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How to Improve Email Deliverability Rates: Expert Advice + Strategies

by Chris Herbert | Last Updated May 25, 2021

How to Improve Email Deliverability Rates

Much is made of email marketing’s reputation for being a marketing channel that can deliver BIG in terms of ROI, but there’s one thing that can quickly turn dollars into despair. Oh you know we’re talking about email deliverability. If your emails aren’t landing in the inbox they’re about as much use as a chocolate teapot! Poor deliverability means even though you’re investing time and money, a significant proportion of your subscribers don’t hear a peep from you, most likely feeling a little abandoned, and that isn’t any way to nurture a relationship!

But it’s not all doom and gloom. If your email deliverability rates are low, don’t throw the towel in just yet. There ARE lots of things you can do to remedy this. A remarkable number of things that are under your control in fact. And to help take you on that journey from email doldrums to inbox bliss, we spoke to 24 experts who have decades of combined experience in this area, to get their thoughts on the steps you need to take to increase email deliverability.

Now it’s up to you. We’ve sought out the world-class advice for you, now you need to put it into practice. So scroll down the page and start learning about the changes you need to make to your email marketing program to get more of your emails hitting the target.

If you’ve used any of the email deliverability tips shared in this article, we’d love to hear about the results you achieved in the comments section!

Strategies to Improve Deliverability

How to Increase Email Deliverability in 2021: 24 Experts Weigh In

“Which strategy will improve my email deliverability?” is probably a thought you have quite often if you run an email marketing program, and below you’ll find a top-level overview of all of the strategies that were shared in the making of this post. There’s no push-button secret shortcut that will improve your email deliverability rates without any effort, but if you implement the advice shared by these experts, you’ll see gains in time.

  1. Reengage or Disengage
  2. Implement Real-Time Email Verification on All Subscription Forms
  3. Seedlist Testing – Why It Is Important
  4. Mind Your Canaries: Know Your Early Warning Signs and How to Monitor Them
  5. Differentiate Your Message Types By Sending IP and From Address
  6. Implement BIMI
  7. Know What the Best Practices Say
  8. Email Authentication with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
  9. Deliverability Doesn’t Care About Your Business Model
  10. Opt-Down and Reduce Cadence to Users As They Age
  11. Send LESS Email
  12. Improve Engagement
  13. Setting Clear Expectations for New Subscribers
  14. Build a Welcome Series
  15. Email List Management is Key
  16. Monitor Both Your Campaigns and Your Reputation
  17. Inboxing – Constantly Warm Up Your Sending Domain and IP Address
  18. Proper Data Management
  19. 3 Incorrect Beliefs that Could Seriously Damage Your Email Deliverability
  20. Build the Trust You Need to Deliver an Email
  21. Avoid Big List Syndrome
  22. DO NOT BUY EMAIL LISTS!
  23. Segment Your Email List
  24. Be Ethical and Protect Your Inbox Reputation

Other Articles You May Find Useful:

  • Best Email Marketing Software for Small Business? 104 Pros Vote
  • How to Increase Your Email Open Rate: 42 Pros Offer Expert Advice
  • Best Email Marketing Books: What Do The Pros Recommend You Read?
  • How to Build an Email List: 75 Experts Share Their Secrets
  • All Email Marketing Resources

What the Experts Said: Email Deliverability Tips Explained

This section is where we’re hiding all the game-changing advice, where our experts explain their tips in greater detail for you. There’s so much value in what they’ve shared. I learned tons about email deliverability by reading through each tip, and I’m 100% sure you will too!

If there’s one tip that catches your eye, you can skip right to it by using the handy filters below.

{"filter_mode":"masonry"}
  • All
  • Do Not Buy Email Lists!
  • Real-Time Email Verification
  • Improve Engagement
  • Mind Your Canaries
  • Segment Your Email List
  • Send LESS Email
  • Opt-Down/Reduce Cadence
  • Data Management
  • Inboxing
  • Change Sending IP and From Address
  • Set Clear Expectations
  • Protect Inbox Reputation
  • Reengage or Disengage
  • Build Trust
  • Big List Syndrome
  • BIMI
  • Your Business Model is Irrelevant
  • Seedlist Testing
  • Monitor Campaigns + Reputation
  • List Management
  • 3 Incorrect Beliefs
  • Know the Best Practices
  • Build Welcome Series
  • SPF + DKIM + DMARC

André Goermer

Recognized as a resourceful and intuitive leader, I offer over 15 years of diversified experience in the advancement of professional services programs within the digital industry. I have been leveraged as a trusted business partner capable of positioning clients for growth and profitability through the management of targeted digital strategies.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andregoermer/

  • Email Authentication with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC

    – “Internet Service Providers (Microsoft, Verizon, Gmail & more) across the globe have the goal to protect their recipients/customers from Spam and mostly from Phishing attacks. Brands have the objective to land with their marketing campaigns in the recipient’s inbox. One of many methods to distinguish between an email marketing campaign from a brand and a phishing email is the verification of the sender.

    SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are three acronyms with which email marketers will have to get more familiar in order to prevent email phishers from using a brand to spam or domain spoof, as well as being informed about phishing attempts through alert notifications.

    Instead of drowning in jargon, let’s visit an analogy to explain the concepts of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. The SPF record is a “document” that contains the name of the only authorized “virtual postman” – let’s call him Pat – who is in charge of delivering an email marketing campaign to the recipient. If done this way, the recipient will accept the message without batting an eye.

    Sometimes Pat is sick at home and has to delegate the message delivery to his colleague, Jess. Most recipients will be suspicious of Jess, as they don’t know her. In this case, a forwarded email will lose the SPF features of the initial sender. However, with the help of the DKIM, Jess will also be able to deliver the message, because it will be properly signed by the original sender.

    The DMARC dog, thanks to his good sense of smell, knows if the postman and his mail are fraudulent. He will start barking in order to alert the recipient about the upcoming scam danger. However, this smart DMARC dog can be also trained to let the postman pass through safely or, on the flipside, be trained to eat his mail.

    This trio of SPF, DKIM and DMARC has now become a global standard, which means that your message can be properly delivered into the highly coveted email inbox. Almost all Internet Service Providers accept this type of safety measure.

    1. SPF = Sender Policy Framework

    When the recipient’s server receives the email, it compares the sender’s IP Address and the IP Address in the DNS and, if both are the same, it accepts the message and delivers it to the inbox. Otherwise, it returns a message by stating “Error 550 – Message rejected because SPF check failed” or delivers the message to the junk folder.

    2. DKIM = DomainKeys Identified Mail

    DKIM is usually a 1024- or 2048-bit encrypted key that must be coupled with the sender domain, used to fight email spoofing. Upon receiving the email from the recipient’s server, it verifies whether the key, published in the email header, belongs to the one related to the sender domain. If not, they assume that the email has been intercepted by third parties and modified.

    As for the SPF, DKIM implementation requires publication in the DNS area with the public key and signature visible in the message header.

    To reiterate, the possible results of the record check can be:

    • Pass: the signature received matches with the public key
    • Fail: the signature received is not related to the public key of the sending domain, which means that the message has been modified somehow.

    Further possible errors could be Softfail, Neutral, None, Permerrorand Temperror. Obviously, only the Pass status is to be considered as a record correctly entered.

    3. DMARC = Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance

    By publishing a DNS record, you will receive an alert from the Internet Service Provider who does support DMARC whenever a domain that is not properly configured (doesn’t pass the SPF and DKIM validation) is used as sender. This way you know when, who, and how, your identity is used on the web.

    In terms of Email authentication, using SPF, DKIM and DMARC is the best response to email spoofing.”

Mike Hillyer

Founder of EmailNinjas, Mike has been working in the email industry since 2006 and advises senders on infrastructure, deliverability, and strategy.
http://emailninjas.com

  • DO NOT BUY EMAIL LISTS!

    – “You may get approached about buying lists, but it’s the worst possible thing you can do. It’s tempting to think that you could potentially gain thousands of new people to reach with your message, but what you’re really getting is a minefield of spam traps, honeypots, and people who never asked for your message.

    Buying an email list is the quickest and best way to get blacklisted not only by the mailbox providers, but by the Email Service Providers (ESPs) who scan uploaded lists to try and catch list purchasers before they can start sending emails and ruin the ESP’s reputation.

    Did your boss hand you a purchased email list and ask you to get on it? Rather than send them email, use the list to generate lookalike audiences in other channels, craft a compelling and relevant ad copy, and point clicks at a landing page that encourages them to sign up for your email list. Now you have a clean list of recipients who actively signed up for your content and a safe way to expand your email marketing footprint.”

Thibault Sarlat

Email deliverability Consultant by day, teacher and trainer by the evening, Spam Fighter at night. Sharing is caring.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thibaultsarlat/

  • 3 Incorrect Beliefs that Could Seriously Damage Your Email Deliverability

    – “I can remember it like it was yesterday. My mentor explaining to me that email deliverability is the ability for an email message to get to its intended target without any modification.

    Simply put, a message is either delivered (be it to the spam folder), or it is bounced. Sending and delivering one personal email message to Aunt Lily is a piece of cake. Sending hundreds of thousands or even millions of bulk messages in a matter of minutes to the same ISPs is another story. Why ? Because ISPs fight Spam. That is a good thing. You just don’t want your campaigns to fall victim of that raging war. So, since the other experts are putting forward the do’s, I’ll take the don’ts.

    There are many rules and best practices that experienced professionals in the email marketing industry will tell you to follow. Blogs are filled with top ten lists of what you should do. Hell, I even wrote some myself, and I always enjoy reading new ones. Lots of these lists are very good, useful and properly rooted in the realities of our field.

    Part of my consulting experience has shown me that senders don’t always follow what you advise them to do, even if they know perfectly that it is for their own good. Many times, I’ve met senders that need to be told what the bad moves are to realize the risks they are taking. That is why I have chosen to tell you which ways of thinking or which moves will surely make your program fail.

    No clicks

    Remember that an email marketing program starts when you gather your future recipients’ emails and ends up with all the form that churn can take (unsubscription, spam complaint, hard bounce, long term disengagement, etc.).

    In between is a daily battle to make your messages relevant, interesting, and expected. The right message, to the right person, at the right time and on the right channel. Easy to say, right?

    So here is a list of the 3 wrong beliefs that could seriously sour your email marketing programs:

    1 – The bigger (the DB), the better

    A bigger database

    Size doesn’t matter. The biggest ears don’t make you the best listener. Have you ever tried to put a cost on managing useless, unengaged contacts? Start by not subscribing them. Most of the time, the bigger the DB, the more bitter the results.

    You must make the effort to ensure that the people who are entering your email marketing programs are doing so Freely, Easily and Willingly. Call it F.E.W. if it helps. Make sure that each of these adverbs apply. Do not be satisfied with 2 out of 3.

    That means not only do you have to enlighten your soon to be subscribers at the point of registration, but to make a solemn promise, and live by your word. These are the happy F.E.W. after all. No sneaky wording, no opt out, no double negation, no funky business here. See it as wedding vows. It may not last your whole life, but you must live by the promise you made for as long as the relationship lasts. So, make it simple, and make it true.

    Technically, this means that Double Opt In is your best friend here because nothing can show willingness and prove freedom of choice more than the 2 clicks needed. While you are at it, if Captcha is not mandatory, it is highly recommended. It’s the best defence against unwanted and dangerous contacts entering your database.

    Half empty glass people will tell you that doing so you will lose many contacts compared to Simple Opt In. Of course. So what? Good riddance! How much do you think unengaged email addresses are worth?

    Be smart and get rid of all subscribers that come from the same IP Address, the same day. It doesn’t make sense unless they are working at the same company and are sharing the same infrastructures. Don’t rush into sending them the first lot of marketing content. There are so many automated checks that can be done almost in real time. Not caring and acting on that can have you blacklisted in a blink of an eye. Preventing is preferable to curing.

    2 – The more I send, the more I earn

    The more I send, the more I earn

    Wrong! It’s not a linear relationship at all. Long gone are the golden days of mass email marketing when all messages landed (at that time no one really cared where they landed anyway). Attention is scarce. Engagement is king. ISPs are masters of their own domains. Their wishes have become unwritten laws. I mean you are knocking on their doors. They are defending their castle and they make it their mission to keep their users and customers happy with the filtering they provide. How can you please the ISPs then? Segmentation.

    Even daily deal sites should have some sort of segmentation to avoid overusing the trust they were given. For retailers, it’s even more important that they cherish and cuddle up to their most engaged contacts for as long as it lasts.

    If your new contacts are not all Double Opt In (they rarely are), do not assume that freshly gathered contacts are necessarily engaged ones. Have them all pass through a nicely built welcome/activation program. Not just one email. A real sequence works better because not everything can be said in one message. Do not bombard them right away with your marketing content. Be patient and subtle and earn their trust right from the start. The most precious gift you can give them is to care for who they are and what they want.

    If you are not sure, ask. The best welcome programs I’ve encountered were set up like a small poll.

    Today, major ESPs can gather as much data as you can imagine. They include a DMP and Engagement Data Platform. So feed the beast, make it gather valuable information and you will for sure end up with actionable insights.

    ESPs save all click and open related information. So, there is no good reason to not include engagement criteria in your most commonly addressed segment. Not caring to define what is an « engaged » contact in your business could easily be your downfall. It’s the number one rule for the ISPs: Target Active Contacts (T.A.C.). Ignore it at your own risk, but do not complain when your inbox delivery rates drop or even your open rates plummet to the ground.

    For the less engaged, or the disengaged contacts, use automated reactivation programs. They will be the best investment of your time at that point in the customer lifecycle. Their indifference to your messages is a sign that they lost interest at one time or that you lost focus on their expectations, or both. The sooner you realize it and act on it, the better. Trying to rekindle the flame is not easy though. Don’t wait too long. If they are well thought out and built, no one should not open or click any of your messages for more than a few weeks.

    3 – Keep them forever

    keep hold of your email subscribers

    When people are no longer interested in your content, it shows. Rates drop. So, after a time, let them leave. Hell, make it easy. After having done all that is technically possible, email marketing wise (outside of full-blown reactivation harassment of course), you have to make it easy for unengaged contacts to leave. Never hide your unsubscription link. Put it both at the bottom and at the top of all your emails. Test it regularly. Make sure it’s working and that the process is simple to follow.

    You do not want the recipients to find that spam complaint button appealing. The only acceptable diversion from that path is to set a preference centre or a poll form between the unsubscribe link and the actual unsubscription. You may be able to keep a few in, with lighter marketing pressure, but in any case, try to learn why they are leaving. Just as you wanted to learn about them when they got in, you should learn why they want to go out. But don’t sit on that information. Use it to cross-reference that reason with the source or time or marketing operation they were subscribed to. You’ll be surprised how much you can learn about your « providers » practices that way. Maybe their « gold » vein has dried up and you can move to better lands.

    Keep in mind that abandoned email addresses can be turned into recycled spam traps. Try to always address any subscribed contacts at least three times per year, regardless of their engagement status. But at the same time, you must apply a rule for unengaged email addresses to be unsubscribed or discarded after too many attempts at reactivating them.

    Conclusion

    I’ve tried to focus your attention on the three major moments of the customer lifecycle: gathering consent, retention send outs, disengagement/churn. I’m sure other authors have described in more detail precise moments of that cycle and brought to your attention precise solutions to apply. Keep in mind that a sender reputation is more easily damaged than built and maintained, and that your patient efforts can easily be ruined and will likely cost you a lot of time, effort, money and not so fun discussions with your team. Remember, when in doubt, ask your email deliverability support contact, and in the meantime try your best and…”

    Engage email subscribers

Alison Gootee

Alison Gootee is a deliverability nerd with over 5 years of experience in the email space. Her motto is, "everything in excess, except for email!"
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisongootee/

  • Deliverability Doesn’t Care About Your Business Model

    – “In my time handling an abuse desk for an ESP, one frequent refrain I heard was, “But you just don’t understand our business model!” This would be followed by an explanation as to why spamming people is integral to the sender’s business. Believe it or not, email deliverability requirements are the same across all industries and businesses: send emails people want and expect, nothing more or less.

    If your business model necessitates sending unsolicited email (also known as spam!), that also results in conversions of some kind, then your business is untenable. There is no legitimate business that can experience high email deliverability while simultaneously sending spam–they are mutually exclusive. Forced opt-in? Spam. Scraped data? Spam. Industry contact list? Spam. Even if you KNOW the audience will be interested in your product if they could just see an email about it? Still spam, I’m sorry. Any time you send mail to recipients who didn’t ask for it, they will unsubscribe, mark the mail as spam, or –yikes– report you to your ESP.

    Any time you send emails to an audience obtained through unsavory means, you also run the risk of hitting spam traps; those inscrutable email addresses that can get you blocked and/or blacklisted. Since spam traps are indistinguishable from regular email addresses and receive mail without bouncing, even a list validated by a cleaning service won’t be able to suss them out. If you value email deliverability, then the (very real) threat of having your mail blocked likely outweighs the (very imagined) benefits of spamming an audience of people in the hope that some of them will be so elated about your offerings that they’ll overlook the inbox intrusion and purchase anyway.

    If you’re still thinking, “Okay but you really don’t seem to understand my business. We need to reach out to cold email lists in order to build our list!”, then ask yourself these questions:

    • When’s the last time you purchased something from an email you didn’t sign up for?
    • Do you have a good impression of the brands who send you spam?
    • If these truly are promising prospects, then why make a bad first impression?
    Email reputation extends beyond just the inbox and the spam folder–it translates directly into your brand reputation and influences how people view you, your customers, and your products. That means that unless you’re the CEO of Spamming, Inc., and your objective is to send the most spam, your business model is irrelevant.”

Scot Berggren

Email Marketing and Deliverability expert with several years of in-depth experience. Passionate about solving deliverability problems for senders, providing detailed guidance on best practices and potential factors affecting reputation.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/scotberggren

  • Segment Your Email List

    – “While there may be times sending to an entire list is warranted (updated Privacy Policy), you’ll likely see better email deliverability results when your email is segmented.

    There are several ways in which a sender can segment for campaigns, but here are a few.

    First, if you are seeing a drop in performance due to fewer emails delivered to the inbox, try sending to just those on your list that have engaged (opened/clicked) recently to help improve the IP/domain reputation. As you begin seeing an improvement, slowly expand the reach until you find your sweet spot. Some of the major ISPs pay close attention to who is engaging with your email to determine whether it gets delivered to the inbox or junk folder.

    Second, if you have a preference center be sure you are following the choices recipients checked. Some on your list may prefer to receive emails once a week versus daily or a digest of emails at a specified time. If your emails include multiple categories, such as different women’s and men’s items, only send to the subscribers’ preference. This will not only limit recipient complaints, but also help with subscriber fatigue. Honoring what your subscribers signed up for and allowing them to update their preferences goes a long way to building trust.

    Other ways to segment are by purchase history and amount spent. For those who have made a recent purchase, look at following up with complementary items or be proactive about when their item(s) may be running out and it’s time to reorder. Regarding amount spent, is there a way to treat your top customers differently with non-monetary invites or events versus sending a discount offer to those who haven’t bought in some time?

    One thing to think about is be sure to not over segment or you might find your email lists become too small and aren’t useful anymore.”

Jennifer Nespola Lantz

Director of Deliverability at Zeta. I've been in the email world since 2005 and have gone from coding email to production management to the wonderful world of email deliverability. In a former life, I was a media planner, which has given me a rounded perspective on customer communications, regardless of medium.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-nespola-lantz-b688774

  • Improve Engagement

    – “There are many nuances to deliverability and why email goes where it goes. When approaching any email deliverability issue, there are some basic items that need to be in place before any other strategy is employed otherwise you may be met with diminished impact or no effect at all. These basics include the infrastructure and MTAs follow best practices, authentication is set up correctly and passing, the sender employs sound data collection practices (and there are many), and the sender is mailing wanted and expected mail to OPTED IN individuals. Once those items are reviewed and checked off, then one of the best ways to address an email deliverability issue can be summarized in one word, engagement. Use it, love it, live by it.

    UNDERSTANDING THE VIEW

    I love analogies so when I think about ISP filtering, I think of it as if it were an event promoter. Each event can be measured by a multitude of factors that determine if it was successful enough to promote again. Customer activity is the most direct and impactful signal about how it was received. If an event triggers a thunderous applause, you’ve got yourself a hit, even if there were issues such as lighting, some boos, dull moments along the way, or a delayed start. If you hand an ISP a stadium full of 60,000 people and only 600 are clapping, the performance going on inside that venue will feel a little lackluster and, frankly, a terrible entertainment experience that does not warrant being repeated. However, move that performance to an auditorium that seats 700 and 600 people applaud, it makes a much bigger impact. This is the goal. Frame how the ISPs view what they are receiving. In some cases, it comes with the necessity to reduce the number of people you are sending to (I’ll get to that in just a sec), but the impact on what will happen to your mail is much greater. Once you build a positive sender reputation, then you can start to develop larger venues, so long as that also grows the enthusiastic audience in the same proportion.

    REFRAMING THE PICTURE

    To reestablish or build your sender reputation, start by restricting your list to customers that have engaged with the email within the last 3 months (30 days for more dire circumstances). This will naturally improve the quality of the audience. Customers that look for your mail, move it, open it, click it, star it, add a reminder, reply to it, forward it, etc. are your most valuable asset. They are the ones that will attend your next event. The only thing the unengaged customers are doing for your sender reputation is reaffirming to the ISP that the filtering was right and your performance was a dud. Removing them leaves you with a larger group of people that are telling the ISP that the filtering to the inbox is indeed what they want. And bonus! It also will weed out spam traps that may be hiding in your email list. The higher quality list and the better metrics are huge signals to the ISPs that there is value in what you are sending.

    Once in place, let that new selection sit. ISPs need a history long enough to help adjust their algorithms before sender reputation and inboxing will follow. This period of time is your way of telling the ISP that your customers “Like me, they really like me!”. During this time, keep an eye on any automated email campaigns that may also be contributing to the negative metrics. Those should also be capped if so or potentially paused and set aside for review. In some cases, reputation could take 3-4 weeks before you’ll see a change. I had one client experiencing sender reputation issues and we implemented engagement restrictions on 2 of the 3 sends per week from an open mailing that was sent 3 times per week. After this sat for about a month, the MOM open rate increased 3 percentage points and the number of customers opening by 43%.

    MOVING FORWARD

    In life and in email, it’s easier to ruin reputation than it is to rebuild it so don’t expect fast changes or a quick build back to ‘normal’. As you start to see your open rate and your sender reputation return to normal after the first 3-4 weeks with the new targeting, begin your expansion. When you are ready, move from 3 months to 4, then 5, then 6. Give it at least 2-3 weeks between each subsequent jump. You can sometimes jump more aggressively, but that really depends on your business and how much your email deliverability was impacted. As you start to go beyond 6 months, you’ll want to tread more carefully. Some clients will have a sweet spot of 6 months, some 9, and some 12. Once you get reestablished, your targeting can also lean on metrics from other sources, like purchase data, website activity, etc.

    For each expansion, factor in volume changes as well. If you are sitting at a lower volume due to the restrictions, you’ll want to make sure your expansion doesn’t spike volumes or dilute the metrics with an influx of unengaged customers or spike complaints, and so on. Otherwise, you’ll be at square one again. Portion out the expanded audience over a couple of launches. It allows you to ramp up the volume, manage the audience makeup, and temper complaints from those that may have been sitting for a while. I like to break up the audience so jumps are around 10% at a time. In some respect and views, this is a very conservative approach. I prefer this though because by doing it this way, it allows me time to monitor and see if there is anything else impacting the mailings. Flexibility in rebuilding what was lost is very important. Pull back when you see a backslide, push forward when you are doing well.

    For the long term health of your program, you may not get back to business-as-usual, but an altered version of it. I see the most success when there is an engagement cap in place, generally 12 months or less. Again, there is value in the lesser/unengaged population, but if you are going to reach out to them, be strategic. It should not be a part of your everyday operations. At some point reengagement series and repermission series should come in to permanently weed out those that have moved on from the relationship. Reengagement series could start as early as 3 months, repermission as early as 6 months, but this is all dependent upon the business, service/product lifecycle, etc.

    Lastly, while you are working through remediating your email deliverability issues, I would also recommend a self-discovery session to review the mailing program. What is going out? Is it relevant? Is it timely? Is it too much? Too little? What can you do to keep your core email list as engaged as possible to minimize attrition? What drove the issue to begin with? And ultimately are you connected with your customer? If your mail is wanted, expected, and timely, email deliverability issues often fade away.”

Siva Devaki

Siva Devaki is the co-founder of MassMailer. Siva’s background in CRM and his passion for software products led him to build MassMailer. MassMailer is now a popular native email app for Salesforce CRM. Originally from India, Siva lived in California for 19 years before moving to Hawaii two years ago.
http://massmailer.io

  • Inboxing – Constantly Warm Up Your Sending Domain and IP Address

    – “There could be hundreds of reasons why your e-mails are going to spam, and most aren’t your fault. If your domain reputation or IP Address reputation is poor, your emails will go into the spam folder without any doubt. Inboxing is a technique that fixes that by creating positive activity from your domain / sending IP, raising your e-mail reputation significantly. The process is done entirely in the background. You will see a significant difference that actual e-mails will start getting delivered and opened.

    You can use your DNS provider and the email service provider. It is always easy to start with a fresh new domain in case your existing domain already has a bad reputation even though it is possible to repair your current domain provided it is repairable. Sometimes you can contact the respective organizations that have listed your domain in the blacklists and provide valid reasons to remove your domain from the blacklists. Once it has been removed from the blacklists, you can start repairing using the Inboxing service. If it is completely not possible to get the domain out of blacklists, then it is advisable to start fresh by using a new domain.

    The Inboxing process is quite simple to understand. In the background, the regular emails are sent in volume to the seeded list worldwide to various ISPs from your domain and the IP address. The positive engagement is created between the sender and the seeded email list inboxes daily and makes sure no emails are in the spam folder. This ensures a 100% delivery rate and a higher open and response rate.

    The following are the steps to get started:

    • Identify a service provider for Inboxing (I’m biased, but I’d try massmailer.io)
    • Go with your existing domain if it is not blacklisted or purchase a new domain.
      • If your existing domain is blacklisted, contact the respective organizations to remove the domain from the blacklists.
      • If you are purchasing a new domain, you can either choose to host it using any hosting provider or check with your Inboxing service provider if they can host it for you.
    • Create an email inbox that will be used as the sender for Inboxing. You need to provide this to the Inboxing service provider.
    • If you have an email service provider that you are using to send emails, find out the SMTP login details for the same and provide it to your Inboxing service provider.
    • If you already have a dedicated IP address, which you want to warm-up, that will work as well or your Inboxing service provider can also assign a dedicated IP address to send the emails.
    • You will make any changes necessary to your DNS settings based on the suggestions made by the Inboxing service provider.
    • Once the settings are made, your Inboxing service provider will start the warm-up process of the domain and the IP address.
    • It will take 1-2 weeks to warm-up a domain and the IP address after which you should be able to send emails.
    • Inboxing is a continuous warm-up of your domain and the IP address that happens in parallel to your regular email sending.
    • You will be able to see an improvement in the delivery rate, open rate, and response rate due to the Inboxing process.

    The Inboxing technique is simple yet powerful to improve your email deliverability rate.”

Henry Gutierrez

Henry has 14 years of experience in email marketing, with a specific focus on deliverability. At Bluecore, he's currently helping maximize deliverability and ROI for some of the top retail brands in the country.
https://www.bluecore.com/

  • Send LESS Email

    – “There’s a lot to focus on when improving email deliverability but the most common recommendation is to reduce volume. It is also by far the most unpopular. Aggressive volumes will result in sending emails to unengaged subscribers, spam traps or receiving high spam complaints, which will all affect reputation and inbox placement. Before giving tips on how to reduce volume it’s best to understand how less can be more, and more can be less.

    More is Less

    Below is a situation encountered years ago where the sender became more aggressive with the size of their unengaged subscribers and frequency.

    inbox placement and volume
    open count and volume

    Volume and inbox placement show an inverse relationship, affecting the amount of opens. As email tripled in volume, the amount of opens dropped by three times the previous amount. Below is the average amount of opens by daily volume:

    open counts by daily volume

    It’s clear there is an adverse effect when giving into the temptation of increasing volume. Less consistently gives this program more. More opens and more money, by far.

    Reducing Volume Intelligently

    Some points to consider when reducing volume to improve email deliverability:

    • Identify Level of Urgency – Is there an important sending date coming up? In some cases a sender can bounce back to 100% inbox placement in just a few days if aggressive enough.
    • Identify the Damage – Are emails being completely blocked or heavily filtered? Also it’s important to identify where the problem is so that the list size/frequency is only reduced with subscribers at problematic mailbox providers.
    • Reducing Frequency – This is usually the least painful way to reduce volume. Start by reducing frequency to the lesser engaged subscribers. This should cause minimal impact to ROI since those subscribers aren’t engaging with emails anyways. Never count out that reducing frequency across the board may also be a solution.
    • Reducing Email List Size – Sometimes it needs to be done. The higher the composition of unengaged subscribers, the higher the likelihood of encountering issues. The ideal engagement level for a size depends on factors such as content, frequency, vertical, acquisition, etc. Most successful senders email subscribers that have opened or clicked a message from anywhere between the last six months to the past year.

    Sample Approaches

    • Aggressive – A sender had 90%+ of emails going to the Gmail spam folder. Decided to send an email to those who opened or clicked a message in the last 10 days. Gmail inbox went to 100% after 3 days, but a cautious increase continued until a breaking point was found where inbox filtering started to occur again.
    • Cautious – A sender had a 70% inbox placement rate for Gmail and reducing list size was a tough pitch. Reduced email list size to those that opened or clicked in the past 1.5 years, from two years. Sender then also reduced frequency for those that had not opened or clicked in the past year to 1.5 years. Inbox placement for Gmail peaked at 85% two weeks after changes.

    As with everything, measure efforts with every data point possible. Never rule out sending less as a solution to email deliverability issues, which more importantly can increase opens and ROI.”

Vytis Marčiulionis

After a short period in web hosting support and abuse detection at the start of my career, now I provide daily assistance to email marketers that face email deliverability issues. Currently I am part of a team that is looking after approximately 10,000,000,000 emails sent on a monthly basis.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vytis-mar%C4%8Diulionis-b452415b/

  • Know What the Best Practices Say

    – “Know the best practices! When you know what the best practices are, you will be better placed to realize where you may have stepped out of line and what exactly you can fix to earn the favour of mailbox providers. And there is always something to fix, mainly because the email industry is very fluid and keeps changing constantly.

    Here is where I recommend to start.”

    • https://www.spamhaus.org/faq/section/MarketingFAQs
    • https://www.m3aawg.org/sites/default/files/document/M3AAWG_Senders_BCP_Ver3-2015-02.pdf
    • https://www.m3aawg.org/sites/default/files/m3aawg-sendingdomains10102019nk-2.pdf
    • https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/pm/policies.aspx
    • https://download.microsoft.com/download/e/3/3/e3397e7c-17a6-497d-9693-78f80be272fb/enhance_deliver.pdf
    • https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126?hl=en
    • https://postmaster.verizonmedia.com/
    • https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204137

Anthony Mitchell

Director of Deliverability at InboxSys, formally known as Mailmike. I’ve been working in the domain of Email Deliverability for over a decade now, which in the past has included ESPs such as emailvision (now Actito/Smartfocus), eCircle (now Mapp), and Adobe. I strive for the highest standards in Email Deliverability for our customers.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wizanthonymitchell/

  • Seedlist Testing – Why It Is Important

    – “An E-Mail seed is an email address created with analytical purpose only. Basically, the test email addresses you use for split A/B testing can be considered E-Mail seeds. You send an E-Mail to your test-address, to see if the subjectline looks good, if the content is okay and if and why the message was delivered to the E-Mail inbox, or not. Since manual A/B testing does not scale well, it’s recommended to use seedlist tools.

    A Seedlist is a list with multiple seeds. Most typically, a seedlist contains various ISP seeds from various commercial ISPs plus a trigger seed, usually an address ending with something like “@app.inboxeverytime.com”.

    The single trigger seed is used to receive and analyse content, authentication and mail headers.
    The various ISP seeds are used to check to which folder (Inbox, Junk, etc.) this specific message and this specific address at this specific ISP was delivered. Typically ISP seeds contains email addresses from major international ISPs such as Gmail, Outlook & Verizon Media (Yahoo & AOL) plus other providers that are relevant to the region that is being targeted in your email marketing campaign.

    ISP seeds have quite similar characteristics to spamtraps: By default, ISP seeds addresses do not open or click in any email. A good further read on how to exclude seed-generated clicks from your campaign analytics can be found under this link.

    How Does It Work?

    There are two kinds of purposes for seedlist tests:

    • Testing to prevent issues. This is done by analysing the message content, authentication and header and by observing trends in inbox placement before a campaign is sent out.
    • Testing to detect, reproduce and solve existing issues, usually done during or after the sending of a campaign.

    The trigger seed helps to collate the information we have about a campaign and the entire seed list collectively. Once your email marketing campaign is setup and ready to be pushed live:

    • Send a test first to the entire seed list.
    • Sit back, and watch the results come in.
    • Analyse the seed list results, for technical checks and Inbox placement rates.

    During this process the trigger seed does most of the leg work, so to speak. The accumulated report allows for a full analysis of the whole email already in a matter of seconds. The reference seed checks the mail headers to ensure all is well with domain authentication, domain alignment and checks your body content, IP Address reputation and identifies what can be improved. That’s what you essentially really want to know before sending the campaign.

    Now we’ve got that out of the way. The other, various seed addresses (major ISPs) have no other purpose but to show you where your email has landed, which is only moderately interesting for senders with organically grown data.

    Inbox Placement
    Click to Enlarge

    What are the Advantages?

    Email marketing changes quickly, ISPs update their policies often, to change with new Industry Standards. It’s a great way to test what works! Any insight prior to going live can be advantageous, such as:

    • Domain configuration / E-Mail authentication
    • Mailserver setup
    • IP-warmup metrics and evolvement
    • Content quality
    • Which mail-stream (i.e. marketing emails, transactional) is performing better
    • Which ISP you face delivery challenges to and check for folder placement
    • IP Address & domain reputation: Blocklists and spamfilters

    And with the right interface, it saves you a lot of time testing.

    Known Challenges

    Certain providers look closely at user engagement on an email account level. A full explanation would be sufficient content for another blog. Luckily, I have already written a blog about this subject in the past. When ISPs decide their actions on a per mailbox level, results for individual mailboxes are likely not to match your seedlist tesing ISP results. There is no (serious) way to implement those user based engagement metrics in a seedlist test. Instead, it’s better to look at the data from a bird’s eye perspective by observing trends. It’s neither scalable, nor necessary to see every detail. If many users show negative engagement metrics on a user-level, you are very likely to see the accumulated effect of that in your clean, unengaged ISP seeds. That way, it is possible to see what providers think of the overall setup and where you deliver by default.

    Excessive testing to ISP seeds can also be damaging to your sender reputation, especially when you target seedlists with hundreds of seeds for every ISP worldwide. This is due to the fact that seeds do not engage with your email, it can be perceived you are sending to a large, inactive list.

    Tip 1 – Test Before

    Prevention can save your life, even if every test appears to be successful. It could, for example, happen, that a DNS administrator accidentally removes, let’s say, a DKIM record. This would be a once in a lifetime incident that could seriously damage the result of your campaign, or even your whole reputation. Through persistent testing any issue could be tackled before any damage can be done.

    When issues are flagged, it’s a good idea to preventively fix them, even when they don’t appear to cause problems (aka. Junk folder delivery) at this very moment. The decision made by ISPs to put an E-Mail in the inbox or not is based on more than one factor. If the mentioned issue does not accumulate to problems today, it may accumulate to problems tomorrow.

    Tip 2 – Test During & After

    When you launch your campaign, always include a seed list and try to distribute the seeds evenly through your list. When sending to a large list of unengaged contacts, the result may worsen over time. This is where ISP seeds have the most relevancy. ISP seeds are a great way to observe trends within a campaign and at a global level. Important is again, to respond to each and every indicator before it can become a problem.

    Tip 3 – Custom Seeds

    To prevent sender reputation loss by excessive testing, it’s always a good idea to limit the seeds in your seedlist to the ISPs that are important to your marketing strategy.

    It’s an obligatory exercise to find out which seeds are important to your email marketing strategy. This information can be found by simply analysing your database to see the domain distribution of your database. Your seedlist should reflect the ISPs and ratios used. This way, the campaign volume covers up for the negative effects of testing.

    If you have the option to use your own E-mail addresses in an automated seeding process, it even becomes possible to fake a certain user engagement per mailbox for analytical purposes. Note, however, that faking things is expensive and not “smart” per se.

    Tip 4 – Automate!

    A manual split A/B test is a lot of work. Automated seedlist tools help a lot, but you still need to spend time before and after each and every campaign to look at a test result. With an API for seedlist testing, it’s possible to automate the full, round process. Before sending a campaign, the seedlist is requested, mails are sent out, the result is collected and – if everything is alright – the campaign is being sent. The other way ’round, campaigns can be blocked from being sent in case of critical issues and alerts can be used to inform the responsible person.

    Conclusion

    If you really want to measure the success of your campaign(s), send one seed list test before and one test during each campaign. Keep it simple, automate and respond to flags in order to improve ROI for your email marketing campaigns.

    See-d you later.”

Lauren Meyer

Lauren brings 15 years of experience in email to her role as EVP of Product Marketing & Brand Strategy for SocketLabs, with a heavy focus on deliverability and anti-abuse. She is a vocal advocate for following industry best practices and having a proactive, data-driven approach to optimizing email performance and the larger customer experience.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-meyer-3958b84/

  • Implement Real-Time Email Verification on All Subscription Forms

    – “We all know that email addresses are marketing gold.

    It’s commonly mentioned that email has an ROI of 42:1. That’s a return of $42 for every $1 that you spend on email marketing.

    That is four times higher than any other digital marketing channel.

    And research shows that it’s 5x less expensive to retain a customer than it is to acquire a new one.

    So once your potential new customer has finally reached the point where they are actually willing to give you their email address, the last thing you want to do is collect incorrect information from them.

    Normally that kind of mistake leads to a hard bounce, or potentially the address could be a typo spam trap. Both of those have a negative impact on email eliverability.

    In a world where competition is tight, studies show that 95% of visitors will come to your website or physical location only once, and never return again.

    That means you have only one chance to collect their email address.

    By implementing real-time email verification on all subscription forms, marketers are able to verify email addresses in real-time at the point-of-capture, and can even prevent the user from hitting ‘Submit’ until they have entered a valid email address.

    Real-Time Email Verification

    This allows companies to not only reduce their hard bounce rate, but also to avoid missed connections with potential new leads, and build a larger and more qualified email list, which will inevitably lead to more revenue for the company.

    It’s unlikely that unsuccessful subscribers will realize they fat-fingered their own address and come back to sign up again if your welcome email never arrives in their inbox.

    Implementing real-time email verification on all of your subscription forms can ensure the email addresses you’re collecting are valid, and that your content will arrive in their inboxes as expected.”

Przemysław Kuciel

Email deliverability is more than just a job for me - it is my passion. I am fortunate enough to love what I do - helping businesses make it through the competitive email world.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pkuciel/

  • Build the Trust You Need to Deliver an Email

    – “Imagine that you are hosting a huge party, and the whole world is invited. Crazy, huh? Well that’s how it is to be an email provider.

    Despite having security doing a great job by checking IDs (in this case SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) they can’t be sure that all guests will behave properly.

    Finally, after a mandatory verification process they let you pass.

