holding onto information which they didn’t need when it came to the leads.  The leads are not your customers yet. On average, you will be converting 20% of the leads into customers. Rest may trickle in, and some may never be your customers. So, collect only the data what you need when it comes to leads.  When they become your customers, you can collect more data from them. Saving unnecessary information is waste on your resources where you store them.

2. Segment your list and keep them appropriate

When you build the list, you must segment them so that you can personalise the emails. I used to get emails about offers even after I have made my purchase. What used to rattle me further is when I had paid, more money to buy that product and I get an email with lower cost. I can rationalise the opportunity cost, but still, it made me cross. So, segmenting your list will increase retention and goodwill.

3. Cleanse your database every 12-18 months.

You don’t want to waste your time, energy and resources by having stale leads who have not opened your emails, have not brought anything from you. If you’re going to keep freebie consumers, then you can. However, others on the list are going.

4. Send email blast during seasonal holidays

This tactic is more of a novelty. I know when I get birthday notes or birthday personalised offers or seasonal offers; I am over the moon. That means collecting the day and month of the potential clients’ birthday or anniversary or important dates. You can send them emails on the special days along with other seasonal days. I have bought products because they remembered my birthday and bothered to send emails with the offer.

5. Set up GDPR Policies and processes such as privacy policy and cookies policy. Also, have a data deletion request and deletion processes
6. Choose the Right Platform, where you can scale and easy to create email campaigns.  

That is me for today. I will see you tomorrow with another topic on List Building.