    The lights hit your eyes, and in this very moment you acknowledge that you’ve gained a huge amount of trust.

    Now, it is up to you. Will you start to build the trust you need to stay in the world-wide email party, or will you waste your opportunity and get kicked out for misbehaving (getting blocked). It is hard to get back into this splendid email party after getting kicked out – the hosts do not often give second chances.

    But when you decide to be your best self in there, a huge world of opportunity opens. You are trusted. You are allowed to the special room out there, reserved just for trusted people – the Inbox.”

Toshi Onishi

Messaging specialist based in APAC with over 10 years of experience
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonishi/

  • Implement BIMI

    – “BIMI stands for Brand Indicators for Message Identification. It is a new standard that allows senders with good reputation an easier opportunity to get your logo displayed next to your message in the inbox. BIMI not only improves your visibility and brand awareness, it’s also designed to prevent fraud and support email deliverability.

    A recent study by Verizon Media on its Yahoo Mail BIMI beta program showed that there was an average 10% increase in open rates for email messages that had brand logos on them. And while BIMI is still a pilot program which only Verizon supports, Gmail has indicated they will start trialing BIMI sometime this year so it is reasonable to assume more mailbox providers will most likely follow suit in supporting this new standard.

    So how do we implement BIMI? This can be done in 3 simple steps:

    1. Publish and set appropriate DMARC tag status
    2. Create and Publish the BIMI image
    3. Establish a good sender reputation by following email deliverability best practices

    Publish and Set Appropriate DMARC Tag Status

    DMARC is an authentication method built on top of existing email authentication mechanisms. However, one of the features is the ability to publish what policy you want the mailbox providers to apply when your email fails DMARC authentication and alignment checks. This is shown in the “p=” tag within the DMARC record and it applies to your primary domain, as well as all the subdomains unless a “sp=” tag is used with a different value.

    To qualify for BIMI, this “p=” tag needs to be set to either “quarantine” or “reject”. However, as all organisations have different email infrastructure, consult your hosting provider or whoever that manages your DNS to set this up as some additional work will most likely be needed.

    ​Create and Publish the BIMI Image

    ​​​​To be used in association with BIMI, the logo must be formatted in a way to be readily recognizable as associated with the brand, easily displayed at various resolutions, and include characteristics that support verification and security. Specifically:

    1. T​he logo must be square
    2. The logo must be saved as a version of the Scaled Vector Graphic (SVG) format as defined by the SVG Tiny 1.2 profile published by the W3C in 2008.
    3. The logo cannot include anything else such as tags, external links, secondary Word Marks, unregistered marks etc.

    ​​​​Once your BIMI logo has been created, it needs to be stored at a HTTPS location. Make sure you note down this HTTPS path, then contact your hosting provider or whoever that manages your DNS to publish the BIMI record and map it to the HTTPS path.

    ​Establish a Good Sender Reputation by Following Email Deliverability Best Practices

    ​​​​One of the aspects of BIMI is that the mailbox providers can determine at their discretion whether to display the sender’s logo or not. In order to have the sender’s logo published, they require that the sender comply with email deliverability best practices and establish a good sender reputation.

    If you know your mailbox provider supports BIMI, then you can test by sending to a test account at that mailbox provider. If you see your BIMI logo (the SVG file you uploaded), then congratulations!, you are authenticating correctly and have been considered as a trusted sender by that mailbox provider.

    ​​If you don’t see any changes, then continue following email deliverability best practices to improve your sender reputation. Mailbox providers are continuously reviewing and, if they determine you to be a sender with a good reputation, it will only be a matter of time before you will see your logo next to your messages.”

Kevin Hopkinson

Kevin has a deep history with email marketing and deliverability; particularly in the political action theatre, having raised more than $10 million in online donations for clients. He has more than 12 years of experience in professional delivery services and getting email to the inbox.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinsprofile/

  • Proper Data Management

    – “I’d estimate that about half of all email deliverability conversations I’ve ever had, in some way or another, morph into a conversation about data management. It’s the elephant in the room that many people don’t understand is hurting them the most, and that’s what I will gently touch on here.

    Always make sure you have a program setup that naturally churns emails out of your production for good after X number of sends/days with no engagement. Just look at it as a cost of doing business if you purchased the email list, because it’s not necessarily those folks who are buying and sending emails that are the problem like most will allude. It’s all of those senders who are ignorant to the fact that delivering the same email into perpetuity is not a good marketing strategy.

    With that said, one of the worst data management strategies out there is when email marketers demand email quotas in their list counts. Now that is a practice that became obsolete the exact same day it was thought up. The end result is always years of sending to emails that will never engage; emails that are doing more harm than good by staying on the list. Keeping unengaged users on an email list for years on end is like holding up a big sign that says to the filters “I don’t care!”. Folks implementing strategies like that should do a list hygiene scrub and take a gander at their Recycled trap metric.

    That said, email providers and filters are incredibly sophisticated nowadays; and they are particularly good at how they are able to track sender reputation. The data you’re pushing through their systems tells them everything they need to know about you as a sender. In fact, their AI probably has ways to match data points that we can’t even think of. They are able to bucket every single email attempt at their users, which also happen to be their most important asset. Without the email user, ISPs cannot harvest engagement data and present them relevant advertisements. Their mission is clear – to protect those users at all costs. So please manage your data accordingly.”

Aleksandrs Vilums

Aleksandrs is an email deliverability consultant and email industry services product manager. Since 2010, he has helped ESP, SMTP, CRM services, and marketing agencies with solutions for a better quality of email delivery.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleksandrs-vilums-78514957/

  • Be Ethical and Protect Your Inbox Reputation

    – “There are a few best practices I would advise you to follow if you want to improve your email deliverability.

    1. Think About Your Email Deliverability Reputation Score!

    When email users open their mailbox, users have a chance to give reputation credit to email senders or take it away. This is done with functions that mail services provide to email users. When email users either mark or move an email message to spam/junk, delete unread messages or unsubscribe, they take away sender reputation credit. But when email users open, forward, reply to an email, categorize it, mark it as important, add the contact to the address book or move an email message from the spam/junk folder to the inbox, it gives reputation credit to the email sender. If sender reputation credit is high, senders have a better chance to deliver email messages into the inbox. And of course, email delivery speed is also better with a higher sender reputation score.

    2. Keep Your Email Recipients Happy!

    Before you send an email message to your recipients, think about the value that they will get and how your recipients could react. Is the email subject line interesting to them? Will they notice it and open your email? If the answer is yes, think about whether your content provides value, especially if your email recipients are receiving your email message for the first time. If these things all seem to be in order, do you expect some of your email recipients could mark your message as spam? If yes, think about why? What do you want to send your recipients and how often should they receive your emails? Even if the email recipients didn’t remember where and how they joined your email list, if your message is interesting, the email recipients could continue to open your next email messages.

    3. Check Your Email Delivery Quality Before You Send an Email Message to the Full List!

    You have an email list, you have content and your “from details” are set up for your email campaigns. Before you send an email message to all of your recipients, check if your content gets delivered into the inbox for your @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @outlook.com mailboxes. If your test was delivered and landed in junk/spam folders then something is wrong and must be resolved before your message gets sent out to the full list and affects your delivery reputation. Sometimes problems could be with the service that you’re using to send out messages, so you could ask the service provider for help, but in my experience in most cases the problems are with content, sender reputation or sender settings. If you cannot resolve the problem yourself, you can ask email deliverability specialists/consultants for help.

    4. Use Email Delivery Reputation Monitoring Tools!

    If your average open rate is below industry standards (or clicks to your pages from messages 7-10x less than your industry average), you must use reputation monitoring tools for your company to check if your sender reputation is good enough to deliver your emails into the inbox. One of the free and easy to use tools that I recommend is postmaster.google.com.”

Karen Balle

Karen has been in email for over 20 years. She has been heavily involved in the evolution of email and deliverability. Her current focuses are deciphering the complexities of deliverability and helping to keep email accessible to companies and non-profit organizations of all sizes.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-balle-9294701/

  • Mind Your Canaries: Know Your Early Warning Signs and How to Monitor Them

    – “Reputation is a function of engagement over time. It’s obvious when you start seeing blocks that there is a reputation problem but there are warning signs, or canaries, before blocks ever happen. Knowing what your canaries are can help you avoid blocks or minimize the impact of blocks when they do happen.

    First, track any major changes to your email program in a spreadsheet or other easily searchable database. Since reputation is a function over time, blocking rarely happens immediately. It’s more likely that you’ll start seeing changes 2 weeks to 2 months later. Major changes include, but are not limited to, adding new list sources, rebranding, changing your mailing patterns or significant changes to content. When you start seeing problems, refer to this list to see which changes could be the root cause. Whenever possible, when you make a significant change, create a corresponding roll-back plan or a plan to alter how you’re using the data to make it easier to reverse potential reputation damage.

    The easiest and perhaps best way for an experienced email deliverability consultant to monitor your canaries is to monitor your block bounces. If you don’t have access to your blocks and a person who is knowledgeable about their meaning, you should use other signals like extending sending times or blocks at mailbox providers who are more prone to block more quickly instead. It’s also important to look at trends for your engagement metrics for your top 5-10 mailbox providers over the last three months. A slow decline in open and click rates, or an increase in unsub and complaint rates are other early warning signs. Not all ESPs provide per-domain reporting, so you may need to create multiple segmented sends or implement creative use of A/B testing to get per-domain reporting.

    If you’re sending B2C email, monitoring send times; getting reporting for non-global domains like Comcast, Cox, and RoadRunner; and monitoring engagement over time by domain for your top five to ten domains are going to be your biggest canaries.

    Keep an especially close eye on delivery times to Verizon Media Group (AOL, Yahoo, and Verizon). They have a series of traffic shaping temporary rejections that often preface a block. If mail to VMG is exceeding four to eight hours, it’s time to start rolling back some of your more recent changes. These traffic shaping temporary rejections are often your earliest warning sign. Microsoft also uses traffic shaping, but it’s less common that VMG.

    The global mail providers – Gmail, Microsoft (outlook.com and hotmail.com), and Yahoo – are the biggest portion of most senders’ lists. Oftentimes, the early warnings are blocks happening at non-global domains like Comcast, Cox, and RoadRunner, and will start experiencing problems before the big three. Some ESPs allow you to pull reports based on domain. If your ESP doesn’t, you can segregate each send into two or more parts to separate the big three from your remaining domains. While engagement metrics won’t be identical, they should be similar across all parts and should be consistent over time.

    Trends across multiple months are also important to keep track of for the big three. Gmail gives much less warning than other mailbox providers and is harder to resolve. Any immediate drop in open rates of more than 1% is cause for concern. Strive to maintain open rates above 12% for the big three. You also want to monitor open, click, unsub, and complaint rates over time. Optimally, open and click rates remain above 15% and 4% respectively, while complaints and unsub rates stay under 0.08% and 0.1% respectively. When you detect a worsening of engagement metrics, refer to your recent changes document. Find the change(s) that happened before your decline and start working to roll back that change or make adjustments to how you’re handling that data.

    Note, Gmail does not send feedback loops, or complaints, unless a send has a very high complaint rate. Other mailbox providers send copies of most complaints to your ESP, which allows your ESP to suppress those subscribers and provide you with a complaint rate. Complaints must be under 0.08% to stay in the safe zone.

    If you’re sending B2B email, there’s less warning before blocking, but there are two service providers that serve as early warnings – Mimecast and Barracuda. If these bounces are not available through your ESP’s reporting, you can use an MX lookup service like MXToolbox, xnnd.com, or Wise Tools – https://tools.wordtothewise.com/dns. Input the domain of the blocked email addresses (the part after the @) into the MX lookup box and submit the query. Look to see if the result includes barracudanetworks.com or mimecast.com.”

    MXToolbox
    MXToolbox

    xnnd.com
    xnnd.com

    WiseTools
    WiseTools

    Sample Barracuda Results
    Sample Barracuda Results

Brett Schenker

Brett has worked in the digital space for 15 years and email deliverability for over 10. Focused primarily on nonprofits and political organizations, he's become the expert in that space on the subject.
https://brettschenker.com/

  • Email List Management is Key

    – “I find list management is the key to getting good email deliverability today. Email service providers are looking for engagement as a key metric. That means they want to see opens, responses, and forwarding of email. People fall off of email lists and lose interest over time which means that without proper management, you’ll just get more of these “inactive” email addresses on your list, decreasing deliverability rates.

    While the specific needs for every sender will vary, the place I start with those who need help is figuring out what domains you’re having issues with. I look at the open rates at the domain level and see which ones are performing below the average rate for the list.

    For these domains, I’ll then target differently, sending to people who have opened an email in the past 30 days as an example. You’re criteria will vary for that. Then, it’s sending to that segment and seeing if the open rates improve (not the percent, the actual number of opens) and let it keep improving over time.

    You’re sending positive metrics that way to the email providers which they like to see.

    Doing this I’ve seen open rates go from single digits to over 50% with more opens than ever before even though they’re sending to fewer individuals.

    From there, it becomes a math problem maximizing the amount of emails you send to a domain versus what the open rates are.”

José Ramón García Layos

I have 20 years of hands-on experience on the Internet developing businesses, building and leading e-commerce projects to success. A few years ago, I stumbled upon email deliverability, a nearly unknown area at the time, which fascinated me and that has driven my career as of then.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrglayos/

  • Monitor Both Your Campaigns and Your Reputation

    – “Monitoring your campaigns is paramount when it comes to understanding if your email deliverability is in a good health. Except for some odd exceptions (mainly Russian ISPs), it’s quite difficult to know what your inbox placement is like (meaning how many emails you’re sending are landing into your subscriber’s inbox), so monitoring your campaigns the right way and the reputation of your IPs and subdomains where available can provide you with a pretty accurate picture of how your program is performing. That way you’ll be able to pinpoint any scenarios where your emails may be landing in the spam folder or getting blocked.

    You should ensure you pay attention to:

    #Open Rates

    This is the most popular metric and, even though you shouldn’t judge your email marketing program just by looking at them, they will give you a clear understanding of whether something may be off. This is the reason it’s important to look into open rates broken down by recipient domain. This way, you can count on:

    • Aggregated data over time that will indicate you how each ISP usually performs, their trends, ranges and natural peaks and valleys.
    • A clear picture across your entire database, because by breaking down open rates by domain, you’ll ensure a problem with a particular ISP won’t get lost in the big picture / other ISPs with more presence in your database.

    Usually open rates will follow a trend and that trend will be the same across each ISP. In order to pinpoint an email deliverability issue, look for things that stand out in that trend, mainly steep decreases in opens that would indicate either emails being filtered to the spam folder or bouncing back because of a problem (that you should be able to identify by looking at the bounce message).

    #Click Through Open Rate (CTOR)

    While many email marketers look at click through (CTR, clicks/deliveries), CTOR (clicks/opens) will precisely tell you how relevant, engaging and actionable the content of your email was. And to increase the magic of this metric further still: if you observe a lower open rate alongside a spike in the CTOR, that’s a clear indication a portion of your emails landed into the spam folder, while the most engaged users (these who not only opened but clicked) still got them into the inbox.

    #Reputation with the ISPs

    Some ISPs will provide you with information about your current IPs’ and subdomains’ reputation, which you then can use as a data point to infer inbox placement. The most common ones are:

    • Microsoft Smart Network Data Services (SNDS) – You can enroll your IPs and you’ll get daily info (with a 24 hr delay) about their reputation. Each IP Address will have a color, which will point you to any issues and to the amount of emails that are expected to land in the inbox: green (>90% emails delivered landed in the inbox), yellow (between 10% and 90% in spam) and red (>90% emails into the spam folder). Just create an Outlook account or log in with an existing one at https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds, go to “Request access” and follow the instructions.
    • Google Postmaster Site – Here you can enrol your sender domain(s) and you’ll get daily data (with a 48 hr delay) about their reputation. Each subdomain will have high/medium/low/bad reputation, which will give you an idea of how many emails are sent to the inbox by Gmail. Just create a Gmail account or log in with an existing one at postmaster.google.com, click on the “+” symbol and follow the instructions.
    • Mail.ru Postmaster – Very useful if you send emails in Russia, the Mail.ru postmaster site provides with an incredible amount of information to senders:
      • Engagement – Know how many people are reading your mailings and how many delete them without opening them.
      • Complaint rates – Know how many subscribers have marked your mailings as spam.
      • Delivery rates – Stay informed on the progress of the mailing process: how many emails have already been sent and delivered, how many were marked as spam or were blocked. This is very uncommon among ISPs, so it’s a very valuable piece of information.
    • Yandex Postmaster – Same as Mail.ru, the Yandex postmaster provides with an incredible amount of information to senders:
      • Engagement – Know how many people are reading your mailings and how many delete them without opening them, how many read and still have them in the inbox and how many are unread and still in inbox.
      • Complaint Rates – Know how many subscribers have marked your mailings as spam.
      • Delivery Rates – Stay informed on the progress of the mailing process: how many emails have already been sent and delivered, how many were marked as spam or were blocked. This is very uncommon among ISPs so it’s a very valuable piece of information.
      • Yandex will provide hints on ways to improve the engagement of the users based on the data they provide.

    By putting all of these pieces together you’ll be able to pinpoint most of the email deliverability issues you may be having and start troubleshooting them to get your messages back into the inbox!”

Anna Ward

I've managed mailservers and lead deliverability teams for ESPs for the past 6 years, working in email deliverability and compliance for over 9 years. My work is all about increasing performance, minimizing risk, and establishing the most trusted reputation with ISPs and mailbox providers.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/annagraceward/

  • Differentiate Your Message Types By Sending IP and From Address

    – “Every business has different types of messages they send — login-related transactional messages, purchase confirmations, automated content marketing series, monthly newsletters, legal notices, etc. Since each of these messages has a different vulnerability, if you’re sending them all from the same IP Address and domains, you’re putting *all* your mail at risk when something goes awry with just *one* type of message.

    For example, if a form on your website gets hacked, your promotional messages could also see excessive bounces and blacklistings as receivers try to block the abuse. If your email marketing team accidentally sends to the wrong list, complaints and poor engagement could quickly result in poor email deliverability for transactional messages too.

    Differentiating your message types by sending IP and From address whenever possible creates separate sending reputations the receiver can rely on. That protects your messages against widespread email deliverability issues when small problems inevitably surface (it also makes identifying those problems much easier!). At the very least, I recommend my clients use different subdomains for transactional and bulk/broadcast messages to better monitor their sender reputations and keep them healthy.”

Varun Srinivas

I have over 8 years of experience in email deliverability and have worked with many ESPs and senders of all shapes and size. I enjoy solving deliverability challenges and help marketers send better emails. In my current role as a Director of Email Deliverability and Compliance for Maropost, I provide our senders(customers) consultation, strategic deliverability guidance and actionable insights to achieve higher levels of deliverability.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/srinivasvarun/

  • Setting Clear Expectations for New Subscribers

    – “The quickest way for an angry & impulsive subscriber to stop receiving emails is to open and click the “Mark as spam” button. This often happens if it is unclear to your subscribers what they are signing up for and when they’ll receive your emails. The subscriber acquisition process is not just about adding another address to ‘the list’, it is about setting expectations up front about the email program and the value it provides.

    Here are some best practices, to establish trust and retain subscribers (+ in turn improve email deliverability):

    • Use the subscribe landing page to explain email programs to subscribers.
    • Outline objectives and subsequent incentives to the subscriber.
    • Always be clear about mailing frequencies, be it once a week, twice or even daily.
    • Mention the sender name and from email address that will be used.
    • Share sample content to the subscribers from the get-go. This will prepare them as to what to expect.
    • Always be ‘TRANSPARENT’ about your business practices.

    Morning Brew’s welcome email, confirming your subscription and telling subscribers that they can expect to receive news Monday to Saturday is a perfect example ensuring that the subscribers know what to expect.

    New subscriber Expectation

    Setting clear expectations at the beginning of the sign-up process reduces the risk of spam complaints or unsubscribes, thereby helping build trust with your subscribers.”

Dan Oshinsky

Dan runs Inbox Collective, a consultancy that helps news organizations and non-profits with email strategy. He’s also the creator of Not a Newsletter, a monthly briefing about how to send better email. He previously worked as the Director of Newsletters at both The New Yorker and BuzzFeed.
http://notanewsletter.com/

  • Build a Welcome Series

    – “A welcome series is crucial in the first 30 days after a reader signs up for your newsletter. A great series establishes a relationship with the reader, builds trust, and guides them through the next steps on their journey. But they’re also so important for email deliverability. These emails open at a much higher rate than your newsletters or regular email correspondence, and every time a reader engages with an email, it improves your brand’s standing with inbox providers like Gmail. By driving that early engagement with your readers, it’s going to help you stay out of the spam folder.

    In that first welcome email, make sure you introduce yourself and set the expectations for readers: What they’ll get and when they can expect to hear from you. But don’t stop with just a single welcome email. Make sure that over the course of the first month, you send a series of emails to help readers get to know you, your team, and your brand, and help them get the most out of their relationship with you. The more they engage, the more it should help improve your email deliverability over the long term.”

Josh Nason

Josh has been in the email space for more than 10 years and has worked for email service providers, agencies, and been a client himself.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshnason/

  • Avoid Big List Syndrome

    – “Great email deliverability always starts with sending emails to those who opted in/want to receive those emails, but another common misfire is what I call “big list syndrome” — when marketing likes to tout their email list size.

    The problem? A healthy chunk of those big lists likely haven’t engaged in quite some time, resulting in lower than expected inbox placement rates due to low engagement levels.

    We always recommend cutting off email recipients that haven’t opened in more than two years and pushing them to a re-engagement campaign. From there, senders can likely cut down even more depending on what the stats tell them (ex. how soon someone unsubscribed following signup).

    By cutting down on inactive recipients, senders can get a more realistic idea of their active email list and why and when recipients are dropping off. That also can become beneficial following the cleanup as you can get a better sense of how your active users are responding to your email campaigns, especially if open percentage is a key metric.

    Keeping continually tight email marketing lists is an easy way for senders to increase engagement and cut out the fat.”

Zack Aab

Zack Aab is the Senior Deliverability Strategist at Trendline Interactive. His responsibilities include deliverability audits and consulting for enterprise clients and ESPs, as well as data privacy and legal compliance implementation.
https://www.trendlineinteractive.com

  • Opt-Down and Reduce Cadence to Users As They Age

    – “Unless a user is very active, the longer it’s been since they opted in, the greater probability that they are sending negative signals to their mailbox provider.

    Offer an “opt-down” to re-engage and even if they don’t request the opt-down steadily reduce the frequency that they receive messages.

    This allows them to convert if they become interested later while reducing the frequency and therefore impact of the negative signals they are sending to their provider, as well as reducing the likelihood they get sick of you and unsubscribe or complain.”

Gene Gusman

Gene Gusman is Director of Deliverability Operations, North America for Cheetah Digital. He is a technologist with over twenty years of experience in marketing and publishing technology. He leads the optimization efforts of the messaging infrastructure for deliverability while helping clients to get their messages to the inboxes of their customers.
http://www.cheetahdigital.com

  • Reengage or Disengage

    – “These days, one of the primary factors influencing email inbox placement is engagement. Even if you are doing all the right things in terms of permission, authentication, frequency and content, if your subscribers are not opening, clicking, responding, or otherwise engaging with your emails, then deliverability will suffer.

    Sometimes people change their interests, change their minds, or simply get tired of the same thing. If that is happening with your email campaign, get their attention and find out what they do want. When someone has not interacted with any of your messages in a while, it’s time to change the conversation.

    Maybe they are just not responding to the current subject matter, so change the email subject line and pre-header to include a call to action. The subject line and pre-header are your only line of communication until they open the email. And, since they have not been interacting, lower the frequency of sending.

    Don’t wait until a subscriber has not engaged for six months before changing your message. It is not uncommon for an audience to open and click less frequently with time. When you see this happening, try offering an incentive or some new and special content to rekindle interest in the program.

    Consider creating a segment of your email list that was previously active, but not within the past 3 to 6 months (the time period could vary with your program). Send these subscribers a different message before they lose interest entirely. If they have not engaged within the past 6 to 12 months (depending upon your program), they now require a concerted reengagement effort and should be placed in a segment outside of the primary mailing list. If they still do not interact after some weeks (once again, the period could vary with your program), you should send a request to reconfirm their permission. If one or two of these are unsuccessful the address should be deactivated.

    A list with too many inactive email addresses can damage your sender reputation and negatively impact email deliverability. As the mailbox provider focus on engagement has increased, they may also look at the percentage of the addresses that are engaged as a factor in determining inbox placement. It is therefore important to incorporate an activity-based segmentation strategy so that it is integrated rather than an occasional task. Review your program to help determine the appropriate time periods for each segment. Email addresses that have passed through the phases of decreasing activity, have been given a chance to re-confirm their permission and have failed to do so should be removed from your list. DISENGAGE!”

Filed Under: Email Marketing

Best Email Marketing Books: What Do The Pros Recommend You Read?

by Chris Herbert | Last Updated March 22, 2021

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, meaning, at no added cost to you, we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Best Email Marketing BooksNothing beats a good book if you’re hungry to learn. Those that are well written, by someone that either has bags of experience in the subject area or has carried out extensive research (or both), essentially serve as short-cuts to improvement in your own skills and performance. You don’t have to go through all of the trials and tribulations that the author went through, and can just skip to the good stuff.

And if your thirst for knowledge centers around email marketing, this is the article for you. We asked some of the world’s leading email marketers for their recommendations on the best email marketing books that have been written, and we’ve compiled a hit-list of books that anyone involved with this marketing channel would be well advised to devour.

When we started putting this together, our intention was to only focus on books that are specifically written about email marketing. But we quickly realized that there are many, many amazing books that contain concepts that can be truly game-changing when applied to email marketing. So rather than being a standard list of “The 10 Best Email Marketing Books” this article serves as a list of books that every email marketer should read.

Top Picks: Best Books to Read on Email Marketing

There were a lot of different books recommended by the email marketers we reached out to, but there were a handful that really stood out as they were mentioned multiple times. They also all happen to be specific to email marketing, so if you’re looking for the “best email marketing books to read,” this might be a good place to start.

1. E-Telligence: Email Marketing Isn’t Dead, the Way You’re Using It Is

If your email marketing efforts aren’t bearing any fruit and you can’t figure out why, this is a must-read. Kate Barrett uses her years of industry experience to take you on a journey from “this doesn’t work” to “email marketing rocks!”, walking you through auditing, optimizing and improving your email program, as well as advising you on the key areas of list growth and email deliverability.

More Info

2. Email Marketing Rules

Written by industry veteran, Chad White, “Email Marketing Rules” is suitable for anyone from the complete novice to experienced pro, and is ram-packed full of best practices based on years of real-world, in the trenches research, all nicely organized into well-structured, easy to digest sections.

More Info

3. Hillstrom’s Email Marketing Excellence

Not been paying enough attention to the data? Then you’re committing the most fatal of sins (in the realm of email marketing at least), and this book will help to put you on the right path. Hillstrom’s Email Marketing Excellence takes a forensic approach to helping you understand subscriber behavior and measure the success of your email campaigns.

More Info

4. The New Inbox

In this book, Simms Jenkins helps you to understand how email marketing fits into the modern marketing world. Having been at the helm of one of the world’s leading email marketing agencies for years, this read is full of practical advice on what works, and comes complete with case studies and real-world examples to help you succeed.

More Info

5. Deliverability Inferno

If you want to hone in on email deliverability, then this is a great resource to read. Written by Chris Arrendale, “Deliverability Inferno” helps to break down the complex nature of this often misunderstood aspect of email marketing, helping you to understand the different factors that influence it and how you can take control and increase the chances of your campaigns reaching the inbox.

More Info

Other Books Recommended for Email Marketers By Email Marketers

In this section we’re going to show you a quick overview of the rest of the recommendations that were put forward, which we’ve sorted into some rough categories for you.

Specific to Email Marketing

The Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing 👈

Email Persuasion: Captivate and Engage Your Audience, Build Authority and Generate More Sales With Email Marketing 👈

300 Email Marketing Tips: Critical Advice And Strategy To Turn Subscribers Into Buyers & Grow A Six-Figure Business With Email 👈

Total E-mail Marketing 👈

Email Marketing Demystified: Build a Massive Mailing List, Write Copy that Converts and Generate More Sales 👈

Communication

Everybody Writes 👈

Keys to Great Writing 👈

Nonviolent Communication 👈

Back of the Napkin 👈

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die 👈

Consumer Behaviour/Psychology

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion 👈

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions 👈

Habit 👈

Thinking, Fast and Slow 👈

Data/Testing

You Should Test That 👈

Drilling Down. Turning Customer Data into Profits with a Spreadsheet 👈

Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010: Give Your Data Meaning 👈

Relationships + Audiences

How to Win Friends and Influence People 👈

Audience: Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans and Followers 👈

We Are All Weird: The Rise of Tribes and the End of Normal 👈

The Jobs To Be Done Handbook 👈

The One to One Future 👈

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact 👈

Improving Effectiveness

Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better and Achieve More 👈

The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results 👈

The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done 👈

Decision Making/Strategy

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard 👈

The Art of War 👈

Taking Down Goliath 👈

Misc

Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work and What We Can Do About It 👈

Generation Ageless 👈

Agile for Everybody: Creating Fast, Flexible, and Customer-First Organizations 👈

Digital Marketing 👈

On Emotional Intelligence (HBR’s 10 Best Reads) 👈

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business 👈

New Releases Worth Checking Out:

Holistic Email Marketing: A Practical Philosophy to Revolutionise Your Business 👈

Other Articles You May Find Useful:

  • Best Email Marketing Software for Small Business? 104 Pros Vote
  • How to Increase Your Email Open Rate: 42 Pros Offer Expert Advice
  • How to Improve Email Deliverability Rates: Expert Advice + Strategies
  • How to Build an Email List: 75 Experts Share Their Secrets
  • All Email Marketing Resources

Read What The Experts Said

Below we’ve published exactly what each expert had to say when we asked them for their recommendations on the books they deem to be “must reads” for anyone involved with email marketing. If you want to see what was said about a particular book, use the filters to jump right to the relevant content.

{"filter_mode":"masonry"}
  • All
  • E-telligence
  • Email Marketing Rules
  • Hillstrom's Email Marketing Excellence
  • The New Inbox
  • Deliverability Inferno
  • The Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing
  • Email Persuasion
  • 300 Email Marketing Tips
  • Total E-mail Marketing
  • Email Marketing Demystified
  • Everybody Writes
  • Keys to Great Writing
  • Nonviolent Communication
  • Back of the Napkin
  • Made to Stick
  • Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion
  • Predictably Irrational
  • Habit
  • Thinking - Fast and Slow
  • You Should Test That
  • Drilling Down
  • Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010
  • How to Win Friends and Influence People
  • Audience
  • We Are All Weird
  • The Jobs To Be Done Handbook
  • The One to One Future
  • The Power of Moments
  • Great at Work
  • The One Thing
  • The Effective Executive
  • Switch
  • The Art of War
  • Taking Down Goliath
  • Bullshit Jobs
  • Generation Ageless
  • Agile for Everybody
  • Digital Marketing
  • On Emotional Intelligence
  • Traction

Kath Pay

Kath is recognised as a leading international email marketing thought leader and Author of Holistic Email Marketing. She devotes her time to developing customer-centric eCommerce journeys using a holistic, multi-channel approach. With a wealth of knowledge gained from being an industry veteran of 20 years, Kath is an author, blogger, expert contributor, international conference speaker, and trainer.
https://www.holisticemailmarketing.com
  • You Should Test That – “This is a great book for learning and understanding the ‘why’ and ‘how’ you should be conducting tests. Whilst it’s not specifically addressing how to test in email, the insights can be brought over and implemented within the email channel. It’s incredibly insightful and a must-read for any email marketer who wants to improve their email programs.”
  • Hillstrom’s Email Marketing Excellence – “I’ve had the pleasure of speaking at a conference in Sweden alongside of Kevin, and have been an avid follower and admirer ever since. He brings unique insights into email marketing and questions what we currently do – all based on data.”
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow – “I believe it’s essential for we as marketers to understand as much of human behaviour as we can. Nobel Memorial Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, reveals insights into why we do what we do, enabling you to then carry this information over to help you to better understand your customer’s decision-making processes.”

Kait Creamer

Kait Creamer advocates for emotionally intelligent email marketing in and outside her work as Framer’s CRM Marketing Manager. 2017 Stefan Pollard Email Marketer of the Year award winner, she’s an expert and enthusiast in email, data, and marketing automation, continually pushing for the next best customer-centric campaign.
http://www.wanderingkait.com
  • The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results – “Like it or not, email is a highly visible channel. When everyone sees your work, everyone has feedback for how it can be better. It can be really tough to prioritize making big, impactful changes when you’re being pulled in a thousand different directions. “The One Thing” is one of my favorite books because it gives you a framework for prioritizing the things that matter both at work and at home. When you’re able to focus on making an impact, you get better results. Better results make for happier work. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.”
  • On Emotional Intelligence (HBR’s 10 Best Reads) – “Email marketers are often working with developers, designers, data teams, sales, you name it. When you’re working with so many different individuals who all have their own set of priorities, you have to get really good at managing expectations and emotions or you’ll end up really frustrated with your work. (In that same vein, “Email Takes Resilience” from the wonderful Jason Rodriguez is the single most relatable piece of writing I think most email marketers will read on the challenges of working in email) This collection of articles from HBR is an awesome guide for not only improving your own EQ but also fostering a culture of openness, communication, and alignment within your organization.”

April Mullen

April Mullen is a digital evangelist focusing on global client strategy and marketing for Selligent Marketing Cloud. Mullen is also an adjunct professor of digital marketing at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a co-founder of the non-profit Women of Email. Most recently, April was named to DMN’s list of “Women to Watch” and DMNews “40 Under 40” list in 2018.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aprildmullen/
  • E-Telligence: Email Marketing Isn’t Dead, the Way You’re Using It Is – “If you are looking for a detailed book on how to audit, optimize and increase the sophistication of your email marketing program, you should read Kate Barrett’s book, “E-Telligence: Email Marketing Isn’t Dead, the Way You’re Using It Is”. It’s one of the most comprehensive and newest reads on how to effectively manage the complexities required to resonate with email subscribers today. If you follow Barrett’s prescriptive advice and framework, you will see improvement in your email programs fairly quickly. It’s a brilliant read!”
  • The New Inbox: Why Email Marketing is the Digital Marketing Hub in a Social & Mobile World – “I recommend this book because it helps put email marketing into the broader context of digital marketing — specifically mobile and social media. Jenkins shares proof points of email and cross-channel success through case study examples. It’s a must read for any email marketer seeking to think of email in a broader context of how it can have an impact on other channels.”

Olly Beckett

For 15+ years, Olly has worked with some of the world’s largest brands, including STA Travel and Expedia, creating successful email campaigns. With experience of managing databases large and small, Olly owns the World In Words consultancy, focusing on improving key email metrics, plus providing automation and machine learning advice.
http://worldinwords.co.uk
  • We Are All Weird: The Rise of Tribes and the End of Normal – “A friend recommended this author, and his seminal book Permission Marketing, to me. Whilst Permission Marketing is still a fascinating piece of work, the book I’m reading is more up-to-date and covers an area that I’ve been particularly involved with in recent years; targeting the individual. Organising our audiences into tribes can be helpful, but remembering that we’re all a bit weird can be the most important lesson to learn.”
  • Digital Marketing – “If you want to be a student of marketing then this book should most definitely be on your reading list. Even if you’ve been in this business for many years there are some real gems contained in this text, including some great case studies. We should never stop learning!”

Val Geisler

Val Geisler is the founder and Chief Email Officer of Fix My Churn. With an obsession for customer communication, Val spent over a decade inside companies from non-profits to 7-figure businesses to tech startups. She brings her background in content creation, CX, and digital strategy to her clients every day.
https://fixmychurn.com/

“There are 3 books that I buy for every member of the Email Marketing Mastery Incubator, mostly because I think they’re the 3 most invaluable books for any email marketer to read…”

  • Email Marketing Rules – “Does this book need any further explanation? Chad knows email inside and out (he was the head of research at Litmus, after all) and his book lays out the basics and then some. Everyone can learn from this book: from seasoned email marketers all the way to the very brand new beginner. It’s a regular reference point for me and a must-read for my students.”
  • The Jobs To Be Done Handbook – “Knowing how to craft emails is one thing, knowing the why behind those emails is another. And the only way to get to the why is through the very people who will be reading them. Enter Jobs to be Done: a framework for surveys and interviews you can run with your customers to find out exactly why they “hired” your product in the first place. Once you know that, writing emails is easy! There are a lot of resources out there about JTBD but this book is written by the creators of the method so I prefer to go straight to the source.”
  • Nonviolent Communication – “Not often considered a business book, NVC is circulated amongst small but smart business owners who understand that communication is everything. 90% of working with clients (whether you’re in-house or freelance) is communicating with people and Nonviolent Communication will teach you how to be effective with your words. I use this book every day!”

Ian Brodie

Ian Brodie is the author of Email Persuasion, the best-selling, highest reviewed and most awarded book on email marketing.
https://www.ianbrodie.com
  • Hillstrom’s Email Marketing Excellence – “There are lots of books that cover email marketing generally (I like to think mine is the best, but there are plenty to choose from). So I’m going to nominate Hillstrom’s Email Marketing Excellence by Kevin Hillstrom which is a very specialised book.

    It’s a short book that focuses entirely on email marketing metrics and forensics. It goes way beyond the simplistic use of open and click rates to build a model for understanding the effectiveness of your emails. It also covers more advanced measurement and testing systems such as doing mail/holdout tests.

    If you’ve already read plenty on setting up email systems, getting subscribers and writing emails, a great next step is to read this book to see how to properly measure and test the effectiveness of your emails. It’ll make everything else you learn and do so much more effective.”

Tim Watson

Tim’s an email marketing consultant and international speaker who’s presented at conferences in over half a dozen countries. Working with email volumes of up to 90 million/month, his advice is based on answers from extensive analysis and practical testing.
https://www.zettasphere.com
  • Total E-mail Marketing – “A solid book for beginners. Easy to read with examples throughout.

    It delivers a solid foundation of all elements that are needed for successful email marketing. Including list growth, creative and targeting.

    It was published a few years ago so doesn’t cover current advanced topics for email marketing. However, as a beginner those are not the topics you need.

    You’ll find the core principles covered are a great guide, as you continue to expand email marketing knowledge with practice experience.”

  • Keys to Great Writing – “Email is naturally conversational. Many people make the error of worrying more about the artistic design of the email than the words. That’s a mistake.

    Whilst this book it not dedicated to email marketing it is hugely relevant. To subject lines, calls to action and body copy.

    An excellent guide to powerful copy, how to structure sentences, how to use punctuation, how to add emphasis. Simply how to make your point.

    An easy read with examples illustrating how small changes make a big difference to copy.

    You’ll find the book a double win. Not only does it make your marketing copy better, but also anything you’re writing. Such as emails to your work colleagues – give them impact and get the results you desire.”

  • Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010: Give Your Data Meaning – “Don’t worry about the 2010 title, this book is just as relevant to Excel today as Excel 2010 version.

    PowerPivot is a hidden jewel of Excel. If you don’t have a data analyst on your team or business intelligence department then PowerPivot is the most accessible tool for doing advanced data analysis.

    Email marketing is underpinned by getting insight from your data. PowerPivot is my tool of choice for this.

    If you are a data geek who is already comfortable with Pivot tables and complex Excel formulae then upscale to PowerPivot.

    PowerPivot is an advanced skill, not for the faint hearted. The book is suitable for PowerPivot beginners and intermediates.

    Before reading this book I’d played with PowerPivot but felt I was missing out on getting the best from this powerful tool. Only after reading did I realise how much I was missing out.”

Bonus Recommendation

  • Traction – “You’ve got vision for your email marketing but are struggling to get traction and make it happen. Sound familiar?

    You’re not alone. Very often complete businesses suffer the same problem. Vision goes unrealized due to lack of traction.

    The book Traction, by Gino Wickman, explains a simple set of tools known as the Entrepreneurial Operating System® or EOS for short. A set of tools and disciplines that help entrepreneurial businesses become better businesses. Ultimately achieving their vision.

    I’ve used EOS in its purest form, day in, day out, whilst running a marketing team. The business grew 54% to $10m in the last 3 years. I can say first-hand EOS works. In fact, 1000’s of business have adopted EOS.

    Whilst EOS addresses the whole business, you’ll find the 90 day planning method, priority setting, score carding and methods to drive accountability effective in a marketing team.

    It’s well written and easy to read. If you’re short on time then for marketing read Chapters 3, 5 and 8 as a minimum. If you’re a team lead or manager in marketing add to that Chapter 4.

    Start with Chapter 1 which gives an overview of EOS and the book contents. Get Chapter 1 from this free download.”

Jennifer Kirchhofer

Veteran digital marketer with strong focus on email. Specialties include marketing strategy, customer journey/lifecycle management, using data to create meaningful and relevant communications, and generally trying to figure out what makes people tick. Midwest (USA) born and bred, New York mentality, San Francisco heart, now Auckland, New Zealand based.
www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-kirchhofer-8126087
  • E-telligence: Email marketing isn’t dead, the way you’re using it is – “It’s periodically said that email is dead, but it somehow keeps coming back to life. In my opinion, email as a digital channel is very much alive and well, but the way many use it is broken. Kate’s book is a fantastic look at how to make email a critical and valuable element in marketing strategy. Email truly underpins most other marketing efforts, and serves as a wonderful foundation for lifecycle marketing and relationship building. Get advice from an expert on how to make it work for you in this read.”
  • The Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing – “This is a hands-on guide to making your email efforts work for your organization, even when you’re not confident it will. This book is a great reference for any level of email marketer, and speaks well to the way we use email: as professionals, as consumers, as brands, and as humans. Learn heaps of great tips on the opportunities email gives us, and especially learn how to break the rules and the things we previously knew about this valuable channel.”
  • Audience: Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans & Followers – “All brands and organisations need audiences: it’s where we find new customers, nurture relationships, and foster communication. Yet, many treat their audiences, even developed one, as silos and as afterthoughts. In Jeff’s book, he helps us to see our audiences as valuable pieces of our business and teaches us important lessons on how to build and maintain lasting, strong relationships with these communities. This advice is applicable across any organization, for any professional, and for any channel.”

Komal Helyer

Komal Helyer, VP Marketing at Pure360 has over 20 years of marketing experience. DMA Email Council member, Council Hub Chair and awards judge for several industry awards, Komal has developed and led both B2B and B2C marketing strategies.
https://www.pure360.com
  • The One to One Future – “This book is often heralded to have revolutionised marketing. It also inspired me to build a career in the industry. It is a book that pioneered and prophesied the need for brands to move away from mass marketing to having a customer-centric approach. When originally written, the internet was not yet ubiquitous and technology had not advanced. But yet Don Peppers and Martha Rogers were able to predict the rise of the customer and that those businesses that focused on taking the product to relevant customer segments would be the ones to succeed. It is even rumoured that Jeff Bezos built Amazon off the concepts within this book. After all their mission is “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company…”

    It is one of the best foundation marketing books that every email marketer should read, and whilst the examples may be dated, the concepts are ever more important to know now than they were then. However, what is really exciting for marketers today is that now the concept of true one-to-one marketing can be a reality. Marketing automation technology has advanced enough to enable marketers to deliver relevant and personalised customer experiences at scale. So to read this book and to understand the importance of the concepts is not only crucial for you to drive business success, but also for you to drive your career success.”

  • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – “One of the best books on human behaviour, an essential understanding for any marketer. Why do people say “Yes” and how can you influence others to say “Yes” too! Psychological understanding and application is often forgotten by many marketers especially in digital marketing. In this book, Cialdini outlines the 6 “Principles of Persuasion”, and by applying many of the principles to marketing copy and tactics, it can help you drive the objectives your business needs. Peppered with tons of great examples, it is a great marketing reference book for those at any level.”

Mike Welthy

Mike Welthy is an email marketing consultant based in New York City, specializing in the strategy and development of dynamically generated marketing campaigns that effectively target subscribers and customers in order to impact engagement in the publishing and entertainment industries.
http://www.impactengagement.com
  • Audience: Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans and Followers – “This was one of the first books I read that truly focused on the core concept of an “audience” and how to build them, market to them, and engage with them. The primary goal of the book is to challenge marketers to go beyond using paid media and marketing strategies for short term sales or conversions, and identify ways to build long term solutions to increase the size, engagement, and monetization of their existing users and customers.

    The book is divided into three parts; identifying and building the audience, utilizing a strategic plan to incorporate marketing efforts through multiple channels, and finally, delivering measurable results. Each channel has a dedicated chapter, and the chapter on email (“The Bedrock Audience”) is very well written and provides a comprehensive overview of strategy, practical applications, and execution.

    I especially liked the clever use of ALL CAPS for referring to “specific, proprietary audiences” that are discussed throughout the book, making it easy to follow and highlight key audiences readers might be interested in throughout the book.

    With the growth of cross-channel marketing and customer journeys as the prevailing strategy for B2B and B2C businesses, “Audience: Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans and Followers” serves as an excellent starting point for any member of a marketing team, whether starting from scratch or looking to take things to the next level.”

Guy Hanson

A highly respected digital marketing professional and data storyteller, working primarily in the email industry for almost 2 decades. I’m a passionate advocate for intelligent use of customer data to drive responsive programs, and I’ve developed this belief to become one of the UK’s leading email marketing experts.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/guyhanson/
  • E-telligence: Email marketing isn’t dead, the way you’re using it is – “Kate is that rarest of things in the world of email – a natural storyteller, who is a jack of all trades AND master of all. In this book, she’s managed to squeeze her wealth of knowledge into just under 300 highly readable pages. For email marketers who are looking to up their game, it’s an essential read that covers all the key topics: acquistion; list growth; creative; segmentation; automation; testing; program strategy; measurement and reporting; technology and deliverability – all in one great book! Kate is naturally passionate about email, and after reading her book it’s hard not to feel a little of that passion yourself!”
  • Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better and Achieve More – “This one is for managers of email teams. In the DMA’s 2019 Marketer Email Tracker report, the second biggest challenge to effective email marketing is “limited internal resource” (40% of respondents, and beaten only by “limited budget” – which has a direct impact on resource anyway!). This book’s central mantra is “do less, then obsess” and it explores 8 core principles to achieve this. i.e. scale back all the extraneous stuff, focus on what’s most important, and do it really, really well. Challenge all the unnecessary meetings, make sure every piece of work adds real value, etc. I got my team to implement the 3 they felt made most sense, and we’ve seen a major uplift in capacity since doing so – and they’re happier too!”
  • Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work and What We Can Do About It – “At a recent email council meeting we were remarking on how few people in our industry actually trained for a career in email marketing. Many opportunistically find their way into email, and some even do so by complete accident! As a result, there is often an element of imposter syndrome – “is this a real job?” The good news is email marketing does not get referenced in this book (“a bullshit job is a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence!”) which comes as a huge relief! However, many in email will probably recognise the “duct tapers” sub-category – employees whose jobs exist because of glitches or faults in their organisations, and who are there to fix problems that ought not to exist in the first place (did I hear someone say “deliverability”?)”

Chad S. White

Chad S. White is the Head of Research at Oracle Marketing Cloud Consulting, a global digital marketing agency that’s uniquely positioned within Oracle to help brands succeed. Chad is also the author of “Email Marketing Rules” and the Email Experience Council’s 2018 Email Marketer Thought Leader of the Year.
http://www.emailmarketingrules.com
  • Deliverability Inferno – “Email deliverability is a complex and difficult aspect of email marketing to understand. “Deliverability Inferno” by Chris Arrendale does a great job of breaking down all of the elements that contribute to inbox placement so that marketers can focus on each one in turn. At a little over 100 pages, it’s a quick read and fantastic primer on what brands need to understand if they want to stay in the good graces of inbox providers and their subscribers.”

Ryan Phelan

Ryan Phelan brings nearly two decades of global online marketing experience to Origin focusing on driving GTM strategies for high growth SaaS software and Fortune 250 companies. Ryan is a respected thought leader and nationally distinguished speaker and strategist.
http://www.originemail.com

“Seems that everyone has a book these days. Some of them are not worth the paper they’re written on (or screen they’re displayed on) but yet, some of them are amazing resources for building your knowledge base. In the email space, it’s critical to take the time to read and research.

Online publications, books, webinars – they all take us out of the tactical execution of our day-to-day jobs and help us provide more complexity and relevancy to our programs. Add to that, the average email marketer is one for about 2 years before they move on. This constant refresh on our industry means that with the time we have, we maximize our effectiveness.

After about 20 years of working in the email industry, I can tell you my three book choices are solid investments of time. They not only give practical examples of programs, approaches, strategies and tactics, but they’re easy to read. Nope, they’re not like a college professor lecturing you until you fall asleep, but they’re insightful and valuable from the first page. Enjoy!”

  • Email Marketing Rules – “Chad White is a legend in the email industry and this book is so well needed in the industry. Think about it, we all have questions and struggles in our job and knowing the best way to proceed. This book is as much a reference as it is leading you to better program development and learning from Chad’s vast experience on the front lines of email. Chad has done an incredible amount of research over the years, so know that what you’re reading is based in not only fact, but proven methods. It’s not the be all and end all (but damn close), and everything you consider should be tested, but I will say that Chad is a leader and award winner for a reason.”
  • The New Inbox – “Simms, one of the most successful people in this industry is the CEO of Brightwave, and Ansira Company and has been leading marketers to success for nearly 2 decades. This is Simms’s second book and in it, he reminds us all of where we’ve been as an industry and the evolution of the space that fits within the customer expectations and mindset. It consolidates a lot of the common discussions and strategies that we talk about at conferences, articles and in clients’ offices. Throughout the book, Simms paints a picture through real world examples on how to do the things he’s talking about. It’s an amazing resource as Simms has a keen eye on not only what works, but what a client/marketer can handle. This is a must read for every email marketer!”
  • Taking Down Goliath – “Picture this. You’re an email marketer and you’ve got little budget, big demands and emails flying around the earth at light speed. Well, when you’re in that position (or many others in your career) you’re going to be up against someone bigger than you. My friend Kevin Ryan along with Rob Graham wrote “Taking Down Goliath” and talk through strategies to beat companies 100x your size. Now, while this is not an email marketing book per se, what it does is set a mindset. You have to be not only scrappy, but innovative in the email (or any) space. You have to think bigger, move faster and crush it and that only comes with a clear path forward that starts inside that noggin of yours and with clear and proven strategies. This book walks through digital strategies and gets you in the zone. Where you need to be to survive.”

Evan Diaz

Evan has been neck deep in email design for the last decade or so as the head email nerd at Lucky Red Pixel, a highly-rated email design agency based in central Florida.
http://www.luckyredpixel.com/

“The Heath Brothers’ books are a great resource for experienced and beginner marketers. They’re packed with great practical examples of how people think and what motivates them.”

  • Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die – “If you’re going to be a successful marketer, you need to know how to be memorable. Favorite concept: The Curse of Knowledge.”
  • Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard – “All about making a desired action happen. Favorite concept: Tweak the Environment.”
  • The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact – “his one is for the marketer who really wants to make a lasting impact to surprise & delight. Favorite concept: Break the Script”

Anthony Chiulli

With more than a decade of email experience, Anthony embraces educating and advising email marketers on the latest trends and insights within the email industry as director of product marketing. Before joining 250ok, Anthony's prior roles included Marketing Practice Lead, Deliverability Services at Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and Senior Account Manager at Return Path.
http://www.250ok.com
  • Email Marketing Rules – “I have read many books about digital marketing over my career, but there is only one that I continue to reference regularly and recommended to marketers and industry colleagues alike…that book is Chad S. White’s “Email Marketing Rules”.

    Email Marketing Rules is an exceptional resource for new and experienced email marketers alike. The book is in its third edition, and is filled with a wealth of knowledge on all things email marketing from best practices, tips, and the fundamentals of an effective email marketing program. The book is organized in concise easy-to-follow sections, and includes illustrations and key takeaways that help marketers understand the complex topic that is email marketing strategies. Best of all, Chad’s writing style is structured, easy to follow, and conversational in tone.

    This book is an amazing asset to reference and I have learned A LOT over the years from Chad. I highly recommended this book for anyone in email marketing, novices and veterans alike!”

Magan Le

I have 9+ years of email marketing experience, specializing in conversion and retention strategies. I’m a strong advocate of human-to-human marketing and user experience. The key is speaking to your audience like a person — not a business or dollar sign. This is my approach to standing out in the inbox.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maganle
  • Everybody Writes – “Not specific to email, but great copywriting is essential — no matter your job title. What I love about “Everybody Writes” is its refreshing take on connecting with your audience vs. writing just to sound smart. Hint: Talking “smart” usually makes you more difficult to understand, and brevity is especially key in email. So this book can help you make your email marketing more impactful. Plus, it’s a fun and quick read!”
  • E-telligence: Email marketing isn’t dead, the way you’re using it is – “Seriously, how many times have we been told that email marketing is dead? This relatively new book is a practical, easy-to-follow guide on how to give your email marketing strategy the oomph it needs. Whether you’re a newbie or a seasoned pro, there are great tips for everyone! I especially like how it touches on the operational and technical sides of email, too, so you get a more 360-degree view of everything email.”

David Baker

With more than 25 years of experience in digital marketing and marketing technology, Baker is an award-winning industry thought leader, columnist and speaker. He has held executive roles at publicly traded, leading agencies and marketing services providers including Razorfish, Targetbase, Agency.com and Acxiom.
http://www.salire.com

“There are three books that have had a profound impact on how I see the market, the consumer and applied technology. All email marketers need to understand email is a really impersonal commercial channel, regardless of how personalized it is. While this list is not a “how to be a better email marker” they are life long references to fundamentals that I believe new marketing professionals need to have a strong foundation in in order to grasp the next generation of marketing where machines and decisioning technologies will outpace human’s ability to moderate experiences.

Email marketing is not just a medium; it facilitates functional needs for consumers. Critical to understanding timing, channel bias, location, context, and the fleeting changes that are affected by life-stage milestones (graduation, buying a first home, having children, etc.) and external macro considerations, is to understand how and why humans do what they do, not just observing what they have done. This base is so fundamental to anyone in email marketing that wants to have more impact on Customer Experience, vs. licking stamps.”

  • Habit – “This book is a fascinating view of the mind in the context of buying, shopping, learning and explores the subtleties of how consumers make decisions through the unconscious and conscious mind. All marketers should understand the psychology of how habits are formed and how purchase decisions are influenced by where, when and how you are exposed to brand stimuli.”
  • Generation Ageless – “I’m mesmerized by the differences in how active living generations operate and the influence on society. While there is a great deal published on Millennials, Boomers, Gen X/Y, this book is a great primer to level set on the Boomers which are a highly influential generation, yet aging population, but still has the most impact on financial markets, consumer buying, and wealth distribution.”
  • Back of the Napkin – “In an ever-increasing distributed workforce, communication is so vital to sustaining a culture that can articulate ideas without writing novels. Back of the Napkin is a must-have resource for any marketer starting out, as it provides constructs for how to draw ideas in ways that communicate ideas and bring people together. It’s a lost art, with web conferencing, yet has a dramatic effect on how people share ideas, how ideas travel and simplifying complex thinking. Marketing is getting complex, how you communicate shouldn’t. In my interviews with potential candidates, I always end the interview with an exercise, whereby the candidate will have to visualize their life and career goals on a whiteboard without “words”.. it forces you to think of things very abstractly and to communicate a clear thought.”

“These are three books you will reference over and over in your career, as they are timeless!”

Shmuel Herschberg

Shmuel Herschberg is a seasoned digital marketing executive, who lives and breathes email marketing. He is the founder of Shyn Media, a boutique agency that offers creative marketing automation, content strategy, and digital media services.
http://www.shynmedia.com
  • How to Win Friends and Influence People – “I’m going old school here. Books come and go and without a doubt, one of the seminal business books that’s truly stood the test of time is “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. Written over 80 years ago – and way before the first email was ever sent – Carnegie lays out a masterpiece for how to cultivate relationships. As an email marketer, this is what I’m striving for with my subscribers, albeit on a different medium, so learning how to be personable and develop customer trust is of paramount importance. As Carnegie wrote, “The rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage.” Try adding a bit of that into your email marketing campaigns and watch how customers respond.”

Kateryna Nazarenko

Marketer at MacPaw Inc. 8 years of experience in email marketing & analytics. Customer-centric systems lover
https://www.linkedin.com/in/katerina-nazarenko/
  • Email Persuasion – “This book is a must for email marketing newbies, as it presents fundamental knowledge of the field. The author shares his quick tips and cases studies, so you can use them from the very start.”
  • Drilling Down. Turning Customer Data into Profits with a Spreadsheet – “I really appreciate this book. It’s all about basic analytics. It’s very comprehensive and quite simple to understand even for novices. After reading it, even if you have no analytics tools, you can start to make data-driven decisions, using spreadsheets, and improve your communication with customers – growing their loyalty and achieving bigger revenue numbers.”
  • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – “It’s the classic book on persuasion, explaining the psychology of why people say “yes” — and how to apply these understandings. I’m totally convinced that the principles of social proof, authority, affinity, consistency, reciprocity, and deficit work great in email marketing. It’s worth reading and implementing.”

Alexandro Romeo

Email Marketing Entrepreneur
http://www.doesolutions.com
  • The Art of War – “While knowing Email at Einstein levels is very necessary, understanding how to navigate the corporate environment is typically where most Email Marketers tend to fail. The Art of War is a great read in helping one understand the priorities of your approach as a general would at war. These same principals when applied to business will enable you to pursue your goals with more focus and confidence.”
  • The Effective Executive – “Another one I highly recommend. This is a book that I would classify as “old school business”. Essentially, the book provides the definitive principals of the how and the why as to what makes a great executive. As a leader, it is imperative that you understand what your priorities are in terms of handling your personnel as well as yourself. This book provides excellent foundational values.”

John Thies

John Thies is the CEO and Co-Founder of Email on Acid, a pre-deployment Email QA platform that strives to remove the inherent fear of hitting the "Send Button". He’s a passionate and engaging industry leader who lives, breathes, and dreams in email (seriously). John also serves as the CEO of Cause for Awareness, a recently formed non-profit that empowers other non-profit organizations with digital marketing resources.
https://www.emailonacid.com
  • Deliverability Inferno – “This is my first recommendation of a book that every email marketer should read. Chris does a fantastic job in breaking down what Email Deliverability is, why it’s “a thing” and how marketers are in control of their own inbox placement. Email is not an easy channel to use and there’s a lot that goes into preparing an email campaign for deployment. It doesn’t help that spammers make it more difficult for legitimate email to arrive into a subscriber’s inbox. By following Chris’s guidance, your email campaigns will most certainly have better engagement and drive a bigger return on the investment.”
  • Email Marketing Demystified – “This book does a great job of explaining Email Marketing in clear, precise language and also includes real world examples. It’s not just about theory and best practices. Matthew provides several actionable takeaways that can be implemented the very next day. It’s great for beginners and intermediate email marketers in that it blends technical pieces, but does it in a way that is easy for the reader to understand. I highly recommend this read to anyone that is involved with Email Marketing.”

Jenny Lassi

As a seasoned digital marketing professional and Digital Marketing Strategist for Infinity Direct, I have a passion (really more of an obsession) for solving business problems with technology. My other passions are martech stack consulting and expanding agency capabilities through strategic partnerships.
https://infinitydirect.com/about/jenny
  • Agile for Everybody: Creating Fast, Flexible, and Customer-First Organizations – “The book I recommend is a great read for marketers challenged to adapt to constant change. Email is always evolving, always, but many email marketers are of the understanding that email best practices are a list of rules that doesn’t change and that’s simply not true. What is changing the most now for email marketers is drilling down to the 1-to-1 communications that subscribers, members and customers want in order to stay engaged. Putting the audience into predefined buckets, personas, segments based on what cohorts most likely have in common and writing messaging to that level, won’t be good enough in 2020.

    A.I. will have a huge impact on being able to craft messaging to the individual level at scale and email marketers will need to embrace that as well as know the tech behind the curtain. An agile marketer always keeps customer experience top of mind and this book is a great playbook on how to do that.”

Christopher Donald

Chris sent his first email campaign back in 1995 when the internet and email marketing was more like the wild west. He’s worked directly with Fortune 500 companies, retail giants, nonprofits, SMBs and government agencies in all facets of their email and marketing automation programs. He’s also a BIG baseball fan, loves a good steak, and is mildly obsessed with zombie movies.
http://www.inboxarmy.com
  • Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions – “I first heard Dan speak at an email marketing conference years ago. This book was given out to attendees. I found it a great read with lots of useful information about how humans make or don’t make decisions. Specifically about purchases and what drives those decisions/indecisions. It’s a great look at the human psyche to understand the decision process to which all purchase decisions are driven.

    While not covered in the book, if I remember correctly, he said if you offer someone 2 products, let’s say 2 dresses, one costs $40 and the other $350, 75-80% will not make a decision to buy as in our heads we think, I don’t want the cheap one but I also don’t want to pay $350. But by adding a third option say, a dress at $125-$150, now 60% will make a decision to buy as they get a middle choice. (All based on the target audience.)”

  • Email Marketing Rules – “Chad has been a fixture in email marketing for many years. He has a great pulse on what is foundational to email and what is cutting edge as well. In this book, which is best for beginners to intermediate email marketers, he covers many of the topics you’ll need to build a strong foundation and covers many “Best Practices” though I’m not a fan of calling anything a best practice, as what may be a best practice for one company may not be for another. Nevertheless, there is a ton of great info for the start-up, beginner and intermediate email marketer. A good read.”
  • 300 Email Marketing Tips – “This is another very good book for those starting and even those with a few years under their belt with email marketing experience. There are some great tips and tests to try and execute. She covers many topics throughout email both B2B and B2C. Easy to read and it has real value in her tips.”

Filed Under: Email Marketing

How to Increase Email Open Rate: 42 Expert Tips

by Chris Herbert | Last Updated May 25, 2021

How to Improve Email Open Rate

Email marketing may well be one of the most effective marketing channels in terms of starting a conversation with your audience, but if no one opens your emails, you may as well be talking to yourself! And that’s not going to get you anywhere in a hurry…

That’s right. We’re talking open rates in this article. Just about every email marketing service nowadays lets you track the open rates of the campaigns you send out, which is pretty cool. What’s not so cool is when that magical number won’t seem to budge, or worse still, when it plunges lower and lower, campaign after campaign, and you can’t help but think “what did I do?!” But fear not. You’re not alone and it’s nothing personal, but you probably do need to start doing things a little differently.

So what do you need to change? I talked to a few people who know a thing or two about email marketing, and asked them each to run me through one thing you can do to get more opens. The result…40 tips to help you increase your email open rates from some of the most respected email marketing pros in the world.

Don’t waste another second. Scroll down the page and take advantage of the expert advice. Don’t try everything at once, but do take action and implement some of these ideas before you hit “send” on your next mailout. You’ve worked hard to build your list, now you need to take care of it.

We want to hear about your results and whether these tips helped you better your email open rates in the comments section at the end of this article!

40 Tips to Increase Open Rate

 

Improve Your Email Open Rate: 40 Brilliant Tips

“How to increase your open rate”…that’s a search you’ll never have to do again! Here’s a quickfire overview of all of the tips that were shared with us in the making of this article. There’s no magic email open rate formula unfortunately, so try a few of these tips and see what works for your list.

  1. Incorporate video into your emails
  2. Surprise your email subscribers by pulling them out of their comfort zone
  3. Make sure you’re using fresh subject lines – overuse will be your downfall
  4. A/B test to find what your list reacts best to
  5. Have a list hygiene strategy
  6. Have a coherent plan, set simple goals + measure
  7. Make sure you’re using the right benchmarks
  8. Set up BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification)
  9. Use song, book + film titles in the subject line
  10. Make sure your previous email was awesome
  11. Keep the subject line short
  12. Personalize the first sentence of your email
  13. Really understand your target audience
  14. Make sure your emails are mobile friendly
  15. Re-humanize your email communications through video (record rather than write)
  16. Keep your email lists dynamic
  17. Use geolocation to target your audience
  18. Be relevant
  19. Get the timing right (+ we’re not referring to time of day)
  20. Properly segment your email list
  21. Use personalization within the email subject line
  22. Explain “what’s in it for the reader?”
  23. Add emojis
  24. Write engaging content
  25. Sort out email authentication before anything else
  26. Get their attention with emotional triggers
  27. Develop a strong welcome series
  28. Find the perfect sending frequency
  29. Avoid “spammy” words in the subject line
  30. Use the subject line and preheader combination
  31. Write outrageous subject lines
  32. Focus on building positive engagement
  33. Figure out where the reader is in their customer journey
  34. Pique interest with a touch of curiosity + a question mark in the subject line
  35. Test short text-only emails
  36. Harness schadenfreude in your subject line
  37. Give each subscriber what they want, when they want it
  38. Develop a brand persona
  39. Write your subject line to one person, and answer their needs
  40. Try alternating friendly from

Other Articles You May Find Useful:

  • 89 Effective Cold Email Subject Lines
  • Best Email Marketing Software for Small Business? 104 Pros Vote
  • How to Improve Email Deliverability Rates: Expert Advice + Strategies
  • Best Email Marketing Books: What Do The Pros Recommend You Read?
  • How to Build an Email List: 75 Experts Share Their Secrets
  • All Email Marketing Resources

What the Experts Said: Email Open Rate Tips Explained

Below you’ll find each of the open rate tips explained in more detail, by the email marketing pros that were kind enough to share them with us. There’s tons of actionable advice, and plenty of “outside the box” thinking and ideas that should get you on the right track to an ever improving email open rate.

Use the filters below to skip to the tips you’re most interested in!

{"filter_mode":"masonry"}
  • All
  • “Spammy” Words
  • A Touch of Curiosity
  • A/B Testing
  • Add Emojis
  • Alternating Friendly From
  • Be Relevant
  • Brand Persona
  • Email Authentication
  • Emotional Triggers
  • Engaging Content
  • Focus on Positive Engagement
  • Get the Timing Right
  • Harness Schadenfreude
  • Have a Coherent Plan
  • Incorporate Video
  • Keep Your Lists Dynamic
  • Know Your Audience
  • List Hygiene
  • Make Sure Your Previous Email was Awesome
  • Mobile Friendly
  • Outrageous Subject Lines
  • Personalization within the Subject Line
  • Personalize & Answer Their Needs
  • Personalize First Sentence of Your Email
  • Re-Humanize Your Email Through Video
  • Segment Your Email List
  • Sending Frequency
  • Set up BIMI
  • Short Subject Lines
  • Short Text-Only Emails
  • Song - Film - Book Titles in Subject Lines
  • Strong Welcome Series
  • Subject Line & Preheader Combination
  • Subject Line Freshness
  • Surprise Your Subscribers
  • Two Benchmarks You NEED to Use
  • Use Geolocation
  • What They Want - When They Want It
  • What’s in it for the Customer?
  • Where are They in Their Customer Journey?
Pieterjan Decoster
Pieterjan Decoster is the owner of email agency Saluton, where they help ecommerce brands grow their business by designing and building effective, automated email programs that engage prospects and (re-) activate customers.
https://www.salutonagency.com

  • Find the Perfect Sending Frequency

    – “Like in every relationship, there needs to be a balance between together-time and me-time. If you are sending too many emails to your subscribers, they get annoyed, stop opening them and eventually, break up.

    Try some A/B testing to find your sweet spot. Split your database in 2 segments and increase or decrease the sending frequency in one of them. Don’t change the sending frequency of the other segment. After a while, look at the email open rates and click rates. Is there a difference?”

Melanie Diehl
Melanie is an award winning email marketing expert who creates campaigns that deliver results for her clients.
http://melaniediehl.com

  • Incorporate Video

    – “Across all industries, average email open rates hover around 18%. And while that’s better than average organic reach on social media marketing, you want to see that number of emails opened rise! After all, if your emails aren’t getting opened, they’re not getting read and your CTA’s aren’t delivering the results you need.

    There are a number of tactics that can increase your open rates. One of those is VIDEO, the reigning king of digital content marketing. Studies show that using the word “video” in your subject line can increase email open rates by as much as 18% and your CTR (click through rate) by as much as 65%! That’s significant. It can also build loyalty and reduce unsubscribes.

    In this real-life example, you can see Diane’s campaign results. Diane is an esthetician who always has a great open rate averaging at 25%. In her industry the average open rate is 12%. She had been experimenting with some Facebook livestreaming on her business page and decided to include it in her general monthly email. This email campaign performed even better than usual with an open rate of 45%, almost double her average. And we didn’t even use video in the main subject line, but in the pre-header text. And it still worked like a charm. Take a look at the click report: 73% of the clicks were to the video.

    email with video subject line

    What video should you include in your email campaign? Anything on your YouTube channel is great. Or maybe it’s simply content from someone else that your readers will find valuable. As long as the video content is true to your company’s message and brand, and relevant to your readers, you should be golden.”

Joshua Zelman
Joshua has spent over thirteen years in the digital marketing space, with a large focus on helping many Fortune 500 retailers create and improve their email marketing programs, as well as establishing an omni-channel focus.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-zelman-aa577b2/

  • Personalization within the Email Subject Line

    – “Simple can sometimes be most effective. Calling a customer by name may seem very basic, however in recent testing, we have seen over a 5% lift in unique email open rates when simply calling a customer by first name within the subject line. Now, like most things, this should not be over used. Companies have a tendency to find something that works and use it till it doesn’t. One of the keys to keep a tactic effective is to use it wisely. So for example – if you as a business coupon 3 times a week and one of those coupons is your big kahuna, use it then. Maximize it’s effectiveness by combining it with other proven tactics. Remember the old adage “That’s my name, don’t wear it out”.

    Piggy backing on this simple concept, personalization, when done smartly can be hugely effective in the email subject line. Find the data points that make sense for your customers and your business. “You have 73 points till your next reward!”; “15 days till your anniversary”; “We held on to your size 32 jeans”. Customers like to hear about themselves, it sparks interest, it shows a known connection. So whether simple like calling them by name or complex like telling them it is time to buy their 11th product; show your customers you know them.”

Gina Ramsey
Gina Ramsey has been a leader in digital marketing since 2006. She is a thought leader in website design, social media strategy, SEO, PPC and email marketing campaigns.
http://www.pinkdogdigital.com

  • Properly Segment Your Email List

    – “Why should someone open your email? If you don’t segment your list they may not. Properly segmented email lists result in a higher open rate, lower unsubscribe rate and higher conversion rates.

    Email List Segmentation Results

    Don’t just send a blast out to everyone on your list. Make sure you segment your lists by interest area and send interesting and relevant content to them. Did you meet them at a networking event? Did they fill out a contact form on your website? Did you capture them through a piece of premium content they downloaded? Did they subscribe to your newsletter? Do you give them the option on your lead capture form to select the lists they would like to be a part of? Does their location make a difference? Have they attended an event that you sponsored? Did they purchase something online? Or did they abandon a product? Make sure you are properly segmenting into their interest areas, not the ones you wish to promote.

    Curated and segmented lists will result in higher success rates for all of your email marketing campaigns.”

Matthew Hunt
Founder at AutomationWolf.com and has 12 years in experience running digital marketing agencies. Now helping coaches, agencies, and consultants automate their prospecting through cold email and AI-assisted technology.
AutomationWolf.com

  • Personalize the First Sentence of Your Email

    – “One of the most important things to do when sending cold emails is to personalize the first line. That is the snippet that shows up as a preview in most email clients. Everyone always talks about the subject line, but that first line is uber important too. People are going to judge whether they want to open your email based on the subject line and snippet of the first sentence.

    Usually, the best thing to do in that first line is to genuinely compliment the prospect. DO NOT tell them what they are doing wrong. No one wants to hear that and that can be really off-putting on an initial outreach email. Find something specific you can compliment them on by looking at their site, bio and LinkedIn profile.

    An example could be:

    6 years in the biz. Good stuff! I see you are a soccer athlete and attribute some of your successes from sports. Totally think that is true too.

    or

    5 years in the biz. Amazing stuff! I like how you grouped all your webinars on one page so people can binge watch all your content. Super smart!

    This way your 1:Many emails feel like it’s a 1:1 email.

    It’s not hard to do this and any great SDR or VA can handle this.

    Taking the 60 seconds to write a personalized line is important and it will dramatically give you much larger email open rates. Right now our average open rate is 70% on cold emails.

    Most tools like Lemlist and Mailshake will allow you to upload a personalized line via a CSV file so it’s easy to do.

    Like all automation, if you feed the tool garbage you’ll get garbage.

    If you feed the automation tools good data and information, you’ll get great results.”

Jason Jacobs
Founder, AJE Digital - Specializing in professional digital marketing services for small & local businesses.
http://www.ajedigital.com

  • Write Engaging Content

    – “Most experts will recommend strong, engaging subject lines to increase email open rates. They will likely also suggest emphasizing a sense of urgency, testing days & times, and personalization. These are all fantastic ideas that are crucial to generating more “opens”.

    While the ideas I mentioned are important, the content of the email itself cannot be overlooked. You may wonder how improving the content will impact email open rates considering that those who don’t open the email will never see the content.

    I personally believe that a strong product will sell itself. Meaning, readers will continue to open your emails and share them with others if the content is worthwhile. I make it a habit to “flag” or mark important emails as “unread” in order to return to them later on at a more convenient time. I do this regardless of when the email arrived or what the subject line is. I know which emails I find important and that I want to read them because the content is valuable.

    Many marketers can suggest the best time to send out an email, or create catchy subject lines. Creating valuable content, however, requires a lot more work. Ask yourself what information you find valuable and survey others in your network as well. Map out your next 4-6 emails and plan articles, videos, case studies and other content to guarantee your readers are receiving quality emails each time you press “send.””

Linda Lovero-Waterhouse
Linda Waterhouse is an award-winning digital marketing strategist who helps businesses gain clarity, take action and increase their revenue. Her current focus is teaching LinkedIn for branding and generating leads. In 2018 Linda was named a NJ Leading Women Entrepreneur Brand Builder.
http://www.lindawaterhouse.com

  • Add Emojis

    – “One of the best ways to get your subject line noticed in a crowded inbox is to use emojis. While once they might have been thought of as “unprofessional”, they are getting more acceptance as people realize that a picture attracts people’s attention and conveys a lot of meaning. Emojis can illustrate your topic, catch attention to email subject line and increase your email open rates. However, you have to look at your own specific audience to make the final decision about whether to use emojis or not.

    Two of my favorite places to find emojis are emojipedia.org and getemoji.com. There are also apps like HipMoji (for pop culture) and Big Emoji Keyboard. Big Emoji Keyboard actually lets you create your own emojis!

    Research has shown that emojis in email subjects can increase open rates by up to 60%. But remember they are not the end all be all. Emojis can either make a good subject line better, or make a bad subject line worse. Do some A/B testing to see how your audience responds to emojis.

    Emojis look different on different email clients and on different operating systems, so try them out to make sure the emojis you pick look the way you expect. I’ve been surprised a few times!

    Searching for emojis can be fun, but distracting. Remember to not spend so much time searching for the perfect emoji that you don’t have time to spend writing your actual message.”

Rachel Baines
Experienced email marketing manager with background in professional services and publishing. Passionate about what makes email great and how to better use an often over relied upon channel. I'm also partial to cake, horror movies and rock and roll music.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelbaines89

  • Write Your Subject Line to One Person and Answer Their Needs

    – “Ensuring you really understand your audience when you first segment your list by dynamically segmenting them based on their wants and needs, skills, pain points and demographics will allow you to identify exactly what your email communication can answer for them. Utilising dynamic content in your subject lines alongside personalisation will really ensure the email speaks to that specific person and help with the ambition to market to an audience of one.

    This is only really possible with good quality data, so a secondary tip is to ensure that you really understand how to capture the data you need to make your email marketing efforts really stand out, by providing tangible and genuinely useful content to each person on your list.”

Vincent Tobiaz
Former Email Developer for the rewards programs of Verizon, AT&T, Citigroup, AARP, Wells Fargo, Rakuten, Fridays, & CEO at SEO Smooth
https://www.seosmooth.com/our-team

  • Test Short Text-Only Emails

    – “When my full-time Email Developing came to an end, the Gmail Inbox Category Tabs started rolling out. As we were emailing lists of 2-5 million people in massive B2C markets, open rates dropped double-digit percentages as the new tabs were implemented as the default setting for Gmail. Some of the craftier, and also personable marketing emails I’ve seen recently is only a few short sentences text emails with a link to a site or calendar. These pass by that Promotional category tab and right to the inbox, vastly increasing email open rates in the Gmail website & App.

    Another thing this does is makes the email quickly digestible, and not a drain on one’s time, which I feel in a world of web content and social media content bloat, is of value.”

Cheryl Russell
Over 25 years of marketing and communications experience with industry experience in technology, oil and gas, construction and real estate, law services, and a variety of small to mid-sized businesses.
http://dot2.studio

  • Make Sure Your Emails are Mobile Friendly

    – “We are all spending as much time on our mobile devices as we are sitting at a desk computer. When it comes to email, this is even more true. Make sure your emails are mobile friendly!

    A few tips on achieving a mobile friendly email:

    1. Know Your Email Service – if you are using a service, make sure they are mobile friendly. (Also make sure they can get past spam filters)
    2. Not All Images Will Show – Quite often viewers have images turned off on their mobile devices, so ensure all images have alt text.
    3. Watch Your Width – Mobile widths are about 320 px while desktops are 500 or more.
    4. Keep Them – Include relevant links for mobile users, especially phone numbers!
    5. Don’t Be Too Lengthy – Especially on a mobile device, many people just won’t read a lot. We have very short attention spans so don’t write a novel. If you do, make sure you get your point, and those links, across early!”
Paul Larsen
Paul Larsen has been neck-deep in digital marketing for over ten years. When he is not A/B testing and mapping out digital strategies, he can be found sweeping up glitter or stepping on his daughters' Barbie accessories. He enjoys both!
https://www.redolive.com/utah-email-marketing/

  • Avoid “Spammy” Words in the Subject Line

    – “An easy way to improve your email open rate is to avoid Spammy words in your subject line. Of course if you are sending an email about everyone’s favorite canned meat, by all means use all the spammy words… 😉

    What is a Spammy word? – A spammy word is a word or phrase that at worst can trigger the email provider to block the email and at best it makes the email recipient skip over or delete the email message entirely. It is best to avoid these words in your subject line all together.

    1. Free (especially FREE in all caps)
    2. Click Here
    3. Full Refund
    4. Limited Time Offer
    5. No Obligation
    6. You Are A Winner!
    7. Double Your
    8. Money Back
    9. Pre-approved
    10. Once in a Lifetime

    The above list is not exhaustive, but it is a good start. Happy Emailing!”

Lindsey Roberts
Lindsey is an IDM certified email marketer who is passionate about helping brands send better emails, and has been doing so for over 10 years. She's worked with organisations of all shapes and sizes, including brands such as Chanel and Adidas, and currently leads on all email marketing at Visualsoft.
http://linkedin.com/in/lindsey-roberts-25358823

  • Improve Your Open Rate with A/B Testing

    – “Open rate is probably one of the first metrics that comes to mind when looking at the success of an email campaign. Open rate can be a key indicator of how engaged your mailing list is. There’s no doubt it’s important – if subscribers don’t open your email, they won’t see your content and won’t take the action you want them to/convert. If your email open rates are decreasing, however, your concerns should be bigger than low conversion rates – ISPs monitor how recipients engage with your emails. Frequently sending to high volumes who delete without open could lead to you being placed in the spam folder. Doing this over a long period of time might eventually lead to high soft bounce rates, which might lead to you being blacklisted. I know that sounds scary and it is worst case scenario, but I have seen it happen in extreme cases over the years! This could be a whole article on it’s own, so for now, let’s focus just on improving email open rates.

    Even if you think your open rate is good, you don’t just want to maintain it – especially not as your list grows. You want to optimise it and get more people opening. More openers leads to more clickers/converters. It’s a no brainer! One tactic which can help improve your email open rates is to carry out A/B testing. A/B testing is setting up 2 versions of an email and sending version A to half of your list, and version B to the other half. Whichever has the best result – in this case, the email with the highest open rate – is deemed the winner. It’s a great way to get insight into what your subscribers respond well to.

    AB Testing to Improve Email Open Rate

    Carrying Out A/B Testing

    A/B testing should be easy enough to do in almost any Email Service Provider – most have specific functionality to allow you to carry it out. However, doing the odd A/B test on an email every now and then won’t help you out in the long run. You need a plan in place to get real results. Think about the different subject lines you’ve sent out in your emails historically. Which ones have seen better open rates? What types of subject line have you been sending? Have you ever done anything different that’s had any kind of impact on your open rate? Do you have any ideas of what does / doesn’t work for your subscribers that you can test? It’s surprising how often Marketers have an idea of what they think works, but when it’s tested, they’re proven wrong! Some things you can carry out subject line testing on could include:

    • length
    • action focused language
    • using key words
    • using words with different connotations i.e. clearance / sale / outlet
    • instilling urgency
    • using brand names
    • using emojis
    • using personalisation
    • questions
    • statements
    • intriguing language
    • using discounts
    • using numbers

    Once you’ve decided on which tests are your priority, it’s time to create your testing plan.

    Creating a Testing Plan

    Having a plan is important, and will help you when it comes to analysing results. I’d recommend carrying out repeat tests on each variable in order to verify results – the result of one test alone won’t be significant as a number of other things could have impacted the results, such as the specific offer of that email, as well as the time of day and when in the month it was sent. This could mean that in one month, all of your A/B tests are on the same variable. Then, you have more data to see if your results have been significant.

    Create your plan in a spreadsheet format with a sending schedule and detail on the test variable. It might look something like this:

    Creating a Testing Plan

    (Click to Enlarge)

    You can use this to ensure that you’re keeping your plan on track, as well as recording your results. Any learnings can be carried forward into the next month. For example, if you find that using personalisation significantly improves your open rate, when you move onto your next test, you can use personalisation if appropriate.

    You might find that some tests don’t have any statistically significant results. For example, using emojis might not have any real impact on your email open rates. That’s good insight too – all of the results help you build up a picture of what your subscribers do and don’t engage with. You may decide to repeat the test, to see if the results are still not verifiable, or move onto another metric to test.

    Other Variants to Test

    You can test variants other than the subject line in order to help improve email open rates, too.

    • from name, for example using Sophie @ BrandName vs Brandname
    • day of the week
    • send time

    You can move on to testing elements of the content of your email if you want to optimise other metrics, such as your click rates and conversion rates. There are so many things you can test, here are just a few examples for inspiration:

    • Calls to Action: colour, wording, placement, number of
    • Imagery: size, layout, image types (i.e. model shots vs product-only shots)
    • Products: placement, showing the price, size of image
    • Length: Long emails with lots of content vs shorter emails with fewer calls to action

    It’s important to only test one thing at a time, though, otherwise, you won’t be able to determine which variant has actually made the difference to your results. Another key thing to remember is that every mailing list is different, so what works for Brand A won’t necessarily work for you. I carried out some testing for a leading financial services provider in the UK and found that Monday mornings at 9am were the best time for them to send their campaigns; their email open rates went from 17% to 25% after a three month testing plan. This wouldn’t be the same for brands even in the same sector. Only testing can prove it!

    Your Action Plan:

    1. Review previous email campaigns, to get an idea of what you think does/doesn’t work
    2. Create your testing plan
    3. Monitor your results
    4. Repeat tests to verify your results, especially if you send regularly and at different times/days. Just because you think something works, doesn’t mean it does – test everything!
    5. Never stop testing – continually optimise your results as your mailing list will always be changing”
Jordie van Rijn
Jordie van Rijn is an email marketing expert and founder of emailvendorselection.com
https://www.emailvendorselection.com

  • Make Sure Your Previous Email was Awesome

    – “The open rate of your email is heavily dependent on what the recipient is expecting to find in there.

    Think about the emails you open each and every time. What do they have in common?

    Even better, don’t think, do it literally. Go through your inbox and find the emails that you open every time. What do they have in common?

    Most likely the content is pretty darn interesting (to you) or even indispensable. That makes those emails valuable. That makes it worth your time.

    So shake off all the subject line anxiety and go for value…because you’re worth it.

    PS: Feel free to forget about individual open rates as a measure of success as well. You aren’t running a engagement popularity contest. A more nuanced way is to look at the email open reach, which defines the part of your audience that has been active over a period of time.”

Jerome Benanti
Accomplished online marketing professional with 10+ Years in Email Marketing. Award-winning background and demonstrated excellence in propelling multi-million dollar projects and improved conversions. Proficient in strategizing as well as execution. Extensive experience in online marketing and strategic email marketing management.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeromebenanti/

  • Develop a Brand Persona

    – “Developing your brand’s persona is the first and foremost action that one should take before even thinking about writing your first subject line. The brand’s persona lays the foundation work for how you will talk to your subscribers, segment your lists, develop your creative and plan your subject line tests.

    A few companies that have created best in class personas are: Starbucks, Samsung and T-Mobile. If you think about it, each one does something really well. Take Starbucks for example, their brand persona is, coffee, fun and customer service and they remain at the epicenter of everything they put out. All of the Starbucks’ subject lines follow suit, making the email STANDOUT and creating an urge for the reader to want to open. Not to mention they also do a really good job of defining what you are about to get into when opening the email.

    In my 10 years of email marketing experience, when starting to work on a brand, I develop personas by partnering with my clients to answer the following three questions:

    1. What tone of voice do you want to use in emails (fun, exciting, sad, serious?)
    2. How many streams of emails do you want to develop? Will we be creating a newsletter, a promotional stream? If different streams will exist, subject line plans for each stream need to be mapped out
    3. How often will we be communicating? Daily, Weekly, Bi-Weekly? These details also need to be carved out in the brand persona planning stage

    Once the above questions are answered, everything gets laid out on an email marketing calendar and the process of creating the subject lines can begin. Still taking Starbucks for example, they would have answered the above three brand persona questions as:

    1. The tone of voice for the Starbucks brand is Coffee Lovers, Customer Service and Fun
    2. Different streams of emails will be created around promotions, a rewards program and company news
    3. Multiple communications to different segments delivered daily

    And then they would have taken all of this and put together a marketing calendar. So take July 12th for example, Starbucks wants to announce to the entire customer base that a new brand of coffee is coming out. Taking the above three foundational brand persona traits, Starbucks can then create the following subject line test:

    A) COFFEE ADDICTS: Boy have we got news for you!

    Vs.

    B) Today’s news for you!”

Daniel Miller
For the past 9 years I've worked for one of the world's leading email marketing companies, helping businesses of all sizes get results with email.
https://www.benchmarkemail.com

  • What’s in it for the Customer?

    – “When writing a subject line we need to ask ourselves,”What’s in it for the subscriber?” Leading the subject line with the answer to this question will increase your open rate immediately. Here are some examples:

    Instead of, “Signup to our Webinar and Learn to Code”
    Try, “Learn to Code. Signup to our Webinar”

    Instead of, “Spend over $100 to get 50% Off”
    Try, “Get 50% Off When you Spend Over $100”

    Instead of, “Donate to our Charity to Save Lives”
    Try, “Save Lives by Donating to Our Charity”

    There are two main reasons why this strategy works.

    1. No one wants to do work, period. In the examples above, the first subject lines focus on the work the subscriber has to do to achieve what’s in it for them. Since we don’t care to do work, when reading these subject lines, we are likely to just gloss over them as we already have enough work on our plates. So placing the benefit first gives more of a chance for the subscriber to stop and think about the cost/benefit of the offer at hand.
    2. As humans, we don’t like it when things are taken away from us. When you set the benefit first, we get a sense of being closer to getting it, all we have to do is… Click/Signup/Donate/etc. Because we see and clearly understand the benefit at hand, we are more likely to do the work, as we don’t want this offer to slip out of our hands.

    At Benchmark Email we have conducted A/B tests with this strategy and have seen email open rates increased by over 20%!”

Bennett Lafferty
Bennett has been in Email Marketing for the last 10+ years and currently runs a consulting business that helps companies improve their Email Marketing Programs.
https://www.inbox-integrity.com/

  • Try Alternating Friendly From

    – “The Friendly From is such a cornerstone of brand identity that people often overlook it as something that can be optimized. This is an easy mistake to make, but don’t do it – there is a great opportunity here!

    Think about this: when a new email hits your inbox, where are you looking first? For most people, it’s the Friendly From.

    Like so many other things email marketing and consumer behavior related, this involves human psychology: differing from the norm, in this case a standard FF, often creates significant changes in behavior.

    Put yourself in the recipient’s shoes for a moment. Say your favorite brand always uses their company name as the Friendly From. You’ve grown accustomed to seeing this in your inbox. Now think about what would happen if they changed it.

    Old: Casamigos Tequila
    New: George Clooney, Co-Founder

    This example might be a bit exaggerated, but you get the point. There’s a good chance this new FF would pique your interest enough to generate an open that otherwise might not have happened.

    Alternate Friendly From Examples:

    • Name @ Company
    • Name & Title
    • Company Department
    • Brand Persona
    • Email Content Description, i.e. Deals @ Company

    These can range from playful, to informative to serious – however they should generally align with your email content. Keep in mind, just like other tricks of the trade, frequency of use will be a large determining factor in its success. And above all, always make sure to test before rolling out changes to your full list. As stated above, differing from the norm can produce some significant changes, but not always for the best!”

Simon O'Day
Based in Melbourne, Australia and since 1999 working across customer experience, cross channel and marketing automation in software and services. Working with brands such as Qantas, news Corp and many others and companies such as Responsys, Emma and The Lumery.
http://www.thelumery.com

  • Where are They in Their Customer Journey?

    – “After 20 years of working with clients across the email channel I struggle to keep this to just one answer!

    But, if pressed I think you have to change your entire mindset of email. Talk to your customers about their primary need and where they are in their customer journey and not in a promotional or impersonal way. It is fact that emails related to customer actions destroy the open, click and engagement of any other type of email. When you build this into even a simple matrix of engagement and against activity you win every time.

    • Dormant: Reactivate with an offer
    • Active: Focus on loyalty
    • Purchase: Focus on post purchase value
    • One Time Purchaser: Incentive for repeat”
Tim Watson
Tim’s an email marketing consultant and international speaker who’s presented at conferences in over half a dozen countries. Working with email volumes of up to 90 million/month, his advice is based on answers from extensive analysis and practical testing.
https://www.zettasphere.com

  • Pique Interest with a Touch of Curiosity – and a Question Mark

    – “Great subject lines are very much like great headlines, whether that’s a headline for a webpage or print publication. Magazine front covers and newspapers can be a good source of inspiration for headlines.

    Where headlines and subject lines differ is that with subject lines, a little more curiosity can work wonders.

    The easiest way to achieve this is by posing a question in the subject line. Here’s some examples of real campaign subject lines with high performance:

    • We Have a Winner! Is It You?
    • Want to coin it this year? Copy this man
    • £5 off your next order, [first name]? We’ve just added something special to our sale
    • How Good Is Your Gut Instinct?

    It’s not just about asking any question though. It must be the right question.

    As Bob Bly, author of The Copywriter’s handbook, nicely said “a good question is one the reader can empathise with or would like to see answered”.

    Subject line questions work because they hold the promise of an answer. Pose a question in the subject line that the reader has a burning desire to have answered and the email open will follow.

    A perfect example is the line above “We Have a Winner! Is It You?”. That subject line could have been a simple statement “We Have a Winner!”. With the risk the readers thinks ‘so what?’ and passes it over.

    Adding “Is it You?”, means it’s talking about the most important person, the reader, and makes the reader consider if it is indeed them.

    The question is like an itch, it’s human nature to need to scratch it. They are hard to ignore.

    People love quizzes for a good reason. The question mark is a challenge to the reader – do you know the answer?

    Be open not closed.

    It’s best to avoid asking closed questions. You know, those questions that have a yes or no answer. Such as “Are you hungry?”. Whereas an open question requires a thoughtful answer, contrast “What for you makes a meal tasty?”

    If you do use a closed question, make it one that the reader is going to read with an affirmative nod. A question that your reader will want to say yes to.

    In the earlier example “Want to coin it this year? Copy this man” has a closed question that is likely to be answered with yes. It sets up the second part, “Copy this man”, as the promise and curiosity driver.

    What about this?

    If you’re struggling to find a good question that is open and can’t be answered easily without opening the email, then the word “this” is your solution.

    MarketingExperiments ran a split test of these lines:

    • Quarterbacks aren’t the only changes being tested in Denver
    • A scientific way to increase your conversions
    • Do your landing pages pass this test?
    • [Optimization Summit] 3 Days to a Better Website ($300 Off Coupon Inside!)
    • Learn 3 tips that made that made 10,000 landing pages extremely successful

    The winner had a 126% click uplift against the weakest performer. Which one was it?

    The one with the question of course, “Do your landing pages pass this test?”

    The word ‘this’ sets up the tease. ‘This’ refers to what’s in the email body, you must open to find out the answer.

    Let’s see how else it’s used with further examples from high performing real subject lines:

    • Do you agree with this?
    • What’s wrong with this picture?
    • Could this crazy estate agent improve your copy?

    Follow Through and Deliver

    Once the question is setup, make sure your email answers the question! If the question is not answered and the subject line was an empty promise, you’ll damage the relationship. A cheated reader is one less likely to open your next email.

    In Cialdini’ bestseller “Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion”, one of his six principles is that of consistency.

    With a good answer, not only does the reader continue nodding in agreement, but due to our natural tendency to be consistent with earlier actions, they are compelled into clicking through. Anything else would be inconsistent with their thought pattern.

    Now, there is only one question left.

    What question will pique your audience’s interest?”

Vanessa Lanham-Day
Vanesa’s business is On Track Marketing, where she delivers intensive business growth mentoring programmes to business owners, as well as leading her Mastermind group. Vanessa describes herself as being all about ‘Inspiring and empowering business owners to fulfil their marketing and business growth potential’.
http://www.on-track-marketing.co.uk

  • Use Song, Film & Book Titles in the Email Subject Line

    – “It’s all very well being told that your subject line needs to be ‘interesting’ – what if your bones are telling you that you couldn’t recognise an interesting headline, even if it assaulted you on a dark night…then you’ve got a problem. The ‘film, book and song title’ trick is a great get-out-of-jail-free card, and you can use and expand on it super creatively in your email copy. It almost gives you permission to add personality to your message.

    For example …

    • ‘It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to!!’ – a great intro to any subject you feel strongly about.
    • ‘Great Expectations!’, or ‘When Dickens wrote Great Expectations’ he wasn’t kidding … could be the lead into anything awesome you want to announce
    • ‘It’s been a hard day’s night round here’ – could be the intro to the launch of something new
    • Why being ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’is important to us … an email about customer service
    • Don’t be ‘Gone with the wind’ – could the the precusror to something with limited availability
    • Talk about ‘Top Gun’ – Tom Cruise would be up for this! – Could launch your exclusive VIP deal

    Best advice – just have fun with it!!”

Jenny Lassi
As a seasoned digital marketing professional and Digital Marketing Strategist for Infinity Direct, I have a passion for solving business problems with technology. My other passions are martech stack consulting and expanding agency capabilities through strategic partnerships.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-lassi-781925/

  • Email Authentication Before Anything Else

    – “All of your efforts for sender awareness, awesome subject line, eye-catching creative, responsive design, and amazing copy are for nothing if your email bounces or gets routed to a spam folder and no one knows it’s there to open it. The good news is that you DO have control over a lot of why an email gets bounced (rejected), quarantined (allowed in but not routed to inbox/spam folder) or routed to a spam or junk folder.

    Authentication between your Sender Email address domain and the email service provider (ESP) sending an email on behalf of your domain is the #1 step before you ever send out an email. You will need all 3 forms of authentication: DKIM, SPF, and DMARC.

    A quick way to check is to send yourself an email from your ESP and when you receive it, view the source and read the header. To view the source, you can right click on the email (if using Outlook):

    Sender Email Authentication

    What you’re looking for is that each form of authentication shows it passing like:

    Sender Email Authentication 2

    If you don’t get a pass for each form of authentication, you can use an inspector tool to help you diagnose what needs to change:

    DKIM Inspector: https://dmarcian.com/dkim-inspector/

    SPF Inspector: https://dmarcian.com/spf-survey/

    DMARC Inspector: https://dmarcian.com/dmarc-inspector/

    Whenever there is an issue with bounces, low open rates or emails not passing spam filters, authentication is always the first thing to address. Most of the time, if you passed all at one point, but over time you see a decline in email open rates or hearing reports of people not receiving your email, something changed. Most likely the SPF record, as IT teams will edit this record the most to add/remove include statements or IP addresses as your MarTech stack changes company-wide.”

Diana Conner
Diana is an email consultant, speaker, and the director of email marketing for Bulldog Media Group. She enjoys being a keen orchestrator of the email marketing symphony.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dianaconner18

  • Keep the Subject Line Short

    – “The best way to increase email open rates of your reader’s emails is to focus on the subject line. An open rate hinges on having a spectacular subject line. Be clever but not sneaky. Grab attention but don’t shout. Remember: people need to open your emails for them to have an impact. Without an opened email, customers cannot see the content or offer, let alone engage or convert. Yes, targeting and other factors matter, like getting into the inbox in the first place. However, none are as fundamentally important as the subject line. We’ll assume you are targeting a subset of your audience, with an appropriate frequency, that is engaging so your deliverability rates should be high and the next hurdle is to get them to open among all the other emails in their inbox.

    Keep your subject line short: between 6-10 words should do it. Over 50% of all emails are opened on mobile devices. iPhones show about 35-38 characters in portrait mode, and Galaxy phones show roughly 33 characters in portrait mode. Make sure your subscribers who will open your email on their mobile device can read the entire subject line. Using 3-5 words is also ideal.

    The average office worker gets 121 emails a day. That doesn’t even account for their personal mailbox. So how else can you stand out in the crowd? What helps or hinders an open line? Turns out, there are special keywords that can help increase or decrease opens. Words that decrease tend to be spam triggers. It turns out that numbers help lift email open rates as well. Including just one number can give your open rates a boost. Emojis are giving over 50% boost to email open rates for most brands using them. Just make sure to test rendering across multiple devices to ensure they convert correctly. Also, writing in title case can help set your email apart from others in the inbox. Sense of urgency? Exclusivity? All great strategies to help position your email as one they simply must open for more details.

    Testing is the best way to see what engages best with your audience. Doing A/B tests to see what converts or how your users interact. Perhaps posing a question instead of a “last chance” message resonates more. Maybe putting a 24 hour only message sparks a lift in email open rates. Most ESPs have the capability to identify a test winner and then send that message to the rest of the audience. Once you’ve tested a few times, you may have an idea of how to better “speak” to the customers. Always remember to keep testing because as new users filter in and old ones fade out, your list is continually changing and therefore what resonates with them will also. Happy mailing!”

Rasmus Houlind
Rasmus Houlind is a thought leader within Omnichannel Marketing. With experience from several major agencies, he knows what it takes to succeed in marketing. He's also the author of the book 'Make It All About Me'.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/houlind

  • Get the Timing Right

    – “Look it’s really simple – it’s a matter of getting the timing right. The timing for each individual recipient that is – not in terms of “time of day” or most optimal send out time for a campaign. Instead of focusing on the email (which can also lead to many great ideas by the way) then focus on the occasion for doing so. If you can determine the timing for this occasion per customer by either a simple set of rules based on data, then setup an automated communication flow that times the send out according to this.

    Let me give an example. A Nordic sporting goods retailer sends out a lot of email campaigns – as retailers normally do. Some of their products however, require replenishment after having been used a certain amount of times. Running shoes are one such example. If running shoes get much more than one year old (or have run approximately 1000 km), they need to be replaced in order to prevent knee injuries.

    The sporting goods retailer set up one such flow with the purpose of helping their customers replace running shoes in due time. A simple rule was set up that every day it sent out an email for customers that had purchased running shoes exactly one year ago. Open rates were 3x and conversion rates were 3x when compared to normal email campaigns. And it works every day… Oh… And running shoes are not the only product that wears out by the way.”

Ben Harrington
An ex full mix marketer, focusing on what I love (Email Marketing). With over 12 years' email marketing experience working for businesses big and small in a variety of industries.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/harringtonben/

  • Use Geolocation to Target Your Audience

    – “When it comes to open rates, there isn’t a one size fits all approach, it all depends on the message you’re trying to get across and of course your relationship with your audience.

    My bit of advice is aimed at businesses who run events, in the hospitality sector or just those who need subscribers to visit a certain location.

    And here it is, a drum roll please…

    Use Geolocation to target those subscribers. Of course, this will depend on the data you hold, but if you have an event in London, why would you target subscribers in Scotland? I have worked for plenty of events, shops, restaurants, etc that had been targeting anyone and everyone. They generally saw a decline in open rates soon after because subscribers were just not interested, and as we all know, personalisation is key.

    Instead, target those in the surrounding areas. It’s easy to do, segment your data, personalise your subject line with the location added and away you go.

    For example, I worked with a restaurant chain that had locations throughout Europe and in the Middle East. When it came to marketing to their Dubai based restaurant, they targeted the whole of the Middle East and because of this they had relatively low open rates that were slowly decreasing each time. Having looked at the data they held, I instantly saw a quick win and brought in geolocation targeting. As you would expect, the open rate increased from 8% to 30% over a three month period sending one email per month, using the tactic I shared above.

    Not only will you not be annoying those who can’t attend, but you will increase engagement for those you have targeted.”

Simon Washbrook
Simon is the Founder & CEO of popcorn, and has over 20 years' experience specialising in Email Marketing and as a Marketing Generalist. He has recently launched a new and really easy to use Sales & Marketing platform that tells you when your customers are ready to buy and why.
https://www.popcorn.email

  • Keep Your Lists Dynamic

    – “When it comes to improving your email open rates, you can spend all the time in the world perfecting your subject lines, finding the optimal broadcast time and improving your server reputation, but if you’re not sending it to contacts that are in a buying cycle, then you’re wasting your time!

    Now, most good Email Marketers will invest a good chunk of time at the start of a campaign to get the right contacts and segment them into carefully targeted lists. But what happens to these contacts after you have started emailing them and their preferences change, so they no longer fit into the original group? Are you writing them off and just waiting for them to unsubscribe?

    Of course not. Your data is one of the most valuable assets in your company. Which is why you should always look at your contact lists as being dynamic rather than static.

    Let’s imagine one of your contacts, has been identified as a ‘hot prospect’ in your initial segmenting exercise. But ‘stuff’ has happened in their business since then, and although they are technically still a ’hot prospect’, what you are marketing to them is no longer a priority until they have sorted the ‘stuff’ out, which in reality may take some months to happen. So, if you continue to bombard them with ‘hot prospects’ messaging, your emails are eventually going to become just another piece of SPAM in their inbox. Which is the last thing you want as they are still a valuable prospect and you have spent a lot of time and effort carefully positioning your brand ready for the sale.

    Whereas, if you had been continually scoring your contacts’ engagement across both email and your website, you would have identified the fact that they were achieving low scores and that you should move them down a gear into a nurturing campaign, where you would maintain low levels of communication. Then setup a trigger that moves them back into the original sales funnel when they start to re-engage with either your emails or start visiting your website again.

    Keep Your Lists Dynamic

    If you wanted to get really smart, you could combine a series of triggers. So that if a contact went on to visit your website, they would set off a series of specific sales emails related to the page they had visited, ‘Tag’ them as being interested in the topic, send yourself a notification that it had happened, so that you could give them a call. Then automatically move them back into the original ‘Hot Prospects’ campaign to continue the targeted messaging.

    By doing this, not only do you protect your brand from being perceived as a SPAMMER, but you prolong the life of a contact and increase the number of people that make a purchase as a result of your email campaigns. Which is a win for you and for your contacts, as they will value your brand even more for sharing relevant information with them, when they need it.”

Pat Marcello
Pat Marcello is the President and SEO manager of MagnaSites.com, a full-service digital marketing company with the primary emphasis on building killer websites and making them SEO friendly.
https://MagnaSites.com

  • Write Outrageous Subject Lines

    – “The best way to get your emails read is by writing something great. I’m not talking about good writing. I’m talking about LOL funny or outrageous. I once got an email with the subject line: “Baboon Ass for Breakfast.” Would you open that one? Oh, heck yeah. The email went on to describe a hot sauce that the writer had eaten on his eggs that day — called “Baboon Ass” — along with a connected sales pitch that was clever and fun to read.

    The whole deal is being able to write funny. If you can’t… Don’t. You’ll just come off looking stupid. If you can, you’ll get the highest open rates in history. People love funny cat videos and will not only open, but also read emails attached to funny subject lines.

    With that bit of advice, comes a caveat. If you want to write a crazy subject line, be sure it complies with CAN-SPAM act of 2003, your subject line has to reflect what your message is about. So, if you’re going to write something wild, you’d better be able to back it up with a story. Don’t just write something for effect and let it lay. After all, who needs an $11K fine for EACH email you sent? Not me, brothers and sisters. Whole lotta nope.

    But a good story sells, anyway, right? If you can tell a good story, with humor, you’ll not only get better open rates, you’ll also make more sales.”

Kelly Dedman
Kelly is an email marketing pioneer, having worked in email marketing since the industry’s inception. In 2001, Kelly conducted an extensive RFP vendor evaluation and selection process with the first gen of Email Service Providers. Since then, he has worked with hundreds of companies to develop effective email, database marketing and messaging programs.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellydedman/

  • Know Your Target Audience

    – “Understand the various cohorts, or naturally-occurring segments, that comprise your audience. Perform regular testing of subject lines and content themes in order to understand what resonates with each group of your customers. Transform this testing methodology into a list of keywords and messaging tactics that perform well with each group. At the time of deployment, customize a subject line that will appeal to each cohort rather than sending the same subject line to your entire entire list.

    Make it personal. The more you can personalize the subject line – including the customer’s first name or city name, for example (if appropriate to the email content) – the more success you may have at competing for the customer’s attention.

    Finally, never lose sight of what your customers expected to receive when they originally signed up and stay true to your brand promise.”

Saul Gowens
Founder of Websand, a data driven email platform, helping e-commerce businesses retain and love their customers.
https://www.websand.co.uk/

  • Have a Coherent Plan, Set Some Simple Goals + Measure Them

    – “Your plan should be data driven, by that I mean segmented by the behaviour of your audience. Separating your current customers, previous customers, and prospects. (see screenshot below)

    Segmented by the Behaviour of Your Audience

    Break things up to be more relevant. Separate your prospect conversion programme, your customer engagement programme, and retention programme from your ‘normal traditional email campaigns’. If are in ecommerce and you don’t have these in programmes in place, you are missing a massive opportunity, so make that step one of your plan.

    Email marketing should be a constantly evolving and improving process. If you keep repeating the same boring stuff to the same boring people it should not be a surprise when your email open rates drop and unsubscribes increase.

    Keep it relevant and please, please don’t over send. Email marketing is one of the few direct channels you have with your audience – remember you are sending messages to people not inboxes. So don’t abuse your email channel, be respectful, honour your plan, and you’ll do great.”

Kate Barrett
Kate Barrett is the founder of eFocus Marketing – a specialist email marketing agency providing consultancy, management and training to companies around the world. With over 13 years’ experience, Kate has helped a large range of companies (including M&S, Argos, TUI, QVC, and Adidas, among others) develop comprehensive strategies to target subscribers more intelligently and increase their results. Kate is also the author of the book ‘E-telligence: email marketing isn’t dead, the way you’re using it is’.
http://e-focusmarketing.com

  • What They Want, When They Want It

    – “There are lots of tweaks and changes you can make to adjust and optimise your subject lines and make them more relevant, enticing and encourage the reader to actually open the email and see all the great content you have inside.

    Doing so will improve your email open rates by learning what techniques, formats, wording and styles resonate with your audience, and what doesn’t.

    But, in the long term, the most important and effective way to improve your email open rates overall is to make sure that your subscribers…

    1. Understand and trust that it is you who is sending emails to them
    2. Expect to receive the content you’re sending and when you’re sending it
    3. Want to receive emails from you because they’re relevant, interesting, helpful and/or inspiring

    To meet these needs, you need to start right at the beginning…

    At eFocus Marketing, whenever we have a client who is seeing poor email open rates or increasing negative engagement such as complaint rates, outside of running tests on individual subject lines such as the elements mentioned above, as well as message timing, cadence, frequency, and of course the offers contained therein (we have a great split test planner to download here to help you create tests that actually get results!), the first place we start is to analyse the sign-up process.

    It’s the entry point to your programme and the first impression the subscriber gets, so it has to be good if you want to lay the groundwork for an engaged email audience who WANT to open your emails.

    Here are the main 5 areas we focus on to do exactly that…

    1) Ensure You Properly Set Expectations on Sign Up

    Be as explicit as you can and tell the subscriber how often they’ll receive emails from you (and for GDPR compliance of course, how they can unsubscribe), make it clear they are actually signing up for your emails* and specify what kinds of messages they’ll receive from you.

    Again for GDPR, you need positive consent and it needs to be unbundled; meaning they can sign up to different marketing channels separately, consent is not combined with accepting T&C’s for example and individual company opt ins are separate etc.

    Email Sign Up
    Email Sign Up 2

    2) Make Your Sign Up Compelling!

    It’s really important to clearly explain what’s in it for them to join your programme – why should they give you their email address, but also, why should they be interested in reading your emails going forward?

    You need to really understand your audience to create a content marketing and contact strategy that works for them – what is it that they want from you? Offers? Inspiration? Exclusive content or access to content other people don’t get?

    Know what they desire and tell them that’s what they’re going to receive! No one wants to sign up for a newsletter – what they want is the tips, tricks and exclusive content you’re going to send them, or the discounts and access to online sales 24 hours before everyone else (for example).

    Also consider incentivising the opt in to give an extra reason to sign up now – will they also get a bonus such as an extra discount or a free download for signing up? This can be particularly useful for retailers to not only gain an opt in, but give an extra push towards making a purchase straight away too.

    Compelling Email Opt In
    Compelling Email Opt In 2

    3) Offer Them a Choice

    Subscribers want to be in control of what they receive and when, and by letting them do this they are more likely to interact with the messages you send. This could be based on their current interests, needs, life situation or other factors; something that brings your content into their real world to create a better connection to their day-to-day lives.

    For example, if you have a child who is a boy, you are more likely to interact with content aimed at boys than girls; yes on some occasions you may be looking for a gift for a girl and of course there is always a place in your strategy for inspiration outside of specified interests. But on the whole, delivering relevant content based on their personal situation (interests, needs and wants) is going to see higher engagement and conversion rates.

    Take a look at the two examples below – the first simply asks the subscriber to choose whether they are male or female. The second goes into a bit more detail, asking their areas of interest and what they’re next project will be. Both of these are examples of these businesses collecting what I would consider to be business critical information to allow them to start personalising and targeting their messaging from the very first message. They don’t collect too much, but just enough to achieve this.

    Then through tracking and progressive profiling, they can collect more information to continue to improve this targeting capability as the relationship progresses, further increasing the relevancy of their communications.

    Profiling Email Subscribers at Signup
    Profiling Email Subscribers at Signup 2

    4) Go Beyond the Sign-Up Form

    The first impressions aren’t solely created on the sign-up form – don’t forget to consider your confirmation thank you page and subsequent welcome and on-boarding process emails to further set expectations, build a relationship and engender trust in your brand and products/services.

    Your thank you page should confirm the action they’ve just taken and prompt them to look out for your first email in their inbox, as well as lead them to the next step you want them to take in their journey with you. This will be different depending on your business type; for example, a content provider may want to direct them to additional resources, popular or new blog posts to read or videos to watch, whereas a retailer may want to encourage them to explore key product categories, suggested products or continue on to turn their email subscription into a full account sign up.

    All of these onward actions will also start to give you behavioural data that you can use to target and personalise the subsequent emails and content they will receive in the on-boarding process.

    The on-boarding process will involve an email or series of emails that are sent within the first 30 days after sign-up, after the welcome email and can be used to further build the relationship with the subscriber, highlight key features, products or services and encourage them to take actions over this period of time without overwhelming them all in one email.

    Initial Emails 1

    5) Deliver!

    Making sure you actually deliver based on what they signed up to is critical to ensure you keep your email open rates high.

    You need to truly understand your audience’s needs and expectations and send the right message, to the right person, at the right time based on what they’ve asked you for, their behaviour and their purchase history.

    Whenever you can, try to go above and beyond to delight and surprise them – use the information you gather wisely and you can even use the technology available to predict what they may want in the future before they even know themselves!

    Deliver on Your Promises
    Deliver on Your Promises 2

    Follow these tips to get you started and work to create a strategy that adapts with and meets the needs of your subscribers – that’s how you create increases in your open rate that last!”

Kath Pay
Kath is recognised as a leading international email marketing thought leader. She devotes her time to developlng customer-centric ecommerce journeys using a holistic, multi-channel approach. With a wealth of knowledge gained from being an industry veteran of 20 years, Kath is an author, blogger, expert contributor, international conference speaker, and trainer.
https://www.holisticemailmarketing.com

  • Get Their Attention with Emotional Triggers

    – “Human Beings are emotional creatures and although we like to think that we make decisions mindfully, more often than not, we make decisions emotionally. Therefore, use emotions to gain your subscriber’s attention. These are innately customer-centric and can generate a lovely uplift in response. Emotional themes such as fascination, curiosity, anxiety, intimacy, guilt, safety, encouragement, exclusivity, urgency, gratification, gratitude, achievement and challenge can be used to speak to their needs.

    Here are some examples of subject lines that call upon emotions to get attention:

    Emotion Fueled Subject Lines

    Using Persado’s AI-powered emotional themes, eDataSource’s (https://edatasource.com) Subject Line Advisor has combined emotional themes with read rates, allowing you to see the success or impact of the emotions used. Note, the below is just an example, and will be different according to brands, products and subscribers. The larger the circle, the more frequently the emotional theme is used. The higher the circle is placed, the higher the read rate/open rate.

    Emotional Insights Open rate

    (Click Image to Enlarge)

    So next time you’re writing a subject line – try adding a bit of emotion to it!”

Komal Helyer
With 20 years of email and digital experience, Komal. VP of Marketing, brings to Pure360 a deep understanding of marketing strategy, marketers' needs and how that translates into use of marketing technology. She has worked with many global leading brands including HSBC, Black & Decker, Carphone Warehouse and Screwfix.
https://www.pure360.com

  • Develop a Strong Welcome Series

    – “What is your email strategy if not a way to build a relationship with your customer? Your emails are conversations with the people that are interested in hearing from your brand, and an email open is the proof that the customer is listening and paying attention. You wouldn’t start a relationship with someone without introducing yourself, making that connection from the beginning, and the person you were talking to certainly wouldn’t be paying you attention if you forgot to do this at beginning. So why should your email strategy be any different? The best, and really only in my opinion, way to start building a strong relationship between you and your customer is through a welcome email. By not sending this most important email in your whole email strategy you are missing out on ensuring your email open rates/engagement remain high.

    Welcome emails drive over 4x higher open rates than your BAU campaigns and they deliver over 5x Click Rate. This is the time your audience are the most engaged with you. It is your opportunity to take advantage of this early period of high engagement to find out more about your audience and help them learn more about your brand.

    If you are already implementing a welcome email, how about a welcome series that seeks to support a business challenge – be it to reinforce your why, reduce churn or to educate the consumer on how to work with your company. Many eCommerce brands use the welcome series to nudge consumers into repeat customers, knowing that if you buy a certain number of times at the beginning of the relationship you are more likely to remain loyal to the brand.

    Done well, the lifetime value of the customer will far outweigh the upfront effort. As it is in person, you never get a second chance to make a first impression!”

Mike Welthy
Mike Welthy is an email marketing consultant based in New York City, specializing in the strategy and development of dynamically generated marketing campaigns that effectively target subscribers and customers in order to impact engagement in the publishing, health & wellness, and entertainment industries.
http://www.impactengagement.com

  • Using Subject Line and Preheader Combination

    – “Every company has a story to tell. There are a multitude of aspects to consider when designing and building your email campaigns — Sender Name, Subject Lines, image to copy ratio, dynamic content, and many more. Each of these can have a major impact on the success or failure of your strategy, and not all have the same impact. To create a more engaging message that will increase conversions and generate greater ROI, you will need to go beyond these basics and incorporate additional tactics and a sound strategy to stand out in a crowded inbox.

    One of these tactics is to start customizing the Preheader in your email campaigns. The Preheader, simply put, is used to control the preview text just below the Subject Line, which appears in the inbox. The original purpose was to provide a summary of the content within the email, so the reader could quickly determine its relevance. With the rapid growth of mobile device usage, now the primary method for checking email, the form and function of the Preheader is more prominent. As more and more people began to use the Preheader as a creative email marketing tactic, its utilization began to take on many forms.

    Most Email Service Providers (ESP) have now integrated the Preheader as part of a normal email campaign setup, which can also be customized much like the Sender Name and Subject Line. This makes the configuration process simple and straightforward. Alternatively, the Preheader can be constructed using HTML and CSS within the actual body of the email, and can be formatted to be “visible” or “hidden.” However, Preheaders work very, very differently, since they always display content, whether you create it or omit it.

    First, here are some general rules and guidelines about Preheaders:

    • They can be configured in the email message as a combination of HTML, CSS and text
    • They can be configured as an email campaign setting or field in many ESP’s
    • If not configured, email clients will automatically show and autoformat the first text that appears (alt text, URLs, unsubscribe copy, etc)
    • The total number of characters displayed varies, depending on the email client
    • The total number of characters displayed can be for the Subject Line and Preheader combined, depending on the email client
    • They can be hidden entirely in the inbox or preview pane, depending on the email client

    Second, here are some common mistakes and things to avoid:

    • Omitting the Preheader completely, leaving what shows completely up to chance
    • Duplicating the Subject Line, in part or exactly
    • Displaying unsubscribe text or URLs
    • Displaying “View in browser”, image alt text, or default text
    • Lengthy text that will be arbitrarily truncated depending on the email client
    • No clear purpose or context related to the Subject Line or email

    When asked “What’s the first thing you look at when deciding whether to open an email?”, a Litmus-Fluent survey discovered that the Preheader accounted for 24% of responses (Sender Name accounting for 42% and Subject Line accounting for the remaining 34%). That means when combined with the Subject Line, this block of text accounts for close to 60% of the reason someone decides to open your email, delete it, or mark it as SPAM.

    The utilization of a Preheader, as a marketing tactic in you email campaigns, can single-handedly increase open rates by up to 7%. But, when combined with the Subject Line, it goes beyond just increasing your email open rates, influencing overall engagement and conversions.

    Crafting an effective Subject Line and Preheader strategy requires identifying the role and responsibility of each, individually and collectively. There are several ways Preheaders work in conjunction with Subject Lines, complementing each other to communicate your story:

    • Build on your Subject Line: Let the Subject Line focus on grabbing the reader’s attention, allowing the Preheader to provide additional context, clarity, and reinforcement.
      Subject Line: Beach, please.
      Preheader: Meet the JT Beach Jogger. Crisp, lightweight, and built for lazy days and epic adventures.
    • Create Urgency with Offers & Promotions: Use discounts and promo codes as a teaser, or add time-sensitive offers too good to pass up.
      Subject Line: 3 great brands—and savings all around!
      Preheader: 35% off at Banana Republic & Gap; 30% off at Old Navy.
    • Personalize: Treat it as you would the Subject Line, including profile or demographic data specific to the reader’s past interactions.
      Subject Line: Get rewarded for your time
      Preheader: Mike – based on your e-rewards, you’re invited to take our survey
    • Increase Awareness: Increase brand awareness, share your tagline, or communicate your value proposition.
      Subject Line: How to tap into the hidden job market
      Preheader: The Ladders – Career advice to speed up your job hunt”
Irina Akelyeva
I help small and medium businesses increase revenue from email marketing. I believe in being data-driven and I see email as one of the most efficient channels to build communication with your prospects and clients.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/akelyeva/

  • Set up BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification)

    – “BIMI or Brand Indicators for Message Identification is a standard to verify information about your brand. The senders that use BIMI will appear in the inbox with the logo next to their messages.

    Set up BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification)

    Why BIMI Helps You to Improve Your Email Open Rate?

    1. It increases brand recognition
    2. It ensures brand authentication for your emails
    3. It makes your emails stand out in a crowded inbox

    It’s important to know that BIMI includes two parts: a record and a file (with your logo).

    RECORD:

    The TXT record that is placed in the DNS of the sending domain (for example default._bimi), this should contain the link to the image with the logo. Example of the record: v=BIMI1; l=https://www.example.com/images/logo.svg; For more information about BIMI record, please visit https://authindicators.github.io/rfc-brand-indicators-for-message-identification/#rfc.section.5

    FILE:

    Your file with the logo should have an SVG format and be an exact square.

    Before you start, you should keep in mind that you should:

    1. Have access to your sender domain name servers (DNS)
    2. Set up other authentication records (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) before BIMI
    3. You should have a good sender reputation

    Please note that if you use several sending domains or subdomains, then you should set up BIMI for each of them.

    At the moment this feature is only supported by Yahoo and AOL, however, GMAIL has recently joined the working group (according to postmaster.com). Microsoft will use their standard instead of BIMI; you can check beta testing here https://business.microsoft.com/.

    I would recommend this feature to all companies that have a significant part of their subscribers with Yahoo and AOL emails.”

John Scott
John Scott is Co-founder of Melbourne based email marketing specialists agency, The Orchard Agency. Since 2010, The Orchard Agency has built a foundation as one of Australia’s most experienced Lifecycle Marketing Agencies by developing tailored email marketing programs that deliver solutions based on three core principles: Growth, Conversion & Retention.
https://www.theorchardagency.com.au/about-us/

  • Have a List Hygiene Strategy

    – “The open rate of an email campaign is undoubtedly the most common benchmark with reference to email marketing success.

    However, if you find your open rates are on a downward trend, the first step is to take an in-depth look at your list hygiene practices.

    All email lists will degrade over time with regards to the contact’s interest, so it’s important to monitor who is actively engaging in your email campaigns and have a process to re-engage or remove them from your list.

    This practice is known as ‘list hygiene’ or ‘list cleansing’ and contributes to better deliverability and higher open rates. Removing inactive or non-interested contacts from your list means that your reports more accurately reflect the success of your email campaigns, as they are only based on contacts who still want to hear from you (not those who are no longer interested).Here’s a couple of tips to keep your list in great shape and maintain your (or improve!) open rates.

    1. Review email engagement rates and segment anyone who has not opened, clicked, or purchased from you within the last 12-24 months (this is dependent on factors such as your buying cycle and email frequency).
    2. Create an automated re-engagement email series that can be triggered after 12 months of inactivity to find out if there is a possibility to keep those contacts on your regular send list.
    3. In your re-engagement campaign give your contacts the option to hear from you less frequently, update their email, provide you with feedback or unsubscribe instantly.
    4. If your business is engaging with contacts via other channels such as over the phone or instore, have these in-actives flagged in your CRM so that your team can find out if they have the best email address for that contact and get them to provide the best one. It’s possible they have subscribed via an account that they no longer access to.
    5. Upon exiting the re-engagement series make an informed business decision about what to do with those contacts. While a simple ‘remove all’ approach can lead to an immediate improvement in open rates – it may not always be the right move. It is possible that there are some dormant ‘customers’ among the in-actives. Think about segmenting all contacts who are inactive for 12 months and only send them less frequent emails over the next 12 months. If at any stage they open an email they will automatically move into the main active segment again. After a further 12 months of no activity then you can determine that there have been 24 months of no-engagement and safely consider removing them from your email list.
    6. Just because your contacts are not reading your emails, it doesn’t mean that this email is no longer useful. You can set up retargeting campaigns on advertising platforms using your opt-in email addresses to try and re-engage them via other channels. Think about running a lead generation campaign to this ‘non-active’ email audience so they can update your list with their most recent contact details.

    So if your open rates are looking a little flat – take the focus off list size and place it on list quality. Having a highly engaged audience is the key to successful email marketing, so taking the time to implement general housekeeping rules around list hygiene can boost your open rates and deliver you a highly profitable channel.”

Javed S. Khan
A highly-rated international speaker and founder of Empression: a marketing services company that works with highly motivated entrepreneurs and organizations – developing and managing marketing programs with a purpose that catch people’s attention, and over the long-term generate results through awareness and support of sales.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/javedskhan/

  • Re-Humanize Your Email Communications Through Video

    – “Although emails & email subject lines can be made personalized and persuasive, there’s nothing like a real-time conversation leveraging a medium which covers all the critical non-verbal elements of communication, is the next best thing to being there in person, and helps you stand out, ultimately making you more memorable and relevant.

    The bottom line is people who use video as part of their email communications receive stronger results.

    • 81 per cent get more replies and responses
    • 87 per cent get more clicks in emails
    • 68 per cent get higher lead conversions
    • 90 per cent stay in touch more effectively
    • Adding video into email marketing campaigns has been shown to increase click-through rates by more than 96 per cent. Merely mentioning video in the subject line can boost email open rates by 19 per cent.

    Sources: bombbomb.com & Syndacast

    3 Ways to Use Video Communication in Your Email Messages

    1. Meeting Confirmations

    Sending a video email reminder about your meeting approximately an hour before the meeting time is a great way to create a starting point for a conversation and strong first impression. This is something you can even schedule ahead of time once you confirm the time and date of your meeting.

    2. Post-Meeting Thank-You

    Be sure to also send a video email message after the meeting to thank your client, prospect, lead or referral source for their time. Ideally, you should send the video about an hour after the meeting. There is no need to repeat what you spoke about since it will still be fresh in the individual’s mind, but touching upon next step actions is good idea to show the individual you were attentive and are on top of things!

    3. Meeting Follow-Ups

    About a week or so later, send a video email message along with some valuable content that may help your contact out.

    With these sure tactics, video communication is bound to help your business!

    What do you need to do to being using video as part of your email communications?

    What do you need to do to being using video as part of your email communications.
    First, consider investing in an email service provider that allows you to record personalized videos and include them as part of your email communications for both one-to-one and one-to-many. The software I would recommend is BombBomb.

    See the software in action by watching this brief video:

    It’s all truly about adding video as part of your email communication experience. Once you start, you won’t look back!”

Ryan Phelan
Ryan Phelan brings nearly two decades of worldwide online marketing and email experience, focusing on driving successful growth strategies for high growth SaaS software and online companies like Adestra, Responsys, BlueHornet, infoUSA, Sears and Acxiom.
http://www.originemail.com

  • Be Relevant

    – “HECK NO! THAT’S NOT GOING TO DRIVE ANYTHING LONG TERM!

    Simply put….be relevant.

    Yes, I know that this has been discussed, written, debated and demonstrated for years, but there’s a reason. Because it WORKS!

    As an example, let’s take Woot.com. Now, if you don’t know woot.com, they are an Amazon company that sells reconditioned stuff, and by stuff, I mean cool stuff. They have it all, but it changes all the time. Heck, many of the things inside and outside my home came from woot.

    Every morning, after grabbing my coffee, I sit down and look at their emails. Why you may ask? They’re consistent, relevant and of course FOMO, but the FOMO thing is driven from their relevancy.

    Now think about what you open all the time. You open it because you either like the brand, products, services or company. You must provide that to your subscribers. This one thing should consume your efforts. People open your emails because you have a strong brand and it’s your job to deliver on that. Otherwise, all you’re doing is chasing the vanishing revenue cause you’ve blasted your subscribers with things that don’t matter.

    Start small. Introduce relevancy slow so you can get used to it and test into what works. Try one thing..ONE THING that you can do to increase relevancy. Is it based on past-click, purchase, browse or something else. Work on that one thing. Then move on to the next. It becomes muscle memory.

    It becomes easier over time, but you just have to start…today…NOW!

    Listen, you can play all you want with the subject line, but what really moves the needle? Relevancy. Work on that and you will be a Rockstar.”

Ian Brodie
Ian Brodie works with consultants and coaches to help them get more clients through simpler, more effective marketing. He's the author of the #1 Amazon bestseller,
http://www.ianbrodie.com

  • Harness Schadenfreude in Your Subject Line

    – “Decades ago, legendary copywriter Gary Bencivenga highlighted perhaps the most important and overlooked factor in getting people to pay attention to what you say: curiosity.

    You can promise all the value in the world in your email subject line, but if your subscribers think they’ve heard it before they won’t bother opening. You’ve got to add a touch of curiosity. A bit of intrigue as to what’s actually going to be in the email.

    That’s why buzzfeed-like headlines like “The top 10 holiday destinations in the world (you won’t believe #3)” are so effective. You can’t resist finding out what those top 10 destinations are, especially number 3. And that’s even if you never plan to leave your bedroom.

    And there’s a type of subject line I’ve found that builds every bit as much curiosity as the buzzfeed ones, but without being used anywhere near as much, nor coming across as quite so clickbaity.

    It’s invoking “schadenfreude” in your subject line.

    For those of us who didn’t major in either psychology or German, schadenfreude is the strange pleasure you get from learning about or witnessing the troubles and frustrations of others.

    We all have it (though most of us hate to admit it). We’re fascinated by other people’s problems or challenges.

    Can you imagine how popular The Avengers film series would have been had they coasted through all 4 films, defeating the villains without breaking a sweat?

    Not very.

    We like to see our heroes put through the wringer. To genuinely face defeat.

    We’re 99.9% sure they’ll win through in the end. But unless bad things happen to them on the way there’s no drama. No interest.

    And yet if you read most people’s emails what you tend to get is a catalogue of success after success.

    They did this, it was great. They did that, they crushed it. You too can learn from all their super successes.

    Bleugh. Not interesting at all.

    What we’re far more interested in is the mistakes they made. The problems they faced.

    And I don’t mean the fake mistakes that people tend to use when answering interview questions about their greatest weaknesses (or gurus use when trying to sound more human). “I worked too hard and burned myself out”. “I cared too much about my clients”.

    I mean real mistakes where you genuinely screwed up.

    Like the sales meeting I had where I was supposed to emerge with a $5m contract, but instead the client didn’t say a word all meeting. Or the email I sent out with a fantastic and creative subject line I was so proud of, that had the worst open rate I’d had in years.

    Tease those mistakes and problems in your subject lines.

    “My WORST sales meeting ever”. “My worst performing email EVER”.

    Both of those email subject lines were huge successes for me. Simple but irresistible.

    “Don’t make these 3 sales mistakes which nearly cost me my job”.

    I just made that one up on the spot right now, but even I want to know what those 3 mistakes were. That’s how compelling these types of subject line are.

    Of course, don’t overuse them.

    You can’t have every email be about a disaster that befell you or pretty soon people will either think you’re some kind of accident-prone idiot or that you’re making it up.

    And you have to show how you recovered from the mistake or what you learned from it (that your reader can learn too).

    And, of course, you have to have established your credibility before you talk about the mistakes you made, otherwise you’ll come across as a bit of a loser.

    But if you use them right, schadenfreude based subject lines can be hugely powerful. They invoke curiosity, they propel the reader into devouring your email content, and they show you’re human too, that you’re just like your reader.

    And since they involve honest disclosure of real mistakes you made or problems you had, most of your competitors won’t be brave enough to use them – and your emails will stand out a mile.

    So they’re not just a great way of increasing email open rates, they’re a great way of standing out, getting people to bond with you and take action on your recommendations.

    Try them!”

Ruben Zantingh
Ruben is an independent Online Marketing Strategist with over 15 years of experience on both client and agency side. He specializes in email marketing and has worked successfully for over 40 customers, ranging from small startups to big corporates.
http://www.marketingenzym.com

  • Surprise Your Email Subscribers

    – “Surprise your readers by pulling them out of their comfort zone. One of the best subject lines I’ve ever seen was “Do not read this message before 5 PM”. It was in the inbox before 1 PM… Who can control him/herself when reading this?

    For a campaign to structurally reduce traffic jams around the city of Rotterdam I sent out emails on the busiest days of the week, just before the first real problems would occur on the road. The subject line was: “Are you going to join the traffic jam within a few moments?”. By focusing on one specific moment, instead of “How to change your day to day behaviour”, and by mentioning a well known and upcoming frustration, we surprised people. With an average open rate of over 60% you could definitely say it was a success!

    Be careful though: do not use this tip for every email you send out, since the effect is likely to wear off if you do.”

Dave Littlechild
With a 20 year career spanning London, New York and Sydney, Dave has been at the forefront of digital marketing and ecommerce globally for the past 15 years. He presently takes the reigns of the global partnership team for Emarsys, enabling marketers around the world to deliver truly personalized interactions. Dave also works with industry bodies including the DMA's Email Council, The Email Experience Council of the US DMA, and the Data Protection Network in the UK.
http://www.emarsys.com

  • Focus on Positive Engagement

    – “I’m sure that everyone will agree if I say that if you’re not in the inbox, it’s incredibly difficult to get your emails opened, so all the good marketing tips on copy, layout etc are wasted if your email doesn’t get seen in the first place!

    Or are they…?

    As we now know, once you’ve gone through the right authentication and technical setup to ensure reputation on your sending IPs, the major driver for inbox placement across ISPs is continuous positive engagement with emails (opens/ adding to address books/ moving across tabs etc).

    So, whilst we can debate the value of measuring clicks vs opens as a better metric, the fact that Opens plays a significant part in influencing inbox placement via positive engagement, it shows that taking steps to improve it will have an overall uplift on your programs.

    If you’re not currently getting a high level of inbox placement, whilst positive engagement is not necessarily something you can fix in a single email, you need to focus on it across your entire email strategy.

    And with that in mind, every tip that you’ve seen here from the experts in this article should help to move the needle! The more positive engagement you get, the more likely that a larger percentage of future emails will go to inbox (gmail, outlook.com, yahoo! etc).

    Consider it like building momentum…it takes effort to cycle to the top of the hill…but once you’re there, you can coast down much faster than you cycled up there.

    And if you’ve taken on board all the great email marketing tips here, then naturally your email opens (and more importantly, engagement, clicks and conversions) will increase…and as your inbox placement increases, so the momentum we’ve just spoken about also increases!”

Dela Quist
Dela Quist, founder and CEO of leading email marketing agency Alchemy Worx, isn’t one to hold back. Passionate about email marketing, Dela has all the research and statistics at his fingertips to prove his arguments. Dela is an entertaining and convincing writer and speaker - well worth following.
https://touchstonetests.io/

  • Two Benchmarks You NEED to Use

    – “I have been involved in email marketing for almost 20 years and one of the most common questions I get from clients and conference attendees is what is the average open rate, or what open rate should I be aiming for. Google the phrase “open rate benchmarks” and you get 21,400,000 results so there is clearly a lot of demand for and plenty written about open rate benchmarks.

    Benchmarks however can be problematic and need to be used with caution. The first and biggest problem is that they represent an average, so even if your email open rates reach the benchmark, there will be many brands out there who are doing significantly better than you. Then there is the question of whether the benchmark relates to your industry or sector. How valuable can a benchmark largely consisting of B2B of senders if your company is B2C and vice versa.

    We decided to see if we could find benchmarks that could be applied to any brand by analysing the data within Touchstone, a Subject Line testing tool, that holds the results of over 1 million Subject Lines (SL’s) received by over 1 Trillion recipients. Touchstone contains open, click and delivery rate data on subject lines that have been sent across many sectors and industries and uses this data to predict how other subject lines will perform. So you find the best SL for your campaign without having to set up or send the test email.

    Findings

    When we crunched the data, two variables that met the requirement of being true of all industries and business types, but more importantly were directly actionable, really stood out. Segment size and Send frequency!

    Both might seem obvious, after all everyone knows that the more email you send, the lower your open rate will be and that highly targeted emails generate a higher open rate. But what we found in the data was truly surprising. The numbers were consistent across all business types.

    Send Frequency

    Open rate By Send Frequency

    The chart above shows you the impact of send frequency on email open rates. The orange line sloping downwards from left to right is the average open rate you can expect based on how many emails you send a month. On average you can expect an open rate of just under 18% if you send 1 email a month, just over 16% if you send one email a week and just over 12% if you send email out daily.

    The grey bars show the total number of senders that fall into each category, with the majority of senders operating at a send frequency of between 2 and 3 emails a week.

    Why these numbers are different from other benchmarks is simple, the trend is consistent whatever your open rate. If you ignore the actual numbers and focus on the relative difference between the email open rates you will see that the open rate for a monthly email is 10% greater than the open rate for a weekly email and 40% greater than a daily email. One email a week will get you a 10% higher open rate than 2 emails a week. We found this benchmark to be true across the board, so if you currently send 1 email a week and your average open rate is 11% and you want to up your frequency to 2 a week, you can expect your open rate to drop to 9.9%

    How to Use this Benchmark

    One of the challenges facing email marketers is managing the often-conflicting demands of the business. On the one hand stakeholders want you to make the numbers, particularly at the end of the quarter or year end, but at the same time your bonus or performance is measured often based on open rates. Armed with this benchmark you can not only argue for your open rate targets to be adjusted according to business-driven frequency increases; you also have the ammunition to push back if performance in terms of email open rates fall below the benchmark.

    Segment Size

    This chart shows the impact of segment size on email open rates.

    Open rate By Segment Size

    Once again, the line sloping downwards from left to right is the average open rate you can expect based on what percentage of the total list was mailed. On average you can expect an open rate of just under 18% if your segment is highly targeted – the email is sent to less than 1% of the list. At the other end of the scale, when emails are sent more than 50% of the list, that is pretty much everyone getting the same email, the average open rate you can expect falls to 11%. So, a highly targeted email will achieve an average open rate that is 60% higher than an email you send to the entire list. More interestingly, what this data also shows is there is very little to gain if your segment is greater than 10% of your list.

    That is right, any segment that is greater than 10% of your list in size will not perform much better than an email sent to everyone!

    How to Use this Benchmark

    Like the send frequency data, the segment size data is consistent whatever your average open rate. If your average open rate for emails sent to your entire list is 10% you should expect an average open rate of close to 17% for your highly targeted emails and vice versa. Your targets should reflect that.

    More importantly if you look at the coloured bars, blue for the total number of campaign orange for the send volume and yellow for total opens, something else becomes clear. While the vast majority (85%) of the email campaigns are targeted to 25% of the list, these campaigns were responsible for 48% of all opens.

    What this means for resource constrained marketers is this. When it comes to prioritizing your subject line tests a 10% improvement in your batch email open rates will deliver far more opens than a 50% improvement in targeted emails. No matter how tempting it is to use triggered and automated emails to improve your average open rate, do not lose site of that fact.

    Keep Testing and Optimizing

    Finally, no matter what benchmark you use, the only way to stop your open rate performance from dipping over time is to keep your subject lines FRESH! “Once and done” testing does not work. Our subject line tool Touchstone lets you test and optimize hundreds of iterations of your subject line in minutes. So, you can continue to edit and improve every single email you send before goes out.”

Ian Deshays
Ian is a marketing automation specialist who has worked with many of the world’s largest organisations, helping them make the most out of their CRM, loyalty and marketing cloud platforms. His thing? Highly personalised lifecycle marketing.
https://www.alchemyworx.com

  • Subject Line Freshness is the Key

    – “Subject lines… the easiest thing to write, the hardest thing to get right. There is just no single best practice, rule or tactic that works every time.

    Emojis and symbols might produce killer email open rates one week, but that doesn’t mean every subsequent send should be jam-packed with ☀☀☀ and ☺☺☺. You have to keep your email subscribers on their toes.

    The key is freshness in moderation. But how fresh and how much moderation?

    “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often”
    Winston Churchill

    Email Marketers are Not Using Fresh Subject Lines

    Team Alchemy Worx analyzed data within subject line testing tool, Touchstone.

    Touchstone contains open, click and delivery rate data on subject lines from over 1 million subject lines sent over 1 trillion times across various sectors and industries. It uses this data to predict how other subject lines will perform, so marketers can find simulate tests and find the best subject line for their email campaign. In this case, the team used the wealth of data contained within Touchstone to identify how many subject lines could be classed as fresh, and how many were stale – fresh being a subject line that contained at least one word the sender had never used before.

    You might think that with such a conservative definition for freshness, most marketing emails would be classified as ‘fresh’. But as the pie chart shows, less than a third were classified as fresh.

    Freshness of Email Subject Lines

    Fresh Subject Lines Boost Click Rates

    So what effect does freshness have on open and click rates? The results are below:

    Fresh Subject Lines Boost Click Rates

    While we only see a modest increase in email open rates when using fresh words, we see a significant lift – 34% – in the unique click rate. So what’s happening?

    Using fresh subject lines triggers an entirely different subset of subscribers to open your emails – “Oh, this doesn’t look like the weekly newsletter I usually ignore”. And since first-time openers and long term inactives are more likely to click than regular openers, the click rate goes up.

    This also explains why the open rate does not increase as much as the click rate. Fewer regulars opened the email, but more irregulars did. And since irregular subscribers are more likely to convert following an open, the click rate is improved.

    Freshness is About More Than Vocabulary

    But it’s not just the words themselves that contribute to freshness and variety. The way the message is presented is just as important. These are called tactics. Look at these two subject lines about a re-brand:

    • Celebrate our new look with a 10% saving on Apple, Sony & Coke
    • We’ve changed – take a look!

    They are different because they use different tactics. The first is a long, specific, multi proposition with a discount and brands. The second is short and intriguing.

    It’s a common goal of A/B split testing to identify the tactic that works best. We have found this often only tells you which tactic worked best for that email campaign and that attempts to repeat it offer diminishing gains.

    Here are the last two years’ of Alchemy Worx emails broken down by 15 common tactics.

    15 Common Email Subject Line Tactics

    With one or two exceptions there aren’t significant differences between the tactics. That’s because there is no single tactic that works all the time. It’s the change in approach that yields results and naturally these even out over time. And when you do find big differences, think of them as opportunities – so we should probably use symbols a little more and not worry about personalization!

    Use Tactics to Write More Varied Subject Lines

    So, even though there is no golden tactic that works every time, the tactics themselves provide a structured framework for writing varied and fresh subject lines. Take the 4 subject lines below for the same re-brand e-shot and 10% discount:

    • Enjoy a 10% discount and check out our new look
    • Get a 10% saving and see our new website
    • Save 10% and take a peek at our new brand
    • Here’s a 10% off code to celebrate our latest refresh

    The only changes here are to the vocabulary. Here are 15 different ways to write this same message using some of the most common subject line tactics:

    Short – Under 60 characters including spaces (keep it concise)

    • Celebrate our new look with a 10% saving

    Long – Over 80 characters including spaces (you can add more personality and detail)

    • Help us celebrate our brand new look and enjoy 10% off as a thank you for your support

    Single Proposition – Mention only one part of the content of the email

    • Check out our new look!

    Multi Proposition – See our new look, have 10% off and check out our hilarious new blog post and video

    • Check out our new look!

    Brands – Use brand names in your subject line (if appropriate to you)

    • See our new look and enjoy 10% off Apple, Sony, Coke and more

    Symbols – Use symbols (if appropriate)

    • Celebrate our new look with a 10% saving ☺

    Promotional – Get the promotion in, preferably up front

    • Enjoy a 10% discount and check out our new look

    Personalization – Use personalization (name, product, location, etc)

    • ##name## see our new look and have 10% off

    Question – Use a question, preferably open (i.e. the answer can’t be yes or no)

    • We’ve got a new look so what will your celebratory gift be?

    Urgency – Add urgency with a specific time or limited time message

    • See our new look now and enjoy 10% off today

    CTA – Add prompts and imperatives to do something

    • Open up, check out our new look and claim your 10% discount

    Benefit – Say how your customer will benefit from the content of the email

    • See our new look, get 10% off and get your new look for less

    Negative – Phrase in a negative way or use a negative emotion (loss v gain)

    • We’ve changed but hurry or you’ll lose your 10% discount

    Intrigue – Don’t give away the content of the email, make them open to find out

    • Look – we’ve changed!

    Specific (no reflection) – Say what’s in the email or be clear about the content

    • We’ve got a new look and you’ve got a 10% discount

    For each tactic, there will be many different ways to convey the message and still remain within the style of the tactic. You can play with the word order, change the tense or use a thesaurus to find different ways to say the same thing. You can also combine tactics. Here, small tweaks and additions to multi-tactic subject lines make subtle but noticeable differences:

    Short + Single + Brands + Question + Urgency + Benefit

    • Do you want to look sharp in Armani today?

    Short + Single + Brands + Question + Urgency + Benefit + Negative

    • Don’t you want to look sharp in Armani today?

    Long + Single + Promotional + Personalization + Negative + Intrigue

    • Dan, bet you never thought you’d see these five huge brands with a 10% discount

    Long + Promotional + Personalization + Negative + Intrigue + Brands + Multi

    • Dan, bet you never thought you’d see Armani, D&G and Channel with a 10% discount

    Again, it’s important to remember that the tactics are being used as a framework to write varied and interesting subject lines, not to find which tactic works best for you. All of these tactics will work for you at some point, just as all of them will fail at some point. Once you are comfortable with the tactics, then writing 10, 20 even 30 fresh subject lines on the same topic should become 2nd nature. And it’s that variety that is the key to a subject line strategy that embraces constant, strategic change.

    Finally, once you settle on a particular tactic for the next mailing, make sure to test your options using Touchstone. It will instantly identify the best performing subject line, saving you valuable time and resource in your quest to boost engagement and maximize revenue.”

Is Email Open Rate the Best Metric to Measure Success?

Open Rates a Good Measure for Success?

We’ve talked A LOT in this article about improving your email open rates (that was kind of the point after all…), but is it a metric you should pay much attention to? I know that many people do get very hung up on it. A couple of the experts we spoke to talked about how open rate has its shortcomings, and that there are other stats that are a better indicator of success in many cases. Read more about these thoughts here…

Christopher Marriott
Chris is a recognized expert in the process of connecting leading brands with the right marketing technology partners and platforms. Prior to founding Marketing Democracy as a consultancy focused exclusively on the ESP vendor selection process, Chris led the Global Digital and Email Agency Services team at Acxiom, building it into one of the industry’s top services providers.
http://www.marketing-democracy.com
  • Should You Be Focusing on Clicks vs. Opens? – “I realize that this article is about improving your email open rates, and there’s tons of great advice from really smart people. But I like to play the contrarian, and instead I would ask you if you should really focus on email open rates at all? What do open rates represent to you? Are they a proxy for engagement with your brand? If you answered “yes” to that question, then you need to ask your self if opens are truly the best measure of engagement with your email campaigns. Let’s start with understanding the limitations of email marketing statistics as they relate to open rate:

    1. Not Every Open is Captured
      Email marketing systems rely on the images in a campaign being downloaded to trigger the email being recorded as ‘opened’. Outlook has images turned off as a default setting and if a recipient reads the email without downloading the images, or just absorbs it in the viewing pane, the system will record it as unopened. Users of other clients may turn off images, also suppressing recorded email open rates.
    2. Not Every Open is a Good Thing
      a) Mobile and tablet browsers have the images turned on by default, and an email that is only selected with the intention of deleting it is likely to be recorded as ‘opened’. In other words, a false positive.
      b) Other people may open an email with the only intent being to unsubscribe.

    So where does that leave you? If your attention is fully focused on increasing your email open rates, you have to be satisfied with the knowledge that you will always be using incomplete or flawed data. If you really want to accurately measure engagement, I propose that a click through to the website is the type of subscriber engagement that leads to what you really want from that person–a transaction.

    The Engagement Path

    Real engagement tends to happen in sequence:

    1. Brand Impression – I see the email in my inbox and note the sender. Can’t be measured other than as a total of emails delivered followed by guesswork.
    2. Brand Awareness – I open an email and scan its content. Can be measured, but not accurately (see above).
    3. Action – I open AND click through from an email to the brand web site or landing page. This can be measured with precise accuracy and is a strong indicator of my near-term intent to engage/transact.

    In short, clicks provide the most accuracy and value, which is why you might want to optimize to clicks rather than opens.”

Skip Fidura
Skip Fidura is a consumer centric digital marketer with over 20 years' experience on the client, agency and provider sides. Working for dotmailer, OgilvyOne and Acxiom Digital, he has helped B2B and B2C brands like BT, Fred Perry, Paul Smith, DHL and Copa Airlines have real conversations with every customer.
http://www.skipfidura.live

  • The Pitfalls of Email Open Rates

    – “Open rate is always the wrong metric because open rate is always wrong. Don’t misunderstand, the open rate on any given campaign can be useful for indicating if something significant has gone wrong. Think of it as the check engine light of your email marketing. When a client team tells me that they get measured on their program’s open rate and that their bonus depends on it, I cannot decide if I should feel bad for them because their bosses don’t get it or if I should envy the way they were able to ensure they all get a good bonus. The simple answer to getting a better open rate is to only send emails to people who open You want to get a great open rate, just send to your mother.

    Sorry, rant over. Let’s break down a little more logically. David Ogilvy famously said, “We sell or else.” This brings up the first problem with looking at email open rates; they do not generate revenue. In twenty years in email marketing, I have only ever had one client that made money from opens (a publisher that sold ad space in the email). For that client we would work very hard and spare no expense to maximize email open rates. I have seen some brilliantly targeted email campaigns with an absolutely perfect subject line that generated very low open rates. How do I know the segmentation and subject line was so good? Because the open to click and the click to conversion rates were both in the high 90’s. In other words, people self-identified if the offer was for them based on the subject line; those that were interested opened, clicked and bought straight away. Those that were not interested, did not waste time “checking out the offer.”

    The second problem is looking at rates. Percentages are very useful for comparing the results of different email marketing campaigns, especially if they went to different sized audiences. Using them as a measure however, can lead to very bad decision making. Which would you rather have: a 50% open rate on a campaign that went to 100 people or a 10% open rate on a campaign that went to a 1,000? If your bonus depended on it you would lean towards the 50%. The stakeholders in your organization however would go for the 10% almost every time.”

Filed Under: Email Marketing

How to Build an Email List: 75 Experts Share Their Secrets

by Chris Herbert | Last Updated March 23, 2021

“Just build an email list” they said. “It’s not that hard” they said. So I put a form up on my website and waited for the subscribers to come rolling in. That was 6 months ago, and today my email list consists of a grand total of…7 people. And two of those are me (well I had to test it was working, didn’t I).

If your story is somewhat similar, don’t worry. Growing your email subscriber list is definitely not just a case of “put up a form and they will come,” particularly if your business isn’t that well established.

If you haven’t got the faintest idea of how to build an email list, or you’ve tried and not seen the results you’d hoped for, this article is for YOU. We wanted to help (before you pull your hair out), and so we spoke to 75 email marketing experts, asking them to spill the tips and techniques that have helped them to repeatedly capture exactly what you’re after: those elusive email subscribers!

This article is the result of those conversations. We’ve put together a “hit list” of the main ideas that kept cropping up frequently, and then we’ve posted exactly what each expert had to say further down the page, where they go into waaaaay more detail and share their wisdom with us. If you don’t have at least a couple of “AHA” moments after reading this post, I’ll eat my hat.

How to Grow Your Email List: Quickfire Ideas to Get You Started

How to Grow Your Email List

  1. Run a Competition/Raffle/Prize Draw (although you might not get the best “quality” subscribers)
  2. Promote your email list on your social media accounts
  3. Create a “lead magnet” – exclusive video, report, podcast, tool – that offers incredible vale to your target audience
  4. Use pop-ups, bars, flyouts and scrolling tabs on your website
  5. Put a link to your signup form in your email signature
  6. Speak at in-person events and offer something in exchange
  7. Host a webinar/telesummit
  8. Take part in someone else’s giveaway
  9. WIFI marketing (for brick + mortar stores)
  10. Put together an E-Series and offer it to your audience
  11. Send follow-up emails after attending a networking event
  12. Start a loyalty program for your brand/business
  13. Use content upgrades to drive signups from your blog content
  14. Choose your email marketing software carefully (we did a survey on the best email marketing software for small business)
  15. Offer exclusive content and/or discounts to subscribers
  16. Make it easy for subscribers to forward your emails to friends and family + encourage this
  17. Remarket to unsubsribers on other channels (Facebook, Instagram etc)
  18. Host a challenge
  19. Collaborate with influencers
  20. Promote your email list in author boxes at the end of articles on your website
  21. Profile “lookalike audiences” and pay for ads on social media platforms to reach the right people
  22. Make it possible to subscribe from your checkout page
  23. Collaborate with companies that serve the same audience, but are not direct competition
  24. Run a survey or a quiz and provide the result by email
  25. Optimize your signup forms (very important!!)
  26. Leverage affiliate networks
  27. ASK when setting appointments (service businesses)
  28. Use “Text to Join” messaging services
  29. Produce “printables” to complement YouTube Videos and offer them via email
  30. Use browser push notifications to guide users to your signup page
  31. Integrate email signup forms into paid search campaigns
  32. Offer free shipping to subscribers
  33. Use time sensitive events or offers to prompt signups

Some Fundamentals to Live By If You Want a Great List

Email List Building Tips

  • Quality over quantity/Better not bigger (however you want to phrase it)
  • Only email people that have asked to be emailed!
  • Make it SUPER easy to subscribe and join your list
  • Set the right expectations the moment they sign up
  • Segment your list so you provide the right content at the right time
  • Track the sources your subscribers are coming from and invest more resources into those that perform best
  • Make sure the info you collect is correct
  • Use a double opt in process
  • NEVER buy or rent email lists – it’ll end badly
  • Make the pitch as personal as you possibly can
  • ASK in as many places as you can
  • Don’t forget about existing subscribers when chasing new ones
  • Test, test and test some more
  • Learn as much as you possibly can about your target audience
  • Don’t lie to get their email address; they’ll only unsubscribe and never come back!
  • Make the benefit of signing up crystal clear
  • Clean your list and remove “dead” subscribers regularly
  • Every email you send a subscriber should provide value; don’t pollute their inbox!
  • Make sure your “Calls to Action” really speak to your target audience

Other Articles You May Find Useful:

  • Best Email Marketing Software for Small Business?
  • How to Improve Email Deliverability Rates
  • Best Email Marketing Books: What The Experts Tell You to Read
  • How to Improve Your Email Open Rate: 42 Tips
  • All Email Marketing Resources

Read What The Experts Said

Below we’ve posted exactly what each expert had to say when we asked them for their advice on the best ways to grow an email list. There’s a ton of quality information in there, and they go into a lot more depth than the quick summaries we posted above. So grab a coffee and prepare for an education in how to win email subscribers from some true pros!

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  • All
  • Fundamentals
  • Incentives
  • Offline
  • Online

Javed S. Khan

Javed S. Khan, a sought out international speaker, who also leads EMpression: A Marketing Services Company has helped entrepreneurial and corporate clients build their ideas innovatively, by guiding their vision and marketing plans. Clients seek out his company’s expertise in digital content, online presence, identity brand management, and marketing. Top firms have benefited from Khan’s 20 years of branding and marketing skills.
www.linkedin.com/in/javedskhan

  • Add a Form to Your Website

    – “Easily add a link to your sign- up form on your website and collect emails from people who visit your site. Give your sign- up form plenty of visibility by putting it on every page.”

  • Offer an Online Coupon – “Offer new subscribers a discount that can be redeemed in-store or online. Plus, add an extra bonus for those who share with their friends!”

  • Offer a Piece of Valued Content – “You can offer up a great piece of content—like a whitepaper, eBook, or guide—to entice people to join your list.”

BONUS TIP: “Test different calls to action!

  • Join our list to learn more about what we have to offer!
  • Join our list to receive exclusive discounts!
  • Over 1,000 people have signed up to receive our emails each month. Sign up today!
  • Don’t miss a thing! Join our email list to get updates sent to your inbox once a week.

Test different calls-to-action and see how your audience responds.”

Beth Silver

Beth Silver of Doubet Consulting offers entrepreneurs and small businesses marketing, management, brand strategy, and public relations expertise. Beth is a special needs parent who helps families and businesses looking for assistance in this specific field of knowledge.
www.doubetllc.com

  • Know Your Audience and Who You are Targeting

    – “When I work with clients, I look at their business as their “Target Advocate.” I advocate on behalf of their end user. Know who your audience is and what they would like to receive in a message. I work with entrepreneurs and small businesses. My content either answers a question, introducing them with a synergistic partner or resource or provides tips they could use when growing their business.”

  • Create Content that Matters! – “Think about what your prospects and clients really are interested in and create your content accordingly. For example, one of my clients is a physical therapist; we are creating an article on fall prevention and provide tips for staying strong and healthy.”

  • Have Patience – “You don’t choose your best friends or clients on day one, so don’t expect to have the killer list on day 1. Be gracious and have meaning and your list will grow. I would rather have a list of 200 really great people than 2000 mediocre ones. A larger list sounds great, but if they are the wrong names, you will hit a dead end. When I reach out to my list, I am very careful that the information I am presenting is meaningful to them.”

Tom Welbourne

The Good Marketer is a Digital Marketing Agency which works with small businesses to create results-driven solutions. We bridge the gap for businesses who don't want to deal with expensive agencies but would still like to grow, develop and succeed.
www.thegoodmarketer.co.uk

  • Avoid Competitions

    – “Don’t use a competition to build up your Subscriber List. Likely chance is they are just going to be looking for a freebie and won’t ever purchase your product. It is much better to have a smaller list with potential customers than a big list for the sake of the ‘numbers.”

  • Be Careful When Using Images – “Beautiful emails are well…. beautiful but be careful! If your email is all images and no text, then you will fall in to a trap. Many email systems in particular will block images from downloading by default therefore, to get around this, ensure all of your images include Alt Text. By including Alt Text, you will ensure your subscribers see text that will explain your image instead of just seeing a blank box.”

  • Having a Storyline is Important – “Create a story line to your emails to keep your audience engaged with your brand. Make them look forward to reading your email instead of annoying them with spam like the 100’s of other emails they receive every day. Instead of telling stories round the fire back in the cave man days, email marketers are telling stories around the digital campfires…emails. Create a storyline and warm that digital fire up, we’re cold!”

Adam Farrell

Navigating small business owners through the maze of marketing ideas and information, ensuring they develop the knowledge, know-how and confidence to take ownership. Search FB for 100daysofmarketing.
www.contentfusion.co.uk

  • Laser-Like Focus

    – “Be incredibly well targeted and don’t stray too far from that niche in any of your marketing. It helps massively if your audience both recognise themselves in your marketing and also believe you are the go to person for solving their problems.”

  • Keep Your Message On Point – “Test and reuse your sales and marketing messages and keep them targeted. Even if you have a legacy client in a different sector or demographic, don’t be tempted to mix your messages. Oh and keep them short in the beginning.”

  • Use Video – “BOOM! The stats are there, it’s incredibly easy with your mobile, a video editor (also on your mobile) and a basic filing set up.”

Karen Skidmore

Karen Skidmore is founder of True Profit Business, where she shows creative entrepreneurs and business leaders how to grow a purposeful, playful and profitable business. Karen is a vivacious coach, speaker and author who blends pragmatic thinking with inner wisdom to inspire her audience to challenge the way they think and do business.
www.KarenSkidmore.com

  • Go Deep, Rather Than Wide

    – “Numbers aren’t always the answer to most list building strategies. If you go for quantity, you are in danger of having an unqualified list, which soon clogs up your database with hard bounces and unresponsive emails. So if you want any chance of being opened and clicked once you send them your follow up emails, focus your list building on strategies that go deep into your market place and get laser focused on your target clients.”

  • Offer Access to Time Sensitive Events – “Live events, such as webinars or summits, are time sensitive which means that your audience are more likely to make a decision to sign up to your list if they know they have to act now. Using events such as these to build your lists also creates campaign momentum in your marketing. So if you are feeling a little staid in your list building activity, this can eject some much needed energy into your business.”

  • Don’t Go All Out Digital – “It’s easy to forget that traditional methods, such as speaking on the stage or printed publications, are still important channels for many audiences. The added benefit to using non-digital is that it takes more effort for your person to sign up to your list, which in turn makes them more likely to want to read, engage and act on your emails.”

Minal Patel

Minal is making it her mission to help small businesses find new customers by demystifying marketing. Through practical advice in non-marketing speak, Minal helps small business owners understand how to effectively market their businesses with the minimum amount of fuss.
www.marketingbyminal.com

  • Host Free Webinars

    – “The number one tactic that has helped me build my list is to host free webinars. I cover all sorts of marketing topics, plus try to plug into wider campaigns like Small Business Saturday. Once the webinar is set up, I share it widely. Not just with my email list and social media, but also Facebook Groups I’m a member of, with organisations who have my target audience and who like to add value to their members. I make sure I give these people everything they need to promote my webinar: social media images, text that they can copy and paste and a link I can track to monitor clicks. Once people get to my webinar registration page, they have an option to join my email list. If that point, they decide not to, I make sure I send out follow-ups to the webinars that includes a link to join my list. The last webinar I did was in October last year. With that one webinar, I added 67 people to my email list!”

  • Create Something Your Audience Will Love + Give It to Them for Free – “Think about a bit of your expertise you can give away for free. Yes, you read that correctly – free. When we see something that is great and will help us, and all it costs is an email address, we hand it over. In 2017, I created a template called the Marketing Success Plan. I want businesses to get great marketing results, but small business owners are scared of creating a marketing plan. So, I created a one-page template that would help them. Using a pop-up on my website, I managed to add 51 people to my email list. Offering a valuable piece of content is a great way to grow your email list. Put your thinking cap on and work out what that might be for your business.”

  • Ask! – “Yes, that’s my last tip. So many small businesses don’t ask people to join their lists. And, if you don’t ask, you don’t get. So, ask in every place you come into contact with your target audience. Grab a piece of paper and spend 10 minutes making a list of all those places. Now you have a list, go ask in those places. If you’re stuck for ideas, here are a few to get you started:

    • Your website
    • Your social media networks
    • Your business cards
    • Your invoices
    • Your delivery notes
    • Your email signature”

    “And remember, it’s not the quantity you add to your list, but the quality. I never quite trust all those tips that claim to help you “explode your email list.” Getting the right people on your email list should be your objective, because the right people will be the ones to buy from you.”

Lisa Jeffries

Lisa Jeffries, a graduate of N.C. State University’s College of Textiles and College of Management, has been working in marketing since 2005. Her professional experience ranges from independent businesses to high-growth tech. Lisa’s specific areas of expertise include new media and experiential marketing for retail, hospitality, and service-based businesses.
www.raleighwoodmedia.com/about/meet-our-team

  • Make the Most of Some Great Plugins

    – “There are some fantastic free and premium WordPress plugins out there that should not be overlooked because they make list building an easy thing to do on your website that can be targeted to first-time visitors, returning visitors, or just before exit. I love AddThis and their Website Tools plugin for WordPress – it is fantastic and nicely customizable “right out of the box” and free! They also send you weekly performance reports on how you’re doing. Our clients see a 1-4% opt-in rate pretty regularly, often more, which is pretty competitive. OptinMonster is also fantastic but will cost you more and for more advanced marketers, is likely worth the investment: https://optinmonster.com/. Their email tips are also top notch, so get on their list!”

  • Don’t Forget About Offline Opportunities for Data Gathering – “Many of our brick-and-mortar clients overlook the simplicity, high conversion rate, and accuracy of asking customers or clients for their email address at the time of appointment setting or payment/checkout. Many also overlook importing their contact lists for their active email exchanges that qualify as having engaged in business together.”

  • Buddy up with a Complementary Business to Host a Giveaway Together – “Contests for Pages is a great premium Facebook tool for hosting contests which are always a popular means of list growth. You have to be cautious not to “over contest” and also temper your expectations on the quality of consumers you’ll get (some are just in it for the freebie), but once or twice a year is doable. https://contest.app.do Be sure that all participating businesses share the fun with their audiences so everyone wins promotionally.”

Alejandro Catalan

I'm an experienced Senior Account Director and Digital Marketer with over 10 year of experience. I'm driven by a genuine interest in people, consumers and their motivations, excited by the evolution of media, passionate about delivering insights-based ideas, and focused on the development of campaigns that aim to achieve measurable goals and drive business results.
www.linkedin.com/in/alejandrocatalan

  • Run a Competition

    – “Believe it or not, Competitions are a great way to accelerate your email list building. Setting up a competition with a prize (Cash, Gift Cards, VIP experiences or a reward) will help you have people sign up with their email address. Encourage people to share the competition in order to get extra entries for each person that signs up to the email list via their referral. It’s important to understand your audience, so make sure your prize aligns with your target audience. Prizes should be appealing enough and make them want to sign up and tell their friends about it. My suggestion would be to have tiered prizes, such as one main prize, and a second and third prize. The process should be designed to nurture them from competition entrant to a prospect.”

  • Provide Valuable Content – “Share valuable content, whether it’s blog posts, research papers, videos, or other types of content highly relevant to your target audience. By providing valuable content, you will encourage your readers to link to it, share it, and forward it on to colleagues and friends.

    This process will drive more traffic to your site, where you can then guide visitors through your email sign up process.

    Excellent and valuable content also helps you rank higher in search engines, which in turn drives organic traffic to your site. Finally, by offering actionable content, you’re building trust, credibility and confidence in your brand or company.

    A quick way to generate relevant and valuable content is to think about the problems your products or services solve for your target audience and base your content around it. Great content delivers real value to readers, incorporates data and insights. Note, you can outsource this process to copywriters, video experts, and researchers, but ensure the content matches your brand voice and personality.”

  • Become an Industry Expert – “Grow your email subscriber list by selling your personal brand/yourself as an industry expect and promoting your business. Blogging on your own website is an essential element of this, but you also contribute to industry blogs and newsletters, cross-post content and partner with different business websites, give free talks and sharing your content with different communities is a great way.
    For example, look for Facebook groups and other online channels where you can spread your voice, provide valuable information, and link to your email sign up landing page.”

“Email marketing might not be the most popular digital channel, but in reality, it can offer you an unbeatable ROI when implemented correctly. So, it’s important to focus your effort on growing your email subscribers list. With the right email growth strategy, you can drive forward your core email marketing strategy, as well as your other marketing tactics and efforts.”

Dave Littlechild

With a 20 year career spanning London, New York and Sydney, Dave has been at the forefront of digital marketing and ecommerce globally for the past 15 years. He presently takes the reigns of the global partnership team for Emarsys, enabling marketers around the world to deliver truly personalized interactions. Dave also works with industry bodies including the DMA's Email Council, The Email Experience Council of the US DMA, and the Data Protection Network in the UK.
www.linkedin.com/in/davelittlechild

“Certainly in the UK, in the post-GDPR world, we’ve seen lawyers (rightly or wrongly) advise many brands to cut databases to ensure compliance. In many cases, these cuts have all but decimated marketing databases.

So now it really is time to go ‘back to basics’ for brands to start to rebuild and use every opportunity to do so – but whilst clearly explaining what you intend to do with that data, what the recipient can expect to receive (for compliance), but perhaps most importantly, what VALUE are they going to receive from you.

For me, the value exchange has always been the most important, and often overlooked element of any data collection – and perhaps now, more than ever brands should really be dialling in on how they are going to create something unique and with a high level of perceived value for the recipient.”


  • Lightboxes/Pop-Overs/Exit Intent Monitoring

    – “For me, this is still number 1 for organic growth – after all, if you’ve managed to get someone onto the website it’s a totally wasted opportunity to not use this.

    As for the arguments that they are annoying etc…well, they are if you don’t think about how to execute properly. Do it right, and they work. Fact.

    The key is in having flexible technology to trigger them intelligently…and most good Marketing Automation platforms should allow you to do this.

    Here’s how to use them effectively and what to avoid.

    • Don’t make them pop up immediately when I land on your site! That’s definitely annoying. Give the recipient time to browse for a while. If you’re working with a company using exit intent monitoring, it may be beneficial to use this to trigger the lightbox.
    • Don’t keep making them pop up if I keep hitting the ‘close’ button! Clearly I don’t want to leave you my data, but I’m happy to shop your site…keep annoying me though and I may change my mind on that too…!
    • Don’t make them pop up if I’m already a subscriber…do you not know who I am…??! As mentioned before, a good technology platform should be able to intelligently display only if I’m not already subscribed.
    • Do be super clear on the value exchange. Why should I give you my data now? What’s in it for me, but more importantly, what will I miss out on if I don’t sign up.

    Remember, incentives don’t always need to be monetary – whilst many brands seem to still want to give discounts/ free shipping etc. consider instead something exclusive. This could be first access to new products or exclusive content or offers that they won’t get if they don’t sign up.”

  • Use CRM Tools to Target Prospects – “Technology has evolved fast – many platforms now give you the opportunity to leverage Google and Facebook Ad networks for acquisition. And of course this also increases reach into the likes of YouTube and Instagram.

    Intelligent, AI driven profiling gives you the opportunity (for B2C brands) to identify their best customers, profile them and target lookalike audiences through CRM based ads into social networks.

    Being targeted like this not only helps control spend (ie. you’re not blanket advertising to everyone), but it’s more likely also to engage those people who are most likely to actually buy from you, or be higher spenders etc.

    Think about something special and unique for those who you attract this way – really go to town in making this compelling for them to signup and link through to a landing page that presents a seamless experience (ie. branding/ offer/ feel/ messaging) and makes it very easy to sign-up. By this I mean only collect data you actually need right away…you can always add preferences later or build their profile and tastes based upon their actions.”

  • Build an Immediate and Solid Welcome Program – “Capturing data is all very well, but actioning and nurturing is key to success. This means that time is of the essence once a recipient has undertaken an action, and the first message of ‘Thank you for joining’ should be immediate.

    Structure a solid Welcome Program which is a journey of touchpoints to push engagement, experience and ultimately drive that first purchase.

    It’s always been my recommendation that Welcome Programs should not be too hard sell. Think about the next step you want someone to take to increase their engagement – this may be to create an account for example, or engage in more content on other channels.

    Make it more content focused for value rather than simply pushing product or discount – how can they use your product, how will it benefit them etc.

    By way of example, a friend of mine runs a makeup brand. Whilst they do sell concessions in department stores, the majority is online, so engagement with brand across channels is key.

    The entire journey from signup is rich content driven to give people makeup tips and techniques.

    They then start to recommend their products to ‘get the look’. The value is in the learning – the products are then much easier to recommend and sell…”

“Above all – and as with everything, keep measuring, testing and refining!”

David Baker

David Baker is a pioneer in the digital marketing and email industry, serving in leadership roles with key leading digital agencies (Agency.com, Razorfish), Direct Marketing and Data organizations (Targetbase, Acxiom) and executive leadership roles in email marketing/digital companies (DigitalThink, Twelvehorses, MindArrow) and former founder and COO for startup Cordial. David is a leading strategist, product marketer, recognized thought leaders and author to hundreds of articles on digital transformation, data management, business intelligence and email /mobile marketing.
www.originemail.com

  • Implement Strong Exit Intent Strategies

    – “In the world of engagement marketing, key for anyone owning a site/or email service is to literally “own” the exit pages on your site and enable retargeting for those that don’t convert. This isn’t out of the box, it’s required. Exit intent surveys, pop ups on the site are all mainstays for list growth.”

  • Use the Power of AI Bots – “AI bots are evolving and with applications like Drift and others that help you collaborate with people visiting your site, this is a prime opportunity to be interactive and gather information.”

  • Re-Engage Subscribers on Other Channels – “Use your unengaged email audiences for look alike targeting on Facebook and Instagram. There is simply a point in time when someone will just not use the email channel to engage with your content. This is when you use the only durable key in the dataset (an email address) to target the subscriber on another channel. We’ve found that by doing this, you can re-engage up to 20-25% of an inactive list.”

Stefanie Amini

Stefanie is Co-Founder of Gossip Media and expert in developing marketing strategies for Startups. She is lead advisor and avid internet lover. You can find her mentoring startups at Google, or meeting cool people for coffee and discussing strategy with them.
http://www.gossipmedia.co

  • No-Strings Giveaway

    – “Offer a free giveaway competition with no strings attached for a prize that’s worth it for your customer base. Post the competition on reddit, and other platforms and collect emails in exchange for a chance to win. Once you’ve picked the winner, use the rest of the emails to send them other great deals with share functions so they can share with friends.”

  • Instagram/Facebook Competitions – “Create another format of competition, but this time for your facebook/instagram audience. Get them to tag a friend, or comment (or both). But as a bonus and for an extra chance of winning, ask them for their email address.”

  • Quality Lead Magnet + Follow-Up With More Value – “Offer a free product, or tips manual/ebook in exchange for their email address. But then use the email to inform them of tips for the field rather than spamming them with sales emails. Nurture them and gain them as customers in the long run. When you bring value, they will stay, and share with friends because they are happy customers.”

Marcus Miller

SEO & PPC Consultant. Founder of http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk . Top 25 Digital Marketing Influencer. Columnist for @sengineland. Ask me anything about SEO and PPC.
www.bowlerhat.co.uk

  • Tactics are Nothing Without Strategy

    – “And by this I mean give people a good reason to sign up (and stay signed up) to your list. The specifics of this will always depend upon the audience. For an ecommerce site this could be regular offers or some such; it does not have to be complicated, we just need to consider what the customer wants and needs and then work from there.”

  • Deliver Real Value – “It’s no good adding 100 subscribers a week if you lose 100 subscribers a week. A marketing email I always read is a summary of the Google Webmaster Hangouts. I have not got 90 mins to watch the whole hangout but a 2 minute summary of key points is absolutely golden – so I stay signed up.”

  • Content Upgrades – “A tactic we have some success with at Bowler Hat (my agency) and for our clients is to use content upgrades. This is where we have an additional element to any content that performs well via whatever channel we promote it on (organic search and paid social mostly). So, for an SEO Checklist we will actually provide a template that folks can get hold of if they sign up to the email. We then likely combine this with a small program of automated emails to help the client use the checklist and just keep hitting them with additional value to keep hold of them (see #2).”

Jennifer Kirchhofer

Veteran digital marketer with strong focus on email. Specialties include marketing strategy, customer journey/lifecycle management, using data to create meaningful and relevant communications, and generally trying to figure out what makes people tick. Midwest (USA) born and bred, New York mentality, San Francisco heart, now Auckland, New Zealand based.
www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-kirchhofer-8126087

  • Make It Easy for Someone to Subscribe

    – “Use a tablet or similar mobile device in person, send a link, or otherwise collect digitally – no one wants to take the time to write their email address for you, and this also lessens the opportunity for errors. If, in person, you’re verbally collecting email addresses, make sure there’s a real-time email triggered to the person immediately after collection – this will ensure accuracy and quickly start to nurture the relationship. In the same vein, make sure to use a double opt in, not only to improve quality but also to ensure people want to receive your messaging. It’s really about quality over quantity in the end.”

  • Offer a Meaningful Incentive for Subscribing – “A discount, gift, or bonus of some sort. Then, make sure your welcome/introductory email is absolutely killer: the first email after subscription usually has the highest open rates, so make sure it’s worth reading and remembering. Keep the messaging transparent, clear, concise, and valuable (this is a tough combination to achieve, but highly worth the effort).”

  • Stay Fresh – “Statistics show that email databases degrade by 20-25% each year as contacts’ email addresses change, new email accounts are opened and old ones abandoned, and opt outs occur. Keep your metrics moving forward by implementing storage for unengaged contacts, using reengagement campaigns, adding new, quality contacts, and sending meaningful messages. It’s much more efficient and less expensive to retain customers/subscribers you already have, but there’s heaps of competition for inbox and mental real estate.”

Hanna Hakio

Hanna Hakio is an international online marketing expert and Co-Founder of Marketigation digital marketing agency. Over the past 15 years, Hanna has been helping small to midsized companies skyrocket their marketing in North America, Europe, and Australasia.
www.marketigation.com

  • Actively Ask for Sign-Ups and Make It Easy

    – “The most important thing in building your mailing list is actively encouraging people to sign up to receive your emails. Email sign-up needs to be a core element on your website, blog, and other marketing channels. It’s essential to prompt email sign-up messages at the right time when your website visitors aren’t busy doing something else like buying your products. You should also make it extremely easy for people to sign up, so forget a mile-long sign-up forms and cumbersome processes.”

  • Set the Right Expectations at Sign-Up – “This might sound like a deja vu, but digital marketers can’t really stress the importance of setting right and realistic expectations for email sign-up enough. When your website visitors or (prospective) clients sign up to receive email from you, you’ll absolutely need to give them an extremely clear idea of what they will receive and how often. If you don’t do this step well enough, you’ll certainly end up with tons of unsubscribes and your mailing list might end up shrinking without growing.”

  • Present the Best Content to Your Audience When They Want It – “When you have an email sign-up and you’ve set the right expectation with them, it’s time to wow them! Segment your audience very carefully. Then, get to know each segment really well and try to anticipate what kind of content they like. Present them with highly relevant content, whenever they want it. Once again, if you try to cut corners here, you’ll end up shrinking your mailing list, and that’s gonna cost you a lot of money. Remember, mailing list building always goes all together with a killer segmentation and content strategy.”

Heather Shore

Heather is a wife, mom, and writer. She enjoys the outdoors with her family, exercise, traveling and seeing what adventure God will bring them through next. Her ministry is to encourage women and help them to embrace freedom and abundant life in Christ.
heathervshore.com

  • Have Optimized Pop-Ups on Every Page of Your Website

    – “Have email sign-up pop-ups and forms optimized on every page of your business’s website. Make sure it’s always top of mind when a person comes to your site (header, footer and pop-up).”

  • Make the Most of Events – “Have physical email sign-up forms at any event you attend”

  • Nurture Quantity Into Quality – “You can use services like Opt-in Monster or contests. These services build quantity leads, but with nurturing those leads can turn into quality leads. The ROI on email is still higher than other online channels.”

Rashida Knox

A career technology enthusiast and digital marketing alchemist, Rashida develops concrete strategies for organizations spanning from Start-Up to enterprise, that solve the number one objective of every organization: generating predictable revenue.
www.linkedin.com/in/rashidaknox

  • “What’s in it for Me?”

    – “Your list building efforts should address two key elements, how badly do you want my opt-in and what’s in it for me? To that end, approach list building as you would a potential romantic interest. You know the attraction is there, but what distinguishes you (your messaging) from every other strategically placed suitor on the web? Laser specific, easy to digest content that solves my issue and gives me something extra for my time. In other words, make me swipe right. For example: I’m looking for discount tickets to a specific theme park. I google “discount tickets to ” and within my search results is your offer for $25 off and free parking. In exchange for your email address, I promise to never spam you, sell your information and I will only contact you to offer exclusive discounts that you can only receive by dating me. Enticed? I thought you might be.”

  • Make Your Lead Magnet Ridiculously Human – “Your offering (also known as a lead magnet) should come across as ridiculously human. Building upon what’s in it for me, in the world of sometimes creepy laser targeting, your lead magnet should directly connect to your audience in a very specific and intimate way. Your potential audience wants to know that you not only get them, but you’ve provided so much value, that you’ve distinguished yourself as the go-to expert, when it comes to solving their very specific issues. Quite literally like a magnet, your offering should have an irresistible element to it.”

  • “Where” Really Matters – “When using social media outlets to generate leads, choose industry specific, laser targeted social channels. Location, location, location. There are literally tons of highly trafficked social outlets. When targeting a specific audience, while your prospects are likely on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, if they’re looking for specific solutions they’re definitely visiting industry specific outlets. Example: You’ve got a hankering for a salad and walk down the isle of your favorite local neighborhood health food store. You come across a strategically placed, gluten-free dressing that’s all the rage. The potential of purchase and definitely your interest just dramatically increased because this store is your staple and if they’re displaying this dressing, they’ve already gained your trust, it may be worth a try. The same is true for your list building prospects, so meet them where they live and work and the likelihood of them opting in to your list increases exponentially.”

Linda Lovero-Waterhouse

Linda Waterhouse is an award-winning digital marketing strategist who helps businesses gain clarity, take action and increase their revenue. Her current focus is teaching LinkedIn for branding and generating leads. In 2018 Linda was named a NJ Leading Women Brand Builder.
LindaWaterhouse.com

  • Don’t Be Afraid Of Pop-Ups

    – “Whether it is an offer for a discount on a customer’s next purchase or a free eBook download, having something to give in exchange for a visitor’s email address is sure to entice more people to subscribe. Hosting a giveaway that is catered to your intended market can help you build a subscriber list of individuals who will be much more likely to be interested in receiving your marketing materials.Think of hosting a giveaway as an investment that will pay off for you down the road in terms of future business. And it truly is a good investment, as email marketing has a 3800% ROI!

    When growing your email subscribers, it’s important that you make smart choices. Be clever with your tactics and remember that you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel. By simply providing more opportunities for people to subscribe to your email list, you are likely to see a stronger response. Make sure that some form of opt-in box appears on every page of your website. Although many people shy away from pop-ups because they are worried about annoying their visitors, they are still extremely effective at gathering emails. One technique that many people forget is including an exit pop up option in your design. Make sure that whatever opt-in plugin you use has an exit pop-up capability. There are a variety of opt-in box formats to suit the aesthetic of your website and meet your needs, whatever those might be.”

  • Surveys and Quizzes Are Still Popular – “People love to take part in surveys and quizzes and love to see how they compare to everyone else. Sign-up boxes can be part of surveys and quizzes that you might host. Surveys and quizzes are a very effective way to grow your subscriber list because you can ask people to submit their email address to get the results and see other peoples’ answers. Making submission of an email a prerequisite for participating is likely to entice many more users to join your list of subscribers.

    Besides surveys and quizzes, people will be more likely to want to subscribe to your email list if you offer original quality content. It may seem obvious, but this tip is essentially the cornerstone of any good subscriber-building strategy. Make sure to publish and distribute this content on a regular basis so that users will subscribe to ensure they do not miss anything. Content that offers real value to the reader will be shared more often bringing more visitors to your website and social channels, therefore increasing the likelihood of you extending your number of email subscribers. Content that solves problems for the reader, posts that teach the reader a skill, such as ‘how to’ posts and content that inspires are types of content that generally is received well by consumers. With more traffic to your website, you will have the opportunity to capture more email subscribers through the opt-in boxes and sign-up forms that you will have on your website, as mentioned above.

    To gather even more email addresses, consider putting some of your content (like a summary sheet of your post) behind an email-subscription wall as an added level of exclusivity will always garner more interest in your content.”

  • Have You Considered the Power of Texting? – “There are a number of excellent applications available nowadays, which can work wonders on your email subscriber list. Textly, for example, is an excellent text message marketing service that can help you grow your email subscribers when used effectively. Believe it or not, text messaging is one of the fastest, most direct ways for you to reach your customers and unlike emails, 98% of text messages are read within 5 minutes of the text being received.

    There are many different ways that you can utilize text message marketing to build your subscriber list. For example, if you are giving a presentation about your product or you are running another marketing campaign for your products/service, you can have your audience text a special code to a specified number to win a prize or enter a competition. As part of the entry, they must enter their email address and subscribe to your email list in the process.

    Another fantastic tool that is used by many email marketers with overwhelming success is Opt-In Monster, a platform to help you manage your opt-in forms and pop-up subscriber boxes on your website. This powerful tool puts you back in the driving seat with managing your subscribers and building your email list over time. It provides analytics to help you see the big picture of what is and is not working on your website in terms of growing your subscriber list. Start experimenting with some of these platforms and find out what works best for your needs. With the right tools at your disposal, you’re sure to see positive results in no time at all.”

David Sayce

I am passionate about helping businesses and professionals take control of their digital presence and present themselves in a way that inspires, impresses, and builds confidence in their products, and services.
https://www.dsayce.com

  • Quality Over Quantity

    – “Key to any email list is the quality, don’t just go for quantity! With that in mind I’ll start with actually reducing your email list…

    From the DMA website:

    “Email marketing’s return on investment (ROI) is up to £32.28 for every £1 spent, from £30.03 the previous year. According to the DMA’s Marketer email tracker 2018 report, sponsored by dotmailer, half of marketers (50%) are now confident they can accurately calculate this ROI figure, while just one in five (19%) believe they can determine the lifetime value of an email address to their business.”

    Review your list at the beginning, who to keep (active), who to re-energise (no longer active) and who to remove (invalid emails). This can be hard for stakeholders to hear, but it is vital. I once reduced an email list from over 20,000 down to 6,000, and that was before GDPR.

    This also means your reporting is going to be far more meaningful! In my example above, open rates appears as:

    Old List 20,000 – 2,000 open, 500 click = 10% opens, 2.5% CTR
    New list 6,000 – 2,000 open, 500 click = 33% opens, 8.3% CTR”

  • Add Situation Specific Opt-Ins – “Understand the legal and regulatory requirements, how they have recently changed and what change may be coming next, ideally be open and transparent about who you are and what you are doing with the data you collect.

    Add specific opt-ins to everything, give them a reason to opt-in and be clear about how you use their data. Make sure your privacy policies, preference centres and unsubscribe systems are all setup correctly, be clear and open.

    Collect email addresses at a trade show (consider how you are gathering consent, it is often best to follow up with an email quickly to confirm an opt-in)”

  • Test, Measure and Refine – “Don’t forget the more technical side too, always be testing:

    • Shorten the length of your lead-capturing forms, for each field added you will lose potential signups and extra data can always be added later.
    • A/B test different campaign copy, find out what works. If it doesn’t work, how can you fix it, if it does work how can you make it better.
    • Add engagement features to your YouTube channel or other videos.
    • Use Forward to a friend for specific email campaigns such as sharing discounts or useful articles.
    • Consider where email can be automated, but make sure it remains personal.

    Remember a 200,000 recipient list will be useless if no one is opening / clicking / subscribing / buying. Keep your data clean and up to date, segment where you can.”

Mark Boudreau

MARK BOUDREAU is a DIGITAL MARKETING EXPERT providing exceptional Voice Search | SEO SEM Digital Marketing / Social Media | Law Firm/Non-Profit/Medical | Launched multiple brands using EXPERT marketing strategies. Record of developing successful digital marketing that=RESULTS
www.linkedin.com/in/markaboudreau/

  • ASK

    – “I worked for Ted Kennedy twice with a 10-year gap. He told me he never took it for granted that folks were going to vote for him. I personally observed him, while campaigning, asking everybody for their vote. 25+ years and a Kennedy in Massachusetts and he STILL asked. You’ve got to ASK for the email address – don’t take it for granted. AND you’ve got to THANK everybody.”

  • RELEVANCE – “I can feed my cat dog food, call her Spot, take her for a walk with a collar, but she ain’t never going to bark. It’s a cat. Find YOUR audience. It’s not about numbers, it’s about relevance. If your audience is deleting or unsubscribing at epic rates, you have an issue. If you are not getting subscribers, you have an issue. Make sure you know who you are talking to and make really sure it’s ALWAYS relevant to them.”

  • “BANG THE DRUM” – “We receive more messaging in a day, than our grandparents received in a lifetime. Our brains had been trained to selectively ‘cut out’ what’s not important. BECOME important by sending out your messaging more than once. Did you see a Coke ad today? How about McDonalds? Find the balance between annoying [unsubscribes] and relevant persistence. FIND something to discuss, impart or make people aware of. Something happened today, LET THEM KNOW.”

Kenny Van Beeck

I have over 15 years hands-on experience as a marketing automation evangelist, crm marketing consultant and business developer. I have worked as a consultant for several international clients such as Unilever, Sara Lee, Thomas Cook, 3M, Microsoft, Colruyt, De Lijn, KitchenAid...
www.linkedin.com/in/kennyvanbeeck
  • Stimulate the Conversion on Your Registration Forms
    1. “Include an abbreviated registration form or prominent sign up graphic on every page of your website to increase newsletter visibility.
    2. Communicate what you’re going to do with the user’s personal information. If you do not sell or share your email list addresses, then convey that clearly, in a visually prominent place and include a link to your entire privacy policy.
    3. Explain the benefits of becoming an email subscriber.
    4. Allow subscribers to choose the frequency of email delivery. Giving the subscriber control over delivery frequency allows you to stop guessing and start listening to your customer’s preferences.
    5. Thank your customers for their registration. It may sound incredibly obvious, but we still come across websites that don’t provide a “thank you” page at the end of the email registration process.”
  • Even in Digital, Don’t Forget Offline
  • “How to collect email addresses:

    • Coupons
    • Call center
    • Trade shows/events
    • Fidelity cards…
    • Ask permission to use the email address
    • Send a confirmation email”
  • Reduce Friction on Your Registration Forms (#1 Conversion Booster) – “Friction elements is a specific resistance due to a given element on the landing page.

    Pay attention to:

    • Limit the length of your copy
    • Use the same tone of voice as your invitation message
    • Make it easy to interact
    • Make your text scannable
    • Limit the number of fields in a registration form”

Abigail Siciliano

Abby has worked in the industry for over 10 years with brands like Chico's FAS, White House | Black Market, HSN, and many more. At Elite SEM, she leads strategy for some of the world's fastest growing & largest brands.
www.linkedin.com/in/abigail-siciliano-39644636

  • Talk to Your Social Media Following

    – “Use your social channels to remind followers to subscribe to email. Don’t assume that your followers are already subscribed!”

  • Invest in Onsite Tech – “Invest in your list building practices to gain quality leads that will earn you more over time. Work with a company that supports onsite technology to enhance the ease of the acquisition interaction – one of my favorites is Justuno. Don’t rely on just one pop-up/overlay to capture email addresses on your site. Work in a full plan to provide both static and disruptive at different points of the user’s site visit.”

  • Remarket to Unsubscribers – “Use your unsubscribe list to remarket and request re-subscribes via other channels (you may even consider increasing the subscribe offer!) Unsubscribe is typically selected for a few key reasons, like receiving too many emails, so work on a strategy to improve common complaints about your emails and once you’re set, let your previous subscribers know via social, display, and even onsite marketing that they should re-subscribe.”

Tracy O’Clair

Tracy is President/CEO at TOCmedia - a digital marketing agency located in Maine, a qualified Solutions Provider at Constant Contact and the founder of Social Media Breakfast Central Maine. With a BA in Marketing Management, Tracy writes about technology and online communications.
www.toc-media.com

“There are many ways to grow your email list and generate leads for your business. Your target market is willing to give up their email address for the right piece of information, content, discount or rewards program. Create a campaign that offers something of value to your audience. Offer that “product” to them in exchange for their email address. Automate the campaign to include pre-marketing and post-marketing. Beta test the campaign until it is successful and then repeat.”


  • Offer a Webinar

    – “Free webinars are a great way to grow your email list, show off your expertise and create qualified leads. EXAMPLE: I sell mortgages in Maine. I offer a free online webinar entitled “First Time Home Owner Options to Save Money” to first time home buyers. I distribute the webinar via Facebook advertising to married couples in their mid-thirties with a household income of $75,000 to $100k who live in Maine. When my target market clicks on my Facebook advertisement, they are directed to a landing page that asks for their contact information including their email address. When they click “Save My Seat,” their email and name is directly added to my Constant Contact account and they are sent an email confirmation.”

  • Host a Sweepstake – “People love to play games and win prizes. Create a contest/sweepstake with prizes. When doing so, make sure to keep the theme tied to your business, target your prospects and make the prize big enough to gain traction.

    EXAMPLE: I sell furniture. I create a sweepstake to raffle off a free grill during the spring time. I use a sweepstakes program like ShortStack or Woobox to distribute the campaign. (Note – it’s important to follow your local laws when running a sweepstake.) I market the campaign on social media to homeowners within a 25-mile radius of my storefront. I ask people to tag their friends and share my sweepstake to their networks. The sweepstake software collects their email address and randomly pics a winner. I’m out a grill and a hundred bucks … but gained 400 email addresses.”

  • Add a Lead Magnet to Your Blogs – “Blogging is a great way to create content, communicate with your audience, show off your industry intelligence and improve your SEO. Use your blogs to grow your email list.

    You can do this in many ways. One way is to offer the blog as a PDF in exchange for an email address. Another way to use blogging to grow your email list is to offer “bonus” content. Create the blog and offer special VIP content that provides more depth. Of course, the price of the additional content is your reader’s email address.

    EXAMPLE: I sell social media marketing services. I create a blog about why you should update your personal LinkedIn profile on a regular basis. Somewhere in the blog, I offer a white paper entitled “How to Sell on LinkedIn.” My reader wants more information. They click on the link, enter their email address and download the whitepaper. Do they ever read it? I don’t know. Meanwhile, my drip campaign has already initiated. They are in the queue to receive email communications regarding my expertise, my business profile and more information about my services and team.”

Nicole Brashear

I am a digital marketing and integrated marketing leader who values innovative content and execution, proving the value of online engagement and providing communities with a solid experience while creating results.
NicoleBrashear.com

  • Add a Sign-Up Pop-Up on Your Website.

    – “Your website is the first contact many people have with your business. Don’t miss the opportunity to stay connected with new visitors.”

  • Offer an Incentive for Their Email Address – “Whether on Social Media or your website, offer something of value that your customer will want to download to provide their email.”

  • Collect Emails Through a Hosted App via Wifi Access – “When a customer wants to access wifi, they will need to provide an email address. Try Gazella.”

KC Chow

KC Chow helps E-commerce brands generate at least 10% to 20% EXTRA revenue with Email Marketing Automation
www.kcchowconsulting.com

  • Create a Landing Page or Pop Up with an Incentive

    – “Thе Cору Your fоrm should tell rеаdеrѕ еxасtlу what thеу’rе gоing tо get аftеr signing uр to уоur list. Will уоu bе sending them a wееklу nеwѕlеttеr? Prоduсt рrоmоtiоnѕ? Sеtting сlеаr еxресtаtiоnѕ will be key tо attracting ԛuаlitу ѕubѕсribеrѕ whо want tо hear frоm уоu – аnd staying оut оf thе ѕраm folder.

    Yоur ѕign uр form should clearly explain thе benefits tо ѕigning uр fоr your liѕt, inсluding infоrmаtiоn about соntеnt (i.е. blоg updates, email newsletters) аnd how frеԛuеntlу you’ll bе ѕеnding (i.e. dаilу, wееklу, monthly). Bу dеfining thiѕ up front, уоur subscribers will knоw еxасtlу whаt thеу ѕignеd uр fоr, which inсrеаѕеѕ thе сhаnсе thеу’ll view уоur emails аѕ vаluаblе instead of ѕраmmу.

    Thе Call-to-Action

    Thiѕ is thе раrt оf уоur sign up form whеrе уоu аѕk rеаdеrѕ to take a ѕресifiс action. In this саѕе, уоur call-to-action (CTA) is tо sign uр tо уоur еmаil liѕt. Inѕtеаd оf gоing with the generic “Sign Uр” button, however, try gеtting сrеаtivе. A uniԛuе, соntеxtuаl аnd асtiоnоriеntеd рhrаѕе ѕuсh аѕ “I wаnnа join!” оr “Sеnd mе mу frее ebook” will сеrtаinlу grab уоur rеаdеr’ѕ аttеntiоn. Also, the colour of the CTA button will affect the conversion rate, please keep in mind that you will need to test different colour and see how your audience reacts to it.

    Thе Lосаtiоn

    If you are using a pop-up, your ѕign uр fоrm should appear on highlу trаffiсkеd wеbѕitе pages, such аѕ уоur hоmераgе оr blog. Idеаllу, уоu wаnt tо place it in a lосаtiоn where it’ѕ noticeable and grаbѕ уоur visitors’ аttеntiоn. Since the location will аlѕо dереnd оn the type оf pop-up уоu uѕе, be ѕurе tо consider thiѕ as you dесidе оn whаt pop-up iѕ the bеѕt.

    Thе Design

    To сrеаtе a соnѕiѕtеnt еxреriеnсе, уоur sign uр fоrm dеѕign ѕhоuld reflect thе look and fееl of уоur wеbѕitе and/or brаnd. A cohesive uѕеr еxреriеnсе hеlрѕ to еѕtаbliѕh уоur сrеdibilitу and build trust with your audience.

    In аdditiоn to carrying оvеr various brаnd elements, соnѕidеr thе size оf your sign uр fоrm and colors used within it; fоr example, уоu might want tо use a mоrе аttеntiоn-grаbbing color fоr уоur CTA buttоn.

    Crеаtе Incentives

    Pеорlе lоvе rесеiving exclusive giftѕ аnd diѕсоuntѕ. So why nоt аdd one to your ѕign uр form? Offering аn inсеntivе (оr lead mаgnеt) thаt арреаlѕ tо уоur audience is a great way tо еnсоurаgе thеm tо sign up tо уоur еmаil liѕt – еѕресiаllу individuals who аrе оn thе fеnсе.

    Common lеаd mаgnеtѕ include рrоduсt diѕсоuntѕ, еbооkѕ оr whitepapers, a dоwnlоаdаblе checklist or printable аnd mоrе.”

Joshua Zelman

Joshua has spent over twelve years in the digital marketing space, with a large focus on helping many Fortune 500 retailers create and improve their email marketing programs, as well as establishing an omni-channel focus.
www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-zelman-aa577b2

  • Consistent Web Site Collection

    – “However you advertise email signup, keep it consistent. So whether you have a static footer input box, or a pop-up modal upon arrival on the main site – make sure the experience is consistent. Meaning don’t provide an incentive offer through one but not the other. Don’t ask for 5 pieces of data on the pop-up but only two pieces during reward signup. The more consistent – the more reliable the data you collect will be. And Speaking of the data…”

  • Be Concise With What You Require – “I have seen great success in a two-part collection process. This means start off by asking the absolute bare minimum – which may very well mean just an email address. Once that is collected, the next page can be a thank you with a brief sentence on how a few more pieces of information would be hugely helpful. Such as “Tell us your birthday and we will make sure to send you an exclusive offer!”; then on that second page get the secondary information such as First Name, Last Name, Birthday and Zip Code. At this point though, make sure to have this second page be optional – meaning if they “x” out the box at this point – it is fine – the first step got them signed up. You can always have a trigger series setup to try and capture that page 2 information if they bounce beforehand. The real goal should be to create an easy – simple experience.”

  • Track Source! – “At first this may not sound like a way to build your list, however by knowing where your names are coming from organically – this helps inform you with where to spend more of your effort proactively. So many companies spend tons of money acquiring new customers, but fail when it comes to the reporting behind these sources. Also, by tracking where your customer comes in from, you can in turn provide a more personalized experience back when it comes to welcomes or subsequent communications. A sign up in Store for example is most likely a different profile than someone who signs up through your website. And knowing that breakdown will help you know when things are working right or not working well in the future.”

Christopher Marriott

A 25-year veteran of digital marketing, including well over a decade in email marketing, Chris and Marketing Democracy are the recognized experts in the RFP process for connecting leading brands with the right marketing technology partners and platforms.
www.marketing-democracy.com

  • Don’t Jeopardize the Inbox

    – “In other words, don’t engage in any acquisition tactics that may have a negative impact on your delivery. In practice this means that you should never add anyone to your subscriber list that you don’t know for certain wants to be there. Sounds straightforward, right? But every time you use co-registration to acquire new addresses you are breaking this rule. In fact, if you bury a pre-checked “sign me up for email” box during the purchase confirmation process on your site you are also breaking this rule. Free-will opt-in means exactly what it says. That person willingly gave you his or her email address (or permission to use it) with the express intent of getting promotional emails or newsletters from you.”

  • Quality is in; Quantity is out – “It’s no longer about how many email addresses you add; what counts is how many email subscribers you add to your list. What’s the difference? An email address just sits in your database. You want to add email subscribers who open, click and transact. You know there is a person behind an email address that does those things. You don’t know what may be behind an email address that never engages. If these inactive email addresses were just overhead, that would be one thing. But we know they’re not. ISPs pay close attention to the promotional campaigns marketers send and will throttle campaigns (or worse) if a marketer continues to send campaigns including what the ISPs consider to contain too high a proportion of inactives.”

  • Don’t Rely on Dumb Luck – “In the old days of email address strip mining you could rely on dumb luck because it was a game of numbers. You knew you would get some quality addresses as long as you brought in enough total addresses. Today, email subscriber acquisition should be as disciplined as any other type of direct marketing. Which means you should target those sources that provide you with the highest quality of new email subscribers. And you should be continually testing new sources to see how they perform against your best existing sources. To do these things, however, requires that you know exactly where each new subscriber came from, and you also know exactly how well that subscriber performs after being added to your database. The real winners when it comes to email subscriber acquisition are those marketers who optimize on an ongoing basis the sources of new subscribers. Over time, they are adding more subscribers who engage and transact more often. Luck is not a strategy.”

Mike Welthy

Mike Welthy is an email marketing consultant based in New York City, specializing in the strategy and development of dynamically generated marketing campaigns that effectively target subscribers and customers in order to impact engagement in the publishing and entertainment industries.
www.e-alignment.com

  • Create a Cross Channel Plan

    – “Don’t think of marketing channels as just verticals; they all play an important part in your cross-channel online marketing strategy. If you have a strong social presence, leverage that to engage with current and perspective customers by promoting exclusive promotions, offers, or “freemium” content, and drive them to individualized landing pages on your website. Landing pages should be designed to collect 1 to 2 pieces of demographic data, along with their email address. Focus product or content-based posts on Instagram and Pinterest and then utilize Facebook and Twitter for time-based or transactional promotions, so they can easily be shared and retweeted. Utilizing multiple channels can lead to exponential lead generation opportunities and generate a larger online presence and reputation.”

  • Leverage the Power of YouTube – “YouTube, now the world’s second largest search engine, offers a unique platform to generate leads and create a community of loyal customers for products and services. YouTube provides several ways to integrate videos and content with your company’s website, through call-to-action cards and embedded media. Videos you share on YouTube should be about creating perceived “added value”, through a combination of demonstrations, how-to’s, and testimonials. Adding YouTube’s call-to-action cards on your channel page will direct viewers to a localized product page on your website, by utilizing customized images, titles, and calls to action. Create individualized product pages on your website, each containing a lead form to capture specific data about each potential customer. These landing pages can offer additional content, offers, or promotions. Combining this demographic data and product information is vital for you to be able to personalize future email campaigns.”

Susana Fonticoba

I work with motivated entrepreneurs to grow their business and improve their clients’ lives. Challenged by a lack of leads, marketing plan, and business development process, I guide them through a growth transformation, so they become – and remain – profitable.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanafonticoba

  • NOTHING Beats Being a Presenter

    – “You don’t have to be the big conference keynote – presenting just about anywhere will always lead to qualified leads entering your database. Speaking is awesome – it’s the perfect way for people to experience you and what it might be like to work with you. Now I don’t mean being an in-your-face sales person, I mean being a sharer of tremendous value and information. When you give your knowledge, people want more – and they’ll get that when they sign up for your list. So at the BEGINNING of your talk (not the end) pass out a feedback form – ask them to share what they liked about your program, what they learned, what they need help with – and include a box they can check off: “Yes, I would like to receive even more valuable information from you” – which means they are asking to be placed on your list. It helps to tell them that you will share your slides or materials with them when they give you their contact information.”

  • An Incredible Lead Magnet – “A FANTASTIC lead magnet on your website can do the job – IF – what they receive is something “meaty” and not “fluffy”. And If your campaigns continue to live up to the reputation you’re building as the expert who gives great value. Several times I’ve signed up to receive some “report” or blueprint or checklist or whatever, only to find it not worth my time at all. Meaningless fluff. And then after that, I get bombarded with almost daily emails as my “reward.” Be better than that: think of something truly valuable your audience can use right away and offer that on your website in exchange for their name and email address. When they sign up for it, be respectful of their time and keep to a manageable campaign schedule (twice a month should do it). If I receive 3 or 4 emails in a week, I opt out, simply because I cannot push everything aside just to read every email that comes my way. So the formula is: Useful stuff + valuable emails + reasonable launch schedule.”

  • Better Not Bigger – “My third tip is list QUALITY building: getting a BETTER list not a BIGGER list. So many people tell me their open rate is disappointingly small. This is indicative of too-large and too generic a list. Better to have 100 people on your list who love what you have to say and are super qualified to be your next best client; than to have 10,000 people who may have been in the same room with you once, never read, never open and don’t know you from the next person. Scrub your list clean and boot out anyone who NEVER engages with you. Consider removing anyone who is NOT a qualified prospect. You’ll see your engagement go from 16% to as high as 60% by cleaning out the clutter. Those folks were never going to buy from you anyway, so the high volume was just fooling you into thinking you had a great list. You just had a fat list. Not the same. I clean out my list relentlessly. Don’t reply, don’t click, don’t open? Vote them off the island. They’re just not that into you.”

Jose Gonzalez

Jose is a digital marketer with 10 years' experience in B2B and B2C, has worked with Fortune 500 companies and now helps entrepreneurs, small and mid-size companies talk with their audience to make more sales.
www.organicsearches.net

  • Leverage Other Companies’ Email Lists

    – “If you’re looking to grow your email list don’t start from scratch, look at other marketers or businesses that already have an email list and make them an offer or offer something of value to them so that they share your product to their audience., ie, time, money, or resources.”

  • Use Paid Ads – “Don’t be afraid to spend money on ads to grow the list because if the numbers make sense, you’ll make your money back fast. Do the math first and work the numbers out before you spend the money on ads.”

  • Give Your List Lots of Value…Often – “Email your list and give them value, as simple as this sounds, you aren’t emailing your audience enough, they have hundreds of emails and if you’re not in front of them with something they find valuable often they will forget about you, your offer and your company. Best way to find out if someone will open your emails or want to buy from you is email yourself or friends first, wait a few days and look through your inbox and see if you’d want to open up your own email, if not try again.”

Luke Harrison

As a marketing automation specialist I’m most passionate about working on bridging the gap between development and marketing. After over 7 years of ESP’s, agencies, banks, retail and consulting the send button no longer holds fear for me.
www.linkedin.com/in/luke-harrison

  • Less is More

    – “The moment you make someone hesitate, you lose them.

    I always go back to the “Jam Study” by Sheena Iyengar, a professor of business at Columbia University. I highly recommend giving it a read.

    In essence, the more options provided reduce both initial interaction and subsequent conversion rate due to analysis paralysis.

    It’s best explained by when you walk into a supermarket and you stare at this huge selection of similar products before you go “whatever” and grab the brand you recognise as it’s the easiest decision or grab the one on special. You’re subconsciously deciding that undertaking the analysis of each choice available is too tedious due to the number of options. This is Analysis Paralysis.

    The easier you make it to join your list with the faster it will grow.

    You can personalise based off their email, web and purchase behaviour; you don’t need to know their mother’s maiden name or their favourite colour.”

    References are here for Jam study:

    https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/345/345%20Articles/Iyengar%20%26%20Lepper%20%282000%29.pdf

    https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/your-money/27shortcuts.html

  • Get Physical – “Digital is great. I love digital. But I don’t love overlooking the endless opportunities a physical interaction presents.

    In a past role, I calculated that each email address we gathered would return nearly $4 over a 12 month period.

    Our focus was purely growing our list on the digital front until someone suggested we could push this in the physical stores of the business.

    We began an education program to customer-facing staff and put an emphasis on sharing the monetary ROI that collecting these addresses would bring. This resulted in a significant uplift. By sharing the business reason for collection we gave staff incentive.

    There are multiple ways to build your list in a physical location:

    • At the point of sale
    • CTA to signup pages on in-store advertising
    • Placement of tablets that prompt the user to join”
  • Provide Incentive and Communicate Expectations – “Sounds like the title of welcome journeys 101 right? That’s because it is. The signup process is the first step in many businesses’ welcome journey and it cannot be neglected.

    It comes down to an exchange of value. You go to a website, up pops the join form and in that split second you consider the value proposition.

    The Australian e-commerce store “The Iconic” has always done this very well.

    Luke Harrison Sign Up Form Example

    In that split second they provide a clear incentive. Sign up to get $20 off.

    But this isn’t the only way. You can provide value through education, events, exclusive news and updates.

    Regardless your signup process needs to communicate what they will receive and for it to be successful these need to align with what your customers want from this value exchange.”

Krista Brea

Krista Brea is a marketing specialist at Xverify. She helps digital marketers improve email campaign success through data verification. Outside of the office, Krista also enjoys traveling, fitness, reading, and listening to podcasts.
https://www.xverify.com

  • A Lead Magnet

    – “A lead magnet is a great way to get a site visitor to give you their email address. A lead magnet can be any type of free digitally downloadable content. Think of an eBook, a case study, a checklist, a tutorial, or even a video. It’s just most important that you make sure your content piece is value-packed. For example, we offer an IP warming guide as a lead magnet. The landing page highlights what the user will get in the guide. This kind of information is highly relevant to our target audience. Not only are we using it to get more subscribers on our list, but we are getting more qualified subscribers.”

  • Use Browser Push Notifications – “Although push notifications are not a way to capture email addresses, they are a great way to bring visitors back to your site. Once a user accepts push notifications on your site, no matter which site they are visiting they will see your notification when you send one.

    This increases brand awareness, helps you gain repeat visitors, and increases your engagement which also helps your SEO. Many push notification tools are free or low cost to implement on your site which is another perk.

    However, the reason why I’m recommending them for list growth is you can guide your audience to pages that you have which they have never seen. As I previously mentioned lead magnets are a great way to collect emails, use push notifications to drive users to your lead magnet pages. In no time you will be racking up email subscribers.”

  • Collaboration – “If you are in the B2B space, you know growing your list is not as easy as it is with consumer targeting. This is where we’ve found collaboration and co-marketing to be a major player in driving business. Networking is the key to establishing solid business relationships that will help you grow your list. One of the methods that helped pull in a lot of leads in the past was hosting a webinar with a partner. It’s a strategy where you both promote the event then share your lead list. It’s a win-win for both parties involved.”

David Fischer

David Fischer is the CEO and Founder of Solutions for Growth, one of America’s largest Solution Providers of Constant Contact. By developing email campaigns for a broad range of clients, Solutions for Growth delivers solid results maximizing its clients’ investments.
www.SolutionsForGrowthLLC.com

  • Make the Most of In-Person Events

    – “At every event (presentation, fair, chamber, etc.) offer something of value in return for an email address.”

  • Use Social Media – “Use your email service provider’s tool to acquire email addresses from your social media platform.”

  • Use Entry into a Raffle as an Incentive – “In retail environments, have a raffle box with a sign inviting customers to enter their email address to win a monthly prize.”

Jenna Tiffany

Jenna Tiffany is Founder & Strategy Director at Let'sTalk Strategy, providing strategic consultancy services across the digital marketing mix. Jenna is a Chartered Marketer and elected Fellow of the IDM with over ten years’ marketing experience across both B2B and B2C. Jenna has consulted with brands such as Shell, Hilton and World Duty Free to name a few on digital and email marketing strategy.
Letstalkstrategy.co.uk

  • Make Your Sign-Up Forms Visible

    – “My number one top tip is not to hide the sign-up option. Many websites hide it at the very bottom of the site, without any explicit call to action or enticing copy to encourage new sign-ups. Make your sign up form stand out and give your customer a reason to subscribe. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to provide a discount or an offer; it could be that you’ll provide your subscribers with sneak previews, personalised content, or reward them for their loyalty to your brand.”

  • A/B Test Your Pop-Up Boxes and Optimize – “A/B test the variety of ways that you capture new sign-ups. For example, a lightbox which is a pop-up box that appears on your website promoting your email sign up is an incredibly useful technique to not only driving new sign ups but also in promoting your email marketing activity. A/B test different designs of this lightbox, the time in which it is displayed and the amount of information you’re asking for to optimise this form. And if you’re asking for more than the email address at this stage, question how clear the value to the new subscriber is? What benefit does the new subscriber receive in providing all of that information?”

  • Provide Relevant and Valuable Content – “It’s great to grow your email marketing list continuously, but that won’t be effective if you don’t optimise the campaigns that are sending. Make sure that the content you are sending is relevant, as personalised as possible and adds value to your subscribers. The best way to assess this is to review the performance of your email marketing campaigns over time. This can also be correlated to the length of time your recipients have been subscribed. I’ve consulted with brands that were experiencing a steady decline in their email marketing performance over time. When analysing their performance it was clear that recipients that had been subscribed for more than 4 months began to lose interest, their engagement waned, and after six months more than half of the email marketing list was no longer opening emails. So make sure your content is optimised and continuously measure your email marketing performance.”

Tamsin Fox-Davies

I look after brand and marketing at the Agile Business Consortium. As a not-for-profit, building community and an engaged list is vitally important for us, and my background in email marketing and content management is useful every day.
www.linkedin.com/in/tamsinfoxdavies

  • Give to Get

    – “People are unlikely to join your mailing list without some evidence that you have something worth their time to share. Be clear and upfront about what that is, and give them a sample of it before they even sign up or receive your first email. Examples are:

    Free blogs/articles. These don’t have to be anything different from what you’ll provide after they sign up. People are pretty lazy, so the idea of having your content sent to them, rather than needing to return to your site to find it, is enough to get quite a few registrations for your list.

    Downloadable guide. An oldie-but-goodie, a downloadable report or guide is a great sign up incentive. Pick one of your customers top issues and put it together. It doesn’t have to be long, but if you can include a worksheet, template or case study, your audience will love it.

    Sign up discount. Retailers and B2C businesses will always do well by offering a discount for signing up. There’s a reason you see this everywhere online – it just works. If you have an online shop, there’s usually a function in your shopping cart system that allows you to set up discount vouchers and codes, so it’s not hard. 10% seems to be the most common discount currently, but that will vary in effectiveness by product type and price-range.

    It used to be that sign-up incentives were delivered AFTER someone joined your list. Although that’s still true for discount incentives, it’s different now with content incentives. People want proof that what you have is worth exchanging their details for, so try giving away the articles or guides without requiring an email address. Instead, let them see it and THEN tell them there’s more where that came from IF they sign up.

    N.B. None of these will work if your content is terrible! Make sure that written content is worth reading, and that any discounts offered are worth having.”

  • Make the Ask – “No one joins your list by osmosis. You must actually ask them to sign up – and do it several times on one page. It needs to be easy for people to sign up from any page of your website as well, because no-one is reading every page of your site (except you).

    Examples are:

    Popups – Use these sparingly and at the right time, as people can find them annoying

    Header forms – A box, button or link in your header. This can sit above your main navigation, if you’re short of space.

    Footer forms – As with a header form, this is always there. As sites often have fat footers (with multiple lines of navigation) you can usually make a footer form bigger and more prominent than a header form.

    In-content boxes – Create a break just after the introduction of any blog article (or similar) and pop in a sign up box. Then continue the article after the box. Include text in a bold font to say something like: ‘Enjoying this post? Get our articles sent to your inbox every month. Sign up here’.

    Side-bar panels – If your site has a side bar for navigation (which many e-commerce sites do), add in a signup box there too.

    Thank you pages – If a person makes it to your thank you page, it’s pretty certain that they like your content and/or products. On that page, offer them the opportunity to keep in touch and tell them what they’ll receive if they do.

    Account set-up pages – If people have to set up an account to use your site or buy your products, add a tick-box on the set up page for people to keep in touch. A short line of text with that saying ‘you can unsubscribe at any time’ will increase the number of people who opt in.

    Contact us pages – Although folks normally visit your contact page because they want to get in touch with you, there’s no harm in also asking them on the same page if they’d like you to stay in touch with them. However, don’t let this be the only place your sign-up box lives, as it’s a lower-response page.

    Resource pages – Do you have a page on your site full of whitepapers, guides, case studies or videos? If so, add a sign up box here. Make it prominent and near the top. Add text that says ‘to get our resources direct to your inbox, sign up here’ (or something similar) so it makes a connection for them. If you have individual pages for each resource, include a sign up form there too as standard practice.”

  • Less is More – “For every field you add to your sign-up form, the number of people completing the form diminishes by 30%. So, ask your potential subscribers for the minimum amount of information you need to stay in touch. First name and email address is plenty, as you’ll collect other data (like address) if they go on to become a customer.

    Exceptions to this are optional tick-boxes like region, or interest preferences, but only use these if you are actually going to send different emails to different groups of subscribers. For example, retailers who have different pricing or product lines for different regions may not want to send the same offers to US subscribers as they do to UK subscribers.

    Despite the warning, I give you a 50% of ‘just adding one more field’ to your first sign up form. Please resist! Go for the bare minimum and collect additional information later with an interests survey that you can send to engaged subscribers or give them the opportunity to update in their account.”

Alexander Bekhterev

Alexander is a digital marketing expert with over 7 years of international experience in Europe and the U.S. He currently works at the largest independent marketing platform company in the world, Emarsys, and consults its biggest customers in North America.
www.linkedin.com/in/alex89

  • Offer Something of Value

    – “Many companies spend a lot of money to drive traffic to their site – but if a person leaves without buying anything or without you capturing any information on them – all that money has been wasted. One of the best ways to try and capture information such as email addresses is to use a Conversion rate optimization (CRO) tool. When implementing user acquisition campaigns one of the most important factors is what you can provide in exchange for getting a potential customer’s email. There are numerous CRO tools out there and I had an opportunity to work with a few: Picreel, Bounce Exchange, Sumo Me, as well as built-in modals of email platforms like Emarsys, to name a few. I listed below what my US customers and I tried using the Picreel tool (not everything described below may be supported by other tools).

    Offer a discount – a discount encourages shoppers to go through with a purchase they were on the fence about. Even if they don’t buy today, offering a coupon rarely fails to at least collect their email address, so you can market to them in the future. The increase in conversion has a direct correlation with the discount size and price elasticity of a product.

    Offer free shipping – did you know that shipping costs are the #1 reason for shopping cart abandonment? Offer free shipping in your exit popup, and you stand to recover 44% of shoppers who are about to abandon their carts.

    Offer a free trial – it takes approximately 7 touches to make a sale. Offering a free trial gives you the opportunity to get your foot in the door and warm up your leads with multiple touches. About two thirds of B2B trials successfully convert and about a half of B2C do the same if done right.

    Offer downloadable content that has to do with the product or service you provide. Example: if you are an advertising agency, you can provide an E-book that goes over SEO tips for increasing visibility and traffic to a potential client’s website.

    Offer an entrance into a giveaway or sweepstakes – Sometimes visitors need a little extra incentive to take action. Free digital downloads are increasingly common, however physical items tend to have a higher perceived value. You don’t need to give everyone a physical gift. Just give them a chance to win the gift when they sign up for your newsletter. This one is my favorite – it is very cost effective (you don’t have to give something away to every subscriber rather just a few of them and once in a while).”

  • Use Overlays Wisely – “It is important to understand your customer journey and when it is appropriate and non-invasive to serve overlays to your viewers. Overlays have gotten a bad reputation because most of them interrupt your customer consuming your content or navigating your website. An effective overlay or drop down should: i) Respect the customer journey, ii) Capture the viewer’s attention, and finally iii) Provide value in return for the visitor providing their information.

    Serving an overlay on exit (aka exit intent) is the last effort to interact with a viewer before they leave but there are other strategies such as serving the overlay after a customer has spent a certain amount of time on page, if they have visited X number of pages or if they have scrolled to a certain percentage of a page. This means you will need to understand what your viewers are doing on your website. Website analytics can give great insight on how long viewers are staying on your website and the average page views.”

  • Optimize Your Email Capture Forms – “Every day, we are exposed to thousands of ads so it is incredibly important to effectively capture your viewers’ attention. Images are a great way to help visually impact your viewers. Our eyes can take in way more information than our brain can actually process. Therefore, people look for visual cues to tell them what’s important and what they can ignore.

    Call to action – Your call to action needs to be very simple and straightforward while enticing your viewers if you want to maximize conversions. Don’t make visitors read a lengthy message, fill out multiple fields, go to their email to retrieve a code, then come back to your site to redeem their offer. Optimizing CTA area and personalizing CTAs themselves can yield conversion increases anywhere between 40%-230% or even more.

    Create urgency – It is human nature to procrastinate. Whether it’s deciding to enter an email address or to make a large purchase, people tend to avoid or postpone making difficult decisions. Urgency gets the ball rolling by defining a deadline: either you get the offer before this time or you miss out. Having the urgency aspect in your campaigns can triple your conversion rates in certain cases.

    Powerful words – Power words subconsciously evoke an emotional or psychological response in a reader. A reader thinks they need what you’ve got. You reel them in with simple, albeit effective, words that speak to the power of Curiosity, Greed, Urgency, Trust/Logic, Simplicity, Exclusivity. Here is an example of simplicity: “Get our simple step-by-step guide to align your sales and marketing teams in less than 1 week.”

    Be creative, be different! Use humor if you can and remember to ask yourself: “If I was served my own overlay would I convert?”

Priya Bransfield

I am an email marketer who likes to see things from the customer’s point of view. The ability to look at the whole journey makes it easier to plan your email campaigns…therefore making them work better and harder for you.
www.linkedin.com/in/priya-bransfield-4582564

  • Make Your Signup Form Visible on Your Homepage

    – “My top most tip would be to add a sign-up form field on your website’s homepage. Offer an incentive which would interest them – this could be anything from a competition or to receive a newsletter. This will also help you determine the demographics that you are reaching and therefore you will be able to then better segment future communications based on their preferences.”

  • Decide on the Type of Person You Want to Target – “Profile customers so that you can see whether they meet the requirements of your company. Once you know the type of person you are targeting you can tailor your content for this purpose, which in return will gain you the needed numbers on your list.”

  • Engage Contacts You Already Have From Other Activities – “Buying lists from 3rd parties is never a good idea. Why not make use of email addresses that you have at your disposal? Maybe there are contacts that could be ported over from your social media or PPC/SEO campaigns? Direct them to a personalised landing page asking them if they want to receive your content. Natural list growth using already acquired data.”

Wilson Manase

Experienced Head Of Digital Media with a demonstrated history of Media Buying, PPC, SEO, Affiliates, Native, Data Aquistion, Email Markting, List Management, Call Centre Marketing, Loyalty Memberships, Direct Marketing, Multi-channel Marketing, Brand Management, Management Consultancy, Branding, Account Management, Advertising, Financial Management, Market Research, Marketing, Negotiation, Business Development, and Digital Marketing. Strong marketing professional with a Human Science Degree from University of Durham.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilsonmanase

  • Affinity Marketing Gets Best Results

    – “Say you work in credit Reports and you want to grow your business. Strategic partnerships with loan companies, debt management and ID theft solutions where you get opted in is a quick way to garner growth.

    Non incentivised co reg campaigns will build quick volumes, profile openers and conversions in order to make future co-reg media buys more efficient for a greater return on ROI.

    Well tested landing pages that are focused on demographic information capture i.e. name, email, etc. For accurate campaigns it is important to have a verification system for data accuracy.

    Survey data purchase to find hand raisers.

    Data profiling by taking converting users and then targeting similar profiles on other channels with follow up email campaigns to get conversion.

    Relevancy and personalisation allows you to cut through the wastage, and if one uses an omni-channel approach the target consumer will become aware of and feel comfortable with brand.”

    Wilson Manase Email List Growth

  • Choose Your Email Marketing Software Carefully – “The email platform you use is critical to any campaign. It’s important to understand that a lot of your success with email marketing depends entirely on the email marketing software you choose because they are responsible for making sure that your emails actually get delivered.

    If you aren’t careful, then you will end up paying a lot more money for fewer features and terrible deliverability (which causes you to lose even more money). A good email marketing service enables you to create highly engaging emails. It also allows you to manage your contacts, segment users into groups, and track the performance of your email campaigns.

    Five I have used and recommend:

    1. MailChimp
    2. ConvertKit
    3. Drip
    4. Aweber
    5. Infusionsoft (Infusionsoft is a very robust email marketing provider)

    These above give you a shared IP with a good reputation and should get you started, but once comfortable, it is worth buying your own package and building your own reputation. Your IP is what email service providers use to work out if you are a spammer. So don’t blast a million emails on day one; spread it over 30 days and build that trust organically with consumers and with companies that control the inbox.”

  • Use Analytics to Really Get to Know Your Customer – “Analysis of the results can be used to determine when your customers are likely to buy one of your products and what that product is going to be. To achieve this, you need to use transactional, demographic, geographical and most importantly behavioural data. By combining and analysing this information, it is possible to understand your customers and their individual journeys. You’ll then be in a position to send the correct message, to the right customer, at a convenient time, on the apt device, using the appropriate channel.”

Andy Crestodina

Andy Crestodina is a co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Orbit Media, an award-winning 38-person digital agency in Chicago. Over the past 18 years, Andy has provided digital marketing advice to 1000+ businesses. He speaks at national marketing conferences and is the author of Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing.
www.orbitmedia.com
  • Optimize Your Signup Box – “Optimize your signup box FIRST. The sooner you do this, the faster your list will grow. Make sure it includes the three P’s

    • Prominence: It’s obvious and easy to see
    • Promise: It tells them what they’ll get if they subscribe
    • Proof: It tells that that other people get it, either by showing number of subscribers or giving a little testimonial

    Here is a simple example:”

    Andy Crestodina Email List Building Tip

  • Collaborate with Influencers – “It’s one of the only shortcuts in digital marketing. Getting the voices, names and faces of people who are influential over your audience does many good things: it build credibility, it improves quality and it can increase traffic.

    If the influencer has a decent and engaged social following and they share the content once it’s live, it can create a short spike in traffic. And since you have a well optimized signup form, you can expect new signups from these visitors.

    Those are subscribers you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t collaborated with the influencer.”

  • Put your subscribe call to action EVERYWHERE – “You probably have it somewhere on your blog. But think about all the other places you could add a sign-up CTA. Here are 10 places to make sure you suggest they subscribe.

    1. At the top of your blog’s main page
    2. At the bottom of every blog post
    3. Halfway down each blog post in the body of the article
    4. On your about us page
    5. In your website footer
    6. On your contact thank you page
    7. In your email signature
    8. On your “page not found” page
    9. At the end of your videos
    10. In the closing words of your podcast”

Helen Cox

Helen Cox is a marketing consultant based in the UK that writes marketing plans and strategies for growing business and professional services firms. She also acts as an outsourced marketing manager.
www.helencoxmarketing.co.uk

  • Provide Content that’s of Real Value

    – “Working in the B2B landscape, content really is King. The best way to attract new people to sign up to you email list is offer them free content that educates, informs and entertains. My advice would be don’t do something that’s a bit lame and your audience could find anywhere on the web, offer them something of value that is really going to make them want to hear more from you in the future. ”

  • Use Pop-Ups – “Another tip is to have a pop-up on your website. It’s quite simple, but a discreet pop-up that comes into view after about 30 seconds browsing the site could encourage people to sign up. You’re never going to be sure at what stage of buying your clients are visiting your website. They may not be ready to buy, but they may want to hear more from you in the future. Make it easier for them to do so.”

  • Promote Your List on Social Media – “Promote your email marketing list on social media both paid and organic. I always get great feedback on my newsletter and I use these as testimonials to promote my newsletter and encourage people to sign up. It doesn’t happen all that often, but when I have posted these testimonials in the past with a link to my sign up list I have seen spikes in numbers.”

Ryan Phelan

Ryan Phelan brings nearly two decades of global online marketing experience to Origin focusing on driving GTM strategies for high growth SaaS software and Fortune 250 companies. Ryan is a respected thought leader and nationally distinguished speaker and strategist.
www.originemail.com

  • Make It Clear What They Will Get

    – “First, the most regular advice that I provide to marketers is to emphasize the value exchange. Sure, you can just ask for email address and then move on, but the better strategy is to actually take the person to another page and lay out the value proposition. Really what you want are people that WANT to be on your list AND are going to give you their primary email address. Lack of value is going to get you their junk email address. You know, the one YOU use on sites where you just don’t care. Well, you’re always going to get them, but if you don’t “sell” your program and offering, you’re more than likely to get the junk email address. So, tell the subscriber why your program is awesome. You’ll find that you get more quality!”

  • Promote It at the TOP of the Page – “This is always the battle of real-estate. To get the most out of your acquisition, put your “ask” for the email address, or link to another page to sign up, at the TOP of the page. I have commonly seen that rates for acquisition increase by 50% when you have it at the top vs the bottom. So, fight the battle with your UX/Tech group, but remind them that email addresses are golden and a ticket into the inbox…whenever the company wants.”

  • Validation – “It’s a must these days for a few reasons. One being that we’re all in a hurry and sometimes we make mistakes when we’re typing our email address not to mention doing it on the mobile. So having validation at the time of submission is key to ensuring that you don’t have high initial bounce rates or addresses that could have easily been checked at the time of submission. Also, make absolutely sure that you have CAPTCHA on the sign up page to avoid fraud or problems with bad emails entered into your system. What we’re trying to accomplish is maximization of our acquisition. Sometimes “Killer List Building Tips” are about making sure that what you get…you can actually use.”

John Caldwell

Since 1996, Red Pill Email founder, John Caldwell, has worked on agency and client sides using deployment tools from ESPs to in-house to homegrown email systems, and has produced an annual Email Vendor Features & Functions Guide since 2009.
http://redpillemail.com

  • Use a Tiered Incentive Program

    – “I’m limited in what I can share, but one of my favorite acquisition programs was for an organization with an active inbound call center selling direct to consumer. The active customer base far exceeded its email subscriber base.

    The goal was to convert inbound callers without an email address on file, as seen in the customer service/order screen, into email subscribers. The organization had a lackluster history of previous attempts to enlist the call center for email acquisition.

    We developed a tiered incentive program packaged as a limited-time contest with a set beginning and end. The first of 5 tiers were within easy reach for the average rep with gifts and goals increasing to a grand prize of a large TV.

    Inbound call representatives were provided a form where they would input a customer-provided email address if the email field in the customer service tool was blank; which was the majority of customers.

    The form supported real-time validation allowing the call center rep to correct any typos to the email address while on the phone with the caller. The form included a field for the rep’s ID for tracking and attribution. Hidden fields were added for identifying the program/contest.

    A script was developed to explain the value of becoming an email subscriber and the steps to make sure they receive the company’s emails. In order to qualify the recipient would have to open three messages within ten days, with the first being opt-in verification followed by two messages within as many days welcoming the new subscriber.

    With a 37% stick rate the value of the new subscribers well exceeded the costs of promoting and producing the contest; even in the short term. What wasn’t measured was the camaraderie and friendly competition that seemed to energize the call center with reps motivating others in competition for the gifts and grand prize.

    The gaining of email subscribers from the customer base didn’t shift attribution from call-in to email, but instead brought additional sales from the growing email subscriber base.”

Earl Flormata

Earl Flormata is known as the “Evil Marketing Genius.”With a 70 million dollar track record in selling everything from software to reusable art boards, he’s a one man army for hire to help your business bring in more sales.
www.linkedin.com/in/earlflormata

“If you’re looking to build an email list – you’re going to see the same stuff posted everywhere on a regular basis.

And to be frank, most of it is going to be based around the same architecture:

  1. Make an offer for an ethical bribe / lead magnet
  2. They “pay” for it with an email
  3. Run ads / traffic to it. Might be Facebook / Google / LinkedIN / Instagram / YouTube etc.

What I’m about to share with you is no different in archetype, but rather different in presentation.

Here are 3 “Off the beaten paths” to build an email list.

  1. Wi-Fi Marketing (Local List Build)
  2. Building Tools – Audience Re-engagement (Bring Dead Lists back)
  3. Public Speaking (Earning engagement in person)”

  • WI-FI Marketing

    – “Let’s start with Wi-Fi. Depending on your target market – especially if you’re looking to build a local brand, Wi-Fi marketing is an amazing method to gather data on customers that enter your physical brick and mortar store.

    You basically find a provider, they set up a router at your location, and you choose how you want people to “log in” to your Wi-Fi. They can opt for Facebook / Twitter / or plain ol’ email. Regardless of the modality, you now have a way to reach out to your “logged in audience.”

    Now send them an interesting offer or message, and go from there.

    A quick example of this was we set up Wi-Fi marketing in a local ice cream shop

    Earl Flormata WI-FI Marketing

    106 of the people who opted in did so directly with email over the next 30 days. 174 total opt ins.

    We sent them an offer for buy 1 get 1 – ice cream. 30% of them came to play.
    The average order size was $10.
    174 x 30% x $10 = $520.

    It cost $250 to implement this, and they doubled their investment within the first email campaign.

    Obviously this isn’t always the case, and it may take a few tries at offers to get an ROI, but you get the idea.

    Let’s move on to the second “off the beaten path” technique.”

  • Building Tools – Audience Re-engagement – “This technique was used for a pre-existing business with a dead email list.

    Scenario: A business had a list of 2000 businesses, past and present that had done business with them, ordered product, and generally had a previous connection to. The problem was that they had never emailed them. Ever. Not even once. So consider this list basically “dead” and we’d have to warm them up again to continue building.

    We created a tool that showed locations on a google map where people could purchase a particular product. We then created a simple email campaign to outreach to all of our previous clients and offered their location to be shown on the map. All for free. We just wanted to make it easy for clients of our clients to make purchases locally. It helped that our head office didn’t compete directly as we didn’t do direct sales ourselves, and only focused on wholesaling.

    The outreach campaign was a success. We received so many orders from people who had long forgotten about said business that the fax machine (yeah, it’s an old example) actually broke down. (It caught on fire).

    Earl Flormata Re-engage Dead List

    (Just a visual, not actual fax machine that took orders)

    I know – it’s different – but I can’t count the number of businesses who are literally sitting on a goldmine. They already have a large list, but just didn’t know how to engage it.

    By the numbers:
    List size when we started – around 2k (dead to us)
    List size after bounces, and unsubs – 1.7k (alive and well)
    Cost to implement solution $1k
    Orders $20k

    And from here – growing the list after this type of engagement should be on easy street. Just have to keep it consistent.”

  • Public Speaking – “This one’s a simple one.

    When writing your talks, use the “fill in the blank” technique for some of your handouts and slides. During the course of your talk, just address the blanks and “fill them in” while on stage. Anyone who wants a copy of the slides – just throw up a quick slide with either a link to a website that gathers their information in exchange for the slides. Or text your email to (your marketing number) for a free copy of a workbook around the talk.

    Using this method, you’re giving them value, establishing yourself as an expert in whatever sector you’re speaking on, and getting email opt-ins from a locally based audience (if it’s a small event) or even potentially an international based audience (at say a large tradeshow).”

    Earl Flormata Public Speaking

    (Yup that’s me, actually using the technique)

“So there you have it. 3 weird ways to grow / revive / earn your following and build your list.”

Diana Conner

Diana is an email consultant, speaker, and the director of email marketing for Bulldog Media Group. She enjoys being a keen orchestrator of the email marketing symphony.
www.linkedin.com/in/dianaconner18

“Whether you’re the brand-new business on the block or the superstore on the corner, everyone wants more traffic in their doors. To help build your online footprint, it’s important to grow your list with a proper inbound marketing strategy. According to HubSpot, the average email marketing database degrades by about 22.5% every year. To keep your list on an upward trajectory here are a few tips to incorporate into your marketing plan.”


  • Exclusive Content

    – “Offer your customers and potential customers some value in a blog, newsletter, contest or giveaway. Perhaps it’s a quiz, infographic or e-book. Invite them to see the value in your brand beyond just making a sale. They will value the product they paid for and continue to come back. When they get to your site you can add an exit popup or lightbox to capture their email address if it’s their first visit. Offer them a discount or checklist that may be of interest to take the bait. Also, in email, make it easy to subscribe or forward to a friend. Having influencers promote your content on their social media platforms will also help raise awareness. Reach out to family and friends to help spread the good word. It’s very easy to “share” or forward something interesting or helpful.”

  • Cross Marketing – “What’s being communicated in your store and/or on your site always needs to sync with email, social media, direct print etc. Trade shows, industry and local events are easy ways to get someone’s address to receive future emails. Research by HubSpot also points out that social media and blogging costs less than 62% of other lead generation methods. A loyalty or referral program can also do wonders to spread the word and provide value.”

  • Segment and Target Your Current List to Optimize Engagement – “Are people complaining or unsubscribing at a high rate? Are they opening but not clicking or not opening at all? Database decay happens and it doesn’t need to snowball into more subscribers exiting the list than joining. Target specific audience groups for specials, newsletters or breaking news. Make sure anyone who hasn’t engaged with your data within a reasonable amount of time are cut from the list. It’s quality not quantity. If you are having deliverability issues this will also help get those campaigns into the inbox! Now, if you have a lot of stale data there is still hope. With the right reengagement strategies, you can win back a lot of those old customers.”

“In summary: Combine exclusive content with the right cross marketing tactics while targeting to the right audience and you are sure to grow your list.”

Bonus tip: “Never rent or buy lists. Most lists are watered down from being sold again and again. People end up abandoning those addresses. The companies also don’t guarantee those leads will convert or actually have interest in your product. Also, emailing blindly, and without their consent, is not compliant with best practices or various laws across the globe. It will also cause the potential customer to complain or unsubscribe and that could affect your overall deliverability in reaching customers who do want to hear from you. Take your time and build your list the right way to fulfil its true potential.”

Katerina Nazarenko

Email marketing expert from Ukraine (for 7 years), with experience of working for both email marketing platforms and in client side roles, love analytics and sharing my knowledge.
www.facebook.com/nk.nymph

  • Use Pop-Ups…in The Right Way

    – “Widely used Pop-up Subscription Forms on websites have a killer effect in two ways. On the one hand, such forms can get on users’ nerves and turn “the devil mode” on. On the other, they still work very well. You should develop them so that they are as subtle and good-looking as you can to diminish a negative effect. Offer a discount / white paper / (whatever is useful for users) in return for their subscription — and you’ll get a good result. BTW pop-ups like a “Fortune circle” with random discounts are quite minty fresh and popular now due to their interactive and entertaining format.”

  • Start a Brand Loyalty Program – “Participation in the brand’s loyalty program can be a strong incentive to subscribe for newsletters and special offers. Just make an email field and double opt-in procedure obligatory to validate a user’s account in this program.”

  • Encourage Sign-Up on Checkout Page – “Suggest your clients subscribe on the checkout stage. They are at the peak of their interest and loyalty to your brand/product at that moment — so make hay while the sun shines and convert really engaged customers into new active subscribers.”

Vanessa Lanham-Day

Vanesa’s delivers intensive business growth mentoring programmes to business owners. As she says, “If you want to grow your business, you need to get good at marketing – it really is that simple. Understanding the art – and the science – behind attracting and keeping customers is the only sure way to achieve growth. Everything else is just admin.”
www.on-track-marketing.co.uk

  • Don’t Overlook Business Speaking

    – “Don’t just think ebooks. Business speaking is a brilliant way to build your list – but you need to create a talk that leaves people really wanting that additional information. Plus you need to create a FOOLPROOF and hard-to-ignore way to capture people’s details. On a large scale you can do that with a super easy opt-in form linked into a short and simple unique url that people can easily type into a phone during the session – share the url on the screen during your talk – or hand out individual signup sheets for smaller events. Passing around a list for people to add their name to does NOT work – it’s likely to stall half way round the room or, if the first few people don’t add their name, most others won’t either. Typically I can grab around 80% of an audience’s details from a small event and 50% from something larger.”

  • Really Think About Your CTAs and Form Placements – “Ditch ‘sign up for our newsletter’. Let’s be really honest – NO-ONE wants to read your newsletter. And I really do mean NO-ONE! It’s lazy, lacks thought and suggests you just are more interested in yourself than your customers and prospects. Think much more adventurously – like ‘share your details in order to be one of the first to hear about our customer offers and price deals’. And don’t relegate your ‘sign up’ to the contact page – make it prominent on the home page and make it sound really compelling. Building a list shouldn’t be an end in itself, so back up the request with a multi-part autoresponder sequence from your CRM system, driving prospects towards a ‘next step’ with you. ”

  • Leverage Tech to Create Amazing Lead Magnets Efficiently – “Creating super attractive material to help you build your list is critical but, in my experience, people often seem to struggle pulling together ‘leadbait’ such as ebooks or useful ‘top strategies’ type material. Make this easier by using https://beacon.by/ which magically transforms a set of your relevant blogs to quickly create a professional ebook for you. Use this on your website, in social media and via talks.”

Skip Fidura

Skip Fidura is a consumer centric digital marketer with over 20 years’ experience on the client, agency and provider sides. He has helped B2B and B2C brands like BT, Fred Perry, Paul Smith, DHL and Copa Airlines have real conversations with each and every customer.
www.skipfidura.live
  • Don’t Ignore the Importance of Keeping Existing Subscribers – “This may seem obvious, but one of the best ways for growing a list is to keep it from shrinking. By spending all your time focusing on growth you run the risk of losing focus on those leaving your list each month. For every person you lose, you need to get two just to stay ahead. Ironically retention begins at registration.

    • Start by sending new registrants a welcome program introducing your brand and letting them know what they will receive.
    • Use web and email behaviour and survey data to send them information that they want
    • Be brave enough to not send what you want to say if it is not right for them.

    As Dorothy Neville famously said, “The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place, but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”

  • Be Wary of List Growth Targets Based on Percentages – “A 20% list growth target is fine when your list is small. In fact it may be too modest, but as your list grows so does the number of registrations you need to hit that 20%. It is unreasonable to think that the potential audience for your product or service is going to grow at the same rate as your target. The only way to achieve that target, is to get registrations that are not into your product or service. You just end up spending money on acquiring people who will not buy, leave your list and have to be replaced.

    Either set a fixed number target or if you have to use a percentage then make it a percentage of traffic to each collection point. The percentage should reflect the potential of getting the opt-in at each location. The opt-in rate on your website will be very different than it is in a shop or on social media.”

  • Smart Pop-Ups – “The first two tips were really about making list growth easier, so here is a tip for growth itself – POP-UP. I hope by now we are past the discussion about how we all hate pop-ups. They may clash with our brand ethos, but they work – even the ham fisted ones that appear as soon as a consumer lands on your site.

    That said, we are in a new year and if you haven’t yet, you should make 2019 the year of the smart pop-up. Think about going to a party- you want to get into the room, feel the vibe and then start meeting people. Nobody likes the over eager guy who hovers by the door waiting to pounce on the first person who walks in alone.”

Rachel Baines

An experienced email marketing professional with over 6 years’ experience in B2B and B2C companies. I head up global email marketing activity at RICS, currently working to roll out marketing automation processes. I love music, horror movies and cake.
www.linkedin.com/in/rachelbaines89

  • Delete “Dead Data”

    – “It’s a bit off-piste but the first tip to growing your list is to delete your old dead data and start with a pot of only your most engaged contacts. It’s always scary seeing your send numbers drop when you have cultivated them for a long time, but removing the people who have hard bounced, non-engaged in any content for a while (or ever in some cases), or who have opted out of all communications from you will pay dividends. It’s a quick win to seeing increased deliverability for your remaining contacts and ultimately will result in higher success metrics. It’s not cheating to only communicate with those you know will be interested and ultimately, its engaged contacts who purchase or convert! ”

  • Tell People About Your Email List + Where They Can Sign Up – “Once you’ve cleared out your data, you want to encourage new sign ups. Having a simple but clear newsletter sign up box on your website homepage is a really easy way to do this. You can also include the option to opt into more email using a consent tick box which links back to your preference centre and grow multiple send lists at once! Sign up boxes should also be placed throughout your customer journey on your site. You can also think about including links to them on social media, at the end of webinars or even cross promote with affiliate companies. Ensuring you tell people where they can sign up is vital, without signposting and making it clear, people who do want to hear from you might be missing out. A lot of people have suggested using popover displays or light boxes on your website to encourage sign up (think groupon or wowcher), personally I think these are a turn off, but there is no reason not to test them as part of your ongoing list growth activity. ”

  • Generate + Share Amazing Content Via Email – “Generate amazing content and then put it behind a marketing sign up wall. Okay so in the days of GDPR you can’t force someone to sign up to your emails to download the document. But you can encourage them to do so by telling them you can send a copy of the document to their inboxes or informing them that content like this is available in your regular email updates. Sing the praises of your email communications and let people know what great stuff they could get from you, whether this be whitepapers, research materials, offers or sneak peak sales etc. You’re doing good things that people want to know about so shout about it and make it seem like a no brainer to sign up. ”

Dortha Hise

I’m the Chief Overwhelm Eliminator and Joy Giver at Pretty Smart Virtual Services. My team of kick-ass virtual assistants and I have supported dozens of business owners figure out what to delegate and how to prioritize tasks to increase their leverage, efficiency and productivity in their business.
prettysmartvaservices.com

  • Participate in Someone Else’s Offer/Giveaway

    – “I recently participated as a contributor in a multi-entrepreneur giveaway – it grew my list by about 350 people. That may not be massive growth for you, depending where you are in your business – for me, that was pretty substantial. It’s worthwhile to consider joining a giveaway where you can be a contributor. The idea being that several people coming together to share an offer/giveaway and everyone gets more exposure that way.”

  • Hold Your Own Free Challenge – “Come up with a theme, set a time frame (some challenges are 3 days, others are 14 or 30 days…pick something that works with your theme as well as fits your business style – you’ll need to do content for each of the days of the challenge ?). I created a 10-day “make delegation a habit” challenge and launched it using a few ads on social media, promoting it to my list and asking a few people to help me promote it and it attracted 200 sign ups over 2 different launch periods. Again, the numbers may not be substantial, however, for my list, it was pretty significant.”

  • Host a Telesummit – “One of the ways I support my clients in massive list building is hosting telesummits. We’ve seen clients grow their lists as much as 3,000 subscribers during one telsummit. The idea with a telesummit – which, by the way is not the cool thing to call your online series anymore…so when you decide to do one of these, be mindful not to call it a telesummit ? A series like this is focused on a theme…for example, if I hosted a telesummit it would be on the topic of eliminating overwhelm in your business and I’d have experts from all areas of life come on to share tips and advice about eliminating overwhelm. The guests can offer a free gift (in some series, I’ve seen a paid or discounted service or product offered), all geared toward exposure for everyone participating. The host does the interviews of each expert, provides some juicy nuggets for each of the interviews in an email to their subscribers for the series. Each interview “airs” for a limited time and all interviews may be available during a replay period after the series concludes.”

“In my opinion, there are some key components to any offer to grow your list: making sure you provide massive value to your audience and then deliver on whatever promise you made. From there, the key with employing any of these tactics is repeatability and consistency.”

Pat Marcello

Pat Marcello has been working online for the past 15 years. Her company, MagnaSites.com, is a full-service digital marketing agency with a primary focus on Web Design and Development and Social Marketing.
https://MagnaSites.com

  • Live Webinars With Experts

    – “Recruit a group of experts, and record a webinar with a live audience. People will attend to get great advice from people whose names they’ll recognize. If you sell the expert’s product as an affiliate, it’s a great way to make money.”

  • Make the Webinar that You’ve Already Done Evergreen – “Let it run as if it’s live… forever, if you want to. There are several different platforms you can use to do this, but a new one – Ever Webinar – seems to be very streamlined. Everything you need to accomplish this evergreen system is included – email templates to be sent to different groups according to their participation levels, webinar hosting, landing page templates, and so on. Very cool. I’m about to use it for one of my clients.”

  • Facebook Ads – “These are inexpensive, and if you set up a squeeze page (lead capture page) with great copy and have something valuable to give away, you can build your email list easily. The trick is in the squeeze page copy and your offer. It has to be good!”

“If you’ve been in online business more than a week, you’ve probably heard the axiom: You make $1 per day for every person on your mailing list. That would be great, right?

It’s not guaranteed. You have to work at it. But building that list is the first step to making money online, while you sleep, on autopilot. Having a responsive list should be a primary objective for any business.”

Getting the List

“First, how do you get a list? One quick way is to advertise for it. Set up a squeeze page (lead capture page, landing page), which can be very simple – an image, a headline, three to five bullet points, a call to action and an optin box. Just be very sure that your image is engaging and that your copy is strong.

What’s strong? Benefits are always strong. What’s in it for them? Why should they exchange their information for your free gift? (Yes, you need something to giveaway – a special report, a book chapter, or maybe a video.) Explain what your giveaway will do for them. Make them really want what you have to give them.

Then, set up your Facebook Ad. Just some short copy with a benefit statement is all that’s required, but you can also use a 15-second video. Folks love videos, but whatever you use, you’ll also need to test your ads to find out what works best. One hundred percent of marketing well is testing well. If you don’t test, you’ll never get better results.

Also target your market very closely. Who are they? You need to decide this before making your ad live. Don’t say something silly like “everyone.” That’s just not true. If you don’t know who your perfect audience is, you’re not ready to advertise. Use Google Analytics Demographics option or other analytics sites to figure that out.”

Live Performances

“Another way to get a good list going is by having a teleseminar (if you want to be old school) or a webinar. To do this, you still need to know your market and what they want. Once you figure that out – give it to them.

You can find out what they want by running surveys. You may want to run ads for your survey before you ever start. Or if you have any list, even if it’s small, you can learn what those folks want to make their lives or businesses better. They’ll be a good barometer for the folks you want to attract.

Once you know what your audience wants, set up your webinar or teleseminar to pertain to that topic. Let’s say they want to know how to get more patients into their medical practice. Your webinar should give them information only about that. Invite a medical professional that has a thriving practice and who wants to talk about how they built it. (And get more patients at the same time.) Expert help is always appreciated.

If that expert also has a list, encourage them to get their people to the webinar by mailing out for you. Send them to a registration page for the webinar and build your list at the same time.

Webinars are great for getting new people onto your list. If you use Facebook to target your perfect audience, you’ll have the most success.”

Miscellaneous Efforts

“You can build your list other ways that might be great or not so great, depending on the calibre of the platform and its captain.”

Write for Prestigious + Niche Publications

“First, write for prestigious publications in your niche. Editors are often looking for content, and if you can write well, they might be happy to add your article to their publication. Your URL will always be shown. Send people to your website (where your optin form is front and center) or to a landing page that pertains precisely to the article you’ve written. Either way, you’ll pick up some people looking for advice.

Also write for blogs in your niche that get some good traffic. You can check for this information in free analytics sites around the Web, too.”

Appear as an Expert on Podcasts/Internet Radio Shows

“Again, these folks are always looking for content, so if you can speak logically about your topic and know how to be a good guest, this is another way to build your list. Listen to several interviews on the channel you’re interested in appearing on to understand the format so that you’re better prepared before speaking.”

Guest Star on Related YouTube Channels

“YouTube should have some great channels in your niche, too. Be sure you have your web cam ready and that your audio is clear. The folks who run the channel will probably make you do some testing first, so be ready!

Maybe even buy a special domain and load your landing page onto it so that you can give the channel master a domain that builds your list. Make it short, keep hyphens and numbers out of it, and have the broadcast send people to your squeeze page. Build your list! (You can use this strategy for any of these miscellaneous methods)”

Mobile Advertising

“Mobile advertising is another way to build your list. Just understand that the people you get from mobile marketing may not be as responsive as they are from other ways we’ve touched on above. You have to really work them – immediately — with instant informative emails, reminding them of how they signed up for your list. The people that want to continue with you will stay, those that don’t will leave. Mobile list building is still worth it, if you want to spend some time.”

Co-Registration

“Co-registration is another option, but as with mobile marketing, you have to work the list. With co-reg, the people are offered several different lists to join at the same time. They choose the offers they want, but don’t always remember that they signed up for yours. As with mobile marketing, you have to work this list hard for it to pay off.”

The Bottom Line

“There are many ways to build a list, but the thing to remember is that you need to stay in contact with the people on your list, once you acquire it. They’re people, not money. Set up a follow-up series that gives the folks on your list great content and every few messages offer something for sale – a product of yours or a related affiliate product. It’s a great way to stay in touch and make that $1 a day for every person on your list that people talk about. Who knows? If you build a big list and do it well, maybe you’ll make more than a dollar. Let’s think that.”

Jack Gevon

Seasoned CRM, Email and Marketing automation professional with several years’ experience working across many industries and sectors. For me it’s all about challenging myself to learn and develop new skills, as well as finding innovative and creative solutions to solve complex or challenging problems.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-g-767a6338/

“I am sure many marketers like myself who went through GDPR last year would have come out of the whole process with a smaller list of subscribers – I certainly did. Although most of the subscribers lost were inactive or not-recently engaged, there were a few active subscribers who requested to be removed from the database as well. Luckily, this did not impact my email campaigns performance, instead it improved it since the remaining contacts were happy to receive and engage with my marketing communications.

For those of you who may have experienced the opposite and are looking for ways to re-generate/increase your subscriber volumes, here are 3 tips that I would recommend.”


  • Create an Omni-Channel Customer Acquisition Form Strategy

    – “Most business use multiple channels to interact and engage with their potential customers/audience. However, many don’t utilise these channels to acquire new subscribers, but instead use them only for building brand awareness or to draw their attention to specific offerings.

    Let’s say you promote your products/services through your Website, social media, blogs, etc on each one of these digital channels you should have a way to capture subscribes directly from the page they’re viewing. You can do this by creating a form in your CRM or marketing tool and embedding the script onto these pages. For example, if you get a lot of engagement on Facebook, you can use their widget tool to create a form on your Facebook page to acquire new subscribers. I personally like to capture potential customer details from a form submission as well as likes on my post. The same applies to blog pages and websites. However, I would recommend you test each of the different form options, i.e. whether you are using a simple form, timed pop-ups, exit page pop-ups, etc…

    Once you’ve optimised this process you can build an automated journey or a series of triggered emails to welcome and find out more about that person’s interest – with compelling content of course. This data can be fed back into your CRM from various channels, which you can leverage to effectively target and convert your subscribers over time.”

  • Launch a Competition – “l love a good competition, especially one that I have a chance of winning. If you really want to engage with your audiences and get them excited, make the competition interactive. I get bored of constantly being asked to enter my details for a chance to win something. Its great but I forget about it the next day and then I am bombarded with emails afterwards.

    If you are an online retailer for example, why not make the competition interactive. Build a landing page that has a wheel of prizes, promote it through your different channels. Those that sign up get a chance to spin and potentially win a prize instantly, plus if they refer their friends they’ll receive additional spins. You can also get the winners to post or share their prizes online to get more spins and you “the retailer” can share the excitement of the winners as well on your social media pages. At the end of the competition everyone gets a chance to win the main prize (something worthwhile) with multiple consolation prizes and if you really want to go all out, give everyone who participated 10% off their next order as a thank you. Keep in mind it doesn’t have to be this sophisticated, but something simple with a bit of creativity can go along way and work just as well.”

  • Use Lead Magnets – “A lead magnet simply put, offers your visitors something of value in return for their details (email address, first name, etc). For example, a free eBook, access to a specific report, whitepapers, webinars, etc. One of the newest emerging trends taking off at present are Podcasts.

    The type of lead magnet you use depends on the industry or sector you work in and the products or services your business offers. However, to effectively capture your audience’s data. I can’t stress enough that whatever you offer must be of VALUE to your demographic, or else you’ll end up with low sign ups.

    For instance, if you’re a book publisher and one of your popular authors is releasing their newest book, you could run a podcast where fans can sign up for the opportunity to listen to the author speak about the book (his inspiration, his experiences, etc.). If you really wanted to create a WOW factor, send everyone who listened to the podcast until the end a unique code allowing them to enter it at the point of purchase entitling them to receive a signed copy.”

“There are many techniques you can use to grow your email subscribers list. Whatever approach you decide to take always remember to test, monitor and optimise your strategy to achieve the best results for your organisation.”

Joolz Joseph

Joolz has over 20 years sales and marketing experience, and is an email marketing specialist and trainer as well as a provider of marketing inspiration through 121 workshops. She is a trainer for the Chartered Institute of Marketing and also works with clients on a local level in Herts, UK.
www.thevirtualmarketeer.co.uk

  • Focus on the Whole Experience Not Just the Hook

    – “Building your list is about more than just the ‘hook’, it is about the entire experience. Those early brand interactions around sign up and how they influence not just signups but people dropping out early on through lack of engagement. Look at your recipient’s entire experience, from initial hook and landing page to confirmation and welcome email (or series). Are they all consistent and resonating with your target audience, answering questions that will help move them towards a sale? Test each aspect and make sure you optimise each one. The landing page needs to be clean, clear and to the point with a very clear call to action. The offer or magnet needs to be relevant and actually helpful if you want to stand out, not just another checklist or token giveaway. A good welcome email is a must and will ensure people engage with your emails from the start rather than unsubscribe when they get the next communication. Manage expectations, ask to be added to their address book and give something extra for them to click on.”

  • Offer an E-Series as Part of Your Pitch – “Since GDPR, there has been some concern over what can be considered appropriate enticement for list growth and with separate check boxes for marketing emails, this may put off subscribers selecting if they don’t know you very well and can just get a freebie. However, if your ‘hook’ is an e-series, they are giving you permission to send multiple emails and you can use ones later in the series to re-offer the newsletter subscription once they have had a chance to get to know you better and decide whether your content is right for them. Let’s face it, we are more likely to want to hear from someone we know provides value than when we have just clicked an enticing ad. Also, if your e-series encourages interaction then this will be better for future email deliverability with that recipient since this is increasing a consideration for email providers, particularly Gmail.”

  • Send a Follow Up Email After Networking – “If you do a lot of networking, send a ‘nice to meet you’ email as a follow up afterwards which invites people to sign up for emails as well. Try to personalise it with the recipient’s name and where you met, but you can still make this relatively automated adding recipients to a list weekly and then deleting any who don’t sign up. Sending something of value at the same time can also help sign ups. Make sure you only send to people you actually met and don’t blanket email the entire attendee list as this will only irritate people.”

Bonus Tip: “Make the most of your social media channels. Drive people from social to email with a sign up option on your Facebook page for example. If they are engaging with you through multiple channels this increases their touch points and chances of conversion or deepening the relationship. Just make sure messaging is consistent or clearly as channel exclusive as appropriate!”

Iliana Whalley

Iliana is a CRM professional and Marketing Automation expert with over 12 years of experience helping businesses improve their marketing communication efforts.
www.linkedin.com/in/ilianaawhalley

  • Use Social Channels to Increase Email Sign Ups

    – “Leverage your social sites to get people to sign up for your email list by placing a link to your signup page. That audience is already interested in your brand and they are already open to consuming your brand’s content, so why not ask them to sign up to receive your emails?”

  • Sweepstakes/Giveaways – “Those leads may not always be the best quality, but the draw to using sweepstakes is that you can get a high volume of emails in a very short period of time. I do think it’s worth a try, but make sure to treat them like any new subscriber and send them a welcome email.”

  • Don’t Ignore Offline Channels – “This might seem a bit antiquated but use offline channels to generate subscribers.

    • Trade shows
    • Business reply cards/Catalog requests
    • In-store purchases

    Depending on your audience and business, this may be a great way to collect information. I was able to increase an email list by 20% just by using business reply card information. There are many small to mid-sized companies that are missing out on potential subscribers by not doing this. You don’t necessarily need to have customers mail in the card. You can simply provide the URL to your sign-up page.”

Dwight Sholes

Dwight Sholes is an experienced entrepreneur and accomplished digital marketer. He has 20 years’ experience in email marketing—including roles on the brand side, as a consultant, and as the founder of a boutique ESP that was successfully acquired.
www.linkedin.com/in/sholes

  • Make Your Email Sign-Up Ubiquitous

    – “Be sure to leverage every customer contact point — not only on your web site but in your stores, contact centers, and points of sale — to invite your customers and prospects to opt-in to your emails. This may sound obvious, but many companies fail to leverage every customer contact as a list-building opportunity. I have seen consistent double-digit list growth from restaurants that promote their email lists on-site, and from travel companies that make opting in clear and obvious through their web sites.”

  • Provide a Specific Benefit to Signing Up – “Being ubiquitous by itself isn’t enough, however. You also have to make sure that your customers and prospects are given a clear incentive for opting in. Examples: retailers who offer a discount off a first order after signing up see consistent list growth, and travel companies who provide email-only offers and “insider” information via email.”

  • Integrate Email Sign-Ups with Your Paid Search Campaigns – “If you’re spending money to drive search traffic to landing pages for your marketing campaigns, but have not included email opt-in that is specific to the campaign, chances are you are leaving money on the table. I have seen time and again, especially for products and services with a longer purchase cycle, how intelligently placed email opt-in forms on a landing page can capture customer intent and build a sales funnel. BUT, the emails sent to those subscribers need to be very targeted to the specific campaign and search terms that generated the user session–don’t just start sending these folks your weekly newsletter. That is a big snooze and they are likely to just opt-out or, worse, simply ignore you.”

Michael Doyle

Over 20 years' experience in digital marketing and one of the most recognised digital marketing leaders in Sydney, Michael has worked with ASX companies to Gov Depts to some of the best-known brands around. Passion for growing brands and businesses, we are the go-to digital marketing agency.
www.top4marketing.com.au

  • Use the Right Tools

    – “There are so many tools out there now but we have found the best ones are full contact for Gmail ( paid version) as it cleans up emails automatically and also Zapier (https://zapier.com/apps/gmail/integrations/linkedin) this cuts down time and gives is great results building a list to over 100,000 in 2 years and growing at 1000 emails a month which obviously increases exposure and sales.”

  • Find Where the Target Market Is and Engage With Them – “Join as many groups on LinkedIn as possible that relate to your services or where the target market is they will then see your posts, which you need to do at least 3 times a week with relevant useful content. Like and share other articles and follow as many leaders as possible.”

  • Be Authentic When You get in Touch – “Import all Gmail into sendgrid and use an auto drip campaign (https://zapier.com/apps/sendgrid/integrations) and try and be as “yourself” as possible with useful relevant content, even if it’s an image on a regular basis. As Gary V says “the race is long.”

Vlad Shevchenko

Product Manager. Earlier: CRM manager. Specialization: Retention Strategy, Automation. Email experience: USA, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, EU.
www.linkedin.com/in/vlad-shevchenko

  • Use the Power of Pop-Ups

    – “If you want to build a customer base, there are at least two ways to go. The first is traditional – with customer buying a product or creating an account online and leaving their email address. The second is a bit tricky, yet extremely efficient – you incentivize customers to leave their emails through the “anythings” methods. One of them is pop-ups.

    The second method turned out to be extremely efficient in my case, especially for industries like real estate or education. Let’s take look at the results I achieved through the use of pop-ups.

    Building the relevant base of potential subscribers: new visitors and repeated sessions of clients without email registration (only for the desktop version)

    Converting leads into registered users: 13.7%. This result was achieved due to the ability to collect the data within the pop-up.

    Converting users into buyers: 7.2% of the pop-up registrations made purchases and became first-time customers.

    For better conversion, you should use the GET parameters in the links, leading people to a certain part of the order form and filling empty fields on the page for new users.

    These results were achieved on a site with about 30,000 monthly active users, out of which:

    • Desktop visitors: 15,000;
    • New visitors: 5,000.

    Important to mention: On the pop-ups, Am email series was created to easily onboard clients and guide them towards making their first purchase.

    For creating pop-ups, you should concentrate on the following 2 things:

    • The moment of collecting customer emails;
    • The content you use to ask for an email (located on the pop-up).

    Now that you know what to take into account, let’s take a closer look at the process of creating a pop-up:

    1) Display conditions. A pop-up should appear when a website visitor is leaving the page. But how do you know when it happens? Well, when the mouse cursor is at the top of the site, it does not always mean the end of the user session. Perhaps a customer just wants to respond to a message in another window.

    2) Placement on the pages should be everywhere. The only exception is the order page, as you don’t want to distract the customer during the purchase process, do you?

    3) Devices. Using pop-ups is convenient only for the desktop version. For the mobile environment, other methods of building a list are more effective.

    4) Pop-up content:

    4.1) Pop-up structure: it should have only one email input field. Check whether the spelling of an email domain name is correct; in the event it is not, display an error and explain the reason for it.

    4.2) Design: it should be designed to fit in with the overall website/brand style and interface color.

    4.3) Content: it should be as short and concise as possible. Motivate users to subscribe: offer prizes, news, gifts, discounts, participation in the contest, etc.

    Important: customers’ motivation to subscribe must align with your product. Otherwise, despite the increase in registrations, you will not get the result you expect – subscribers and buyers may not be interested enough in your product/business.

    When you are building the client base, make sure you use the correct formatting. It must align with all laws of the region you are located in. This is important.

    User interaction with the pop-up:


  • If users are not interested in your offer, they should have a simple opportunity to close the pop-up. You can but you don’t need to disturb them until you have something else to offer.
  • If the user subscribes, you should turn the text on your pop-up into a friendly ‘thank you’ message. This will ensure that the registration in the pop-up is completed and the welcome email is already in the user’s inbox. Prompt users to check the confirmation email right away and confirm their subscription.

For maximum convenience, the user should have 2 ways to hide the pop-up:

  • Automatic closing after a certain period since successful registration has passed;
  • Manual closing by pressing the button.

To prevent the user from getting pop-up repeatedly, you should use cookies at each session or when the user navigates between the pages on your site.

Record 3 types of cookies for different customer groups:

  1. those who closed the window;
  2. those who have successfully registered;
  3. those who have previously registered emails in an organic way on the site.

Before showing the pop-up to the user, you should read the cookies you have written. Then, you should set the end-time for each category of cookies you created.

Sure you will have those users who have been previously registered on the site and who have already seen the pop-up earlier. This situation may happen due to a number of reasons. One of the most comprehensive explanations is that the user does not have the specified cookies at the moment: they could log in from another device, clean the cookie, reinstall a browser or reset an operating system, etc.

Key findings:

In this article, we looked at how you can get additional registrations to your email list using the power of pop-ups. I hope my experience can help your business.

To conclude, I want to give you a recommendation. While working with pop-ups, you can create automatic GA reports, automatic tests on the performance of this method, and anti-abuse protection rules. This will ensure that your competitors do not misuse your registration forms, do split tests of everything related to pop-ups, and much more.

You can start for yourself with several options:

  • Creating pop-up windows independently with the development department;
  • Using the pop-up functionality of different ESPs. Examples: Mailchimp.com, Esputnik.com
  • Using specialized services for creating and working with pop-ups. Examples: Popmechanic.io, Popupmaker.com”

Pieterjan Decoster

Pieterjan Decoster is the owner of email agency Saluton where they help ecommerce brands grow their business by designing and building effective, automated email programs that engage prospects and (re-) activate customers.
https://www.salutonagency.com
  • Feature Your Signup Form in as Many Visible Places as Possible – “If your website visitors can’t see the sign up form, then they won’t subscribe to your mailing list. Sounds logical, doesn’t it? You should try to highlight your signup form as much as possible.

    • A pop-up or exit overlay
    • In the sidebar of your website
    • Below or in between your blog posts
    • A notification bar at the top of your website
    • A link to your sign up form on your social media channels
    • An opt-in box with each form on your website”
  • Offer an Irresistible Welcome Gift – “Seduce your website visitors with a valuable gift. This could be an ebook, video training, worksheet, template, blueprint… about your industry. When your gift offers a solution to your target group, you attract those who are looking for information. Or in other words: potential customers! In order to download the gift, you request your visitors to enter their email address and subscribe to your mailing list.”

  • Be Crystal Clear and Transparent About Your Email Communication – “Tell your readers exactly what will happen when they sign up:

    • What happens when I leave my email address?
    • Is my data safe with you?
    • How often will you email me?
    • What are you going to send me? The free gift? Promotions? A monthly newsletter?”

Kamyar Shah

Small business advisor helping you increase profitability and productivity, offering remote CMO and remote COO services
https://kamyarshah.com

  • Giveaways

    – “This one is THE most effective way of building a large and responsive email list. It is rather simple: determine what your target audience likes and hold regular give away. I have seen lists grow 10x within 6 months. The secret is to entice the community members to share it with others. This will give you even more vertical penetration.”

  • Collaborate with Your Peers – “This one is one of the rather underutilized methods. Don’t fear others in your space; not everyone is your competitor. Reach out and work out deals to expose each other to your audiences. You would be surprised how quickly a fair share of their email subscribers opt for your list as well.”

  • Provide Free Valuable Information Regularly – “Be it some industry news you happen to get the scoop on or a comprehensive curation of industry news. Never underestimate how little time people have and how much they appreciate a round up to keep up to date.”

Sean MacBeth

Sean MacBeth is a Growth Marketing expert at Chameleon Collective. With 20 years’ digital marketing, sales, and business development experience, Sean assists brands by driving rapid growth across their organization on an interim basis.
https://chameleoncollective.com/author/sean-macbethchameleon-co/

  • Do Your Homework

    – “Successful list building begins with knowing exactly who your audience is. Google Analytics is your friend. Doing surveys or (gasp!) talking to existing customers will help clarify further. Explore tools like SEMRush. Figure out who your audience is as specifically as you’re able before doing any advertising to acquire new users.Next you need to create a simple financial model of the value of those who do opt-in, update it frequently (at least monthly), and use it to determine what you’re willing to pay to acquire a new user to your email list.

    Once you’ve done your homework it’s time to implement a mechanism that is simple and quick for users to opt-in to your email list. And make sure you’re GDPR-compliant so you don’t capture a lawsuit instead of an email address.”

  • SMS + Text Can No Longer Be Ignored – “Email’s imminent demise has been heralded by media pundits for well over a decade now. Yet it remains a top 3 channel for profitability and conversion rate, with $38 gained for every marketing dollar spent. Over the past few years, however, site traffic and purchasing behavior has shifted hard to mobile, especially with younger audiences..Figuring out ways to build relationships via SMS and text should be at the forefront of any list building strategy. As AdWeek recently pointed out, 73% of Millennials use their phone to shop online. So still collect emails, but also realize that it is imperative to explore ways outside of email that provide a similar mechanism and engagement level.”

  • Use Paid Ads on FB/Instagram to Reach Your Target Market – “Remember the work you did in Tip 1? You can use all of that on Facebook & Instagram to acquire very targeted opt-ins cost-effectively. There are a variety of different ways to do this and it’s all clearly explained on their website. For users it’s a simple two clicks to sign up—no lengthy forms to fill out and no landing pages for you to manage. It’s common for a brand to add some form of incentive to induce the opt-in. Often brands run contests, offer a discount off first purchase, or some other form of enticement. A nice thing about this method is you can automatically feed the folks who opt-in directly into your ESP / CRM database.”

Bonus Tip: “As with the mobile shift noted above, a similar trend has been happening in Social—more people now use social messenger apps than the social platforms themselves. Because of messengers relative newness as a marketing medium, open rates and conversion rates tend to be notably higher than email. There are any number of different platforms that can assist you with implementing a messenger-based lead generation program; you’ll need to research and find the one that fits your particular needs best.”

Jennifer Nunez

Growth Empowered Marketing (GEM) Services provides custom strategies using a holistic view for small to mid-sized business. No two businesses are alike and my goal is to relay that to the world for yours!
https://growthbeginswithin.wordpress.com

  • Give Away Something of Value!

    – “It doesn’t have to be the secrets of the Lost Ark, but there needs to be original content to disseminate that people need. Speak to your audience, either literally to find out what it is they need, or in a “how-to” way via the article for your industry and target market.”

  • Great Landing Pages are Key – “One focal point of having a great landing page – have only ONE goal and link. Use the link in multiple places, but have only one target destination. Confusing people will only make it more difficult to track let alone build your email list.”

  • DON’T LIE – “Be authentic! Touting your article as the greatest thing since sliced bread, but having it contain the same tips as 500 other articles will lose you followers, not gain them. Doing your research will enable you to provide much more insight to your market than idle threats.”

Tom Ehart

Tom Ehart is the Director of Marketing and Communications at energy innovator Blue Pillar. He has more than 25 years in direct marketing experience in a wide variety of B2B and B2C markets.
www.linkedin.com/in/tomehart

  • One-Two Punch

    – “I have found the greatest success in recent years with what I call the “One-Two Punch”. The first punch is creating killer content that offers something different. I’ve had the most success with short eight-page eBooks that offer potential clients and investors relevant solutions and insights that they won’t be getting anywhere else. The second punch comes from extensive social marketing of those eBooks. A few years ago, we launched an eBook and grew our email list by 400% in six months through a social campaign that positioned the eBook to multiple audiences. We were able to position the eBook as a must-read for everyone in industry from C-suite executives all the way down to hourly employees, all of whom found benefit from the content and perspectives we shared. We didn’t limit our audience, but found ways to make the content appealing to as wide of a global audience as possible.”

  • Refer-a-Colleague – “I’ve been able to successfully use what I call a “refer-a-colleague” technique to grow my lists. This is achieved by sending emails to your current customers and prospects and offering them some incentive for sharing contact information of a specific type of colleague you are trying to reach in order to grow your list and prospect to those colleagues. Many of my current contacts have been more than willing to put me in touch with someone at their organization who might be better suited for a particular offering and they’re generally glad to make the introduction, particularly if that means they may not be receiving as many emails from me because I now have a new contact to reach out to. At one organization, I was able to track a $400,000.00 sales within the first three months of doing such a campaign. List growth from this sort of technique is slower than other techniques, but generally the quality of the leads is much higher than what you’ll get from other sources.”

Bryan Caplan

Bryan Caplan helps businesses elevate their digital presence. A national speaker for Google's Get Your Business Online program and award-winning CEO of Bryan Caplan Marketing, Bryan travels the country, presenting on a wide range of digital marketing topics to help small businesses grow and succeed.
www.BryanCaplan.com

  • Ask!

    – “The worst they can say is, “No.” You’d be amazed how many small business owners feel like they’re imposing if they ask someone to join their mailing list, but an in-person ask is one of the most effective ways to grow your list. It’s hard to turn someone down when they’re smiling at you and asking you to sign up for email-only deals, updates, and events.”

  • Use a Dynamic Subscription Tool on Your Website – “Whether a pop-up, bar, fly-out, or scrolling tab, the movement of the tool catches your website visitor’s attention. Make your pop-up compelling by offering a free resource (like a guide, white paper, or checklist) or a special offer (% off or free product) for subscribing to the list. By providing something of perceived value, your visitors will be more inclined to subscribe to your mailing list.”

  • Use Your Email Signature to Grow Your List – “Don’t forget: you’re sending multiple emails back and forth to prospects and customers, so that repetition of a direct call-to-action (subscribe to my list) is ultimately going to lead to a conversion if they see it enough.

    Consider enhancing your signature to something like:

    Best, Bryan
    CEO of Bryan Caplan Marketing

    Do you want my marketing tips and tricks in your inbox? Click here!”

David Fowler

David Fowler is Fishbowl’s VP of Strategic Services and Data Protection Officer. He has over 20 years of experience in the Martech industry, focused strictly on the issues associated with the digital channel including, email marketing, deliverability, social media, mobile, integrated marketing, marketing automation and digital privacy compliance.
www.linkedin.com/in/oregonlimey

  • Look for Organic Opportunities

    – “Organic growth is the ONLY way to go. Utilize any and all available integrations – online ordering, online shop, gift card purchases, app download, etc.”

  • Use Highly Visible Calls-To-Action on Your Website – “You have a website, have an obvious callout for sign-ups on that real estate – if there’s a rotating carousel of images at the top of the homepage include a link to the join page there and/or use a lightbox pop-up if there isn’t real estate to devote on the homepage.”

  • Don’t Ignore In-Store Signups – “Don’t ignore in-store as a viable list growth option. Sign-up slips are still successful if easily available to guests, or go the Text-to-Join route if you’d like to allow quicker joins/be more advanced. There should be signage and staff members should be trained on some talking points about the program so they can answer questions (or ideally be directly bringing it up to members).”

Bonus Tip: Practice Killer List Hygiene – Not Building But Certainly Management

“A well-managed list will perform well and consistently. Ignoring list maintenance best practices will create issues pertaining to deliverability and engagement, resulting in lost revenue and brand reputation issues. You have to know when to say goodbye to a non-performer; set email triggers for engagement activity before they go cold.”

Ricco Davis

Founder & CEO of ProMonetize, an email marketing consulting and management firm. For over a decade he has helped entrepreneurs build highly profitable email marketing campaigns.
EmailCashFlow.com

  • Leverage Other People’s Email Lists

    – “One of the most effective list building strategies is to have other list owners mail your offer to their list. You can pay other email list owners to promote your product or service. These are typically known as Solo Ads. I also refer to them as Email Media Buys. Find relevant websites that target a similar audience as you do, and ask them if they sell email ads to their email list. For someone who is a beginner to building a list, this is a fast way to get your first email subscribers.”

  • Use a Multi-Step Opt-in Page – “When you send a visitor to your site, you want to make sure there are clear instructions on what they need to do next. For instance, you can have a call-to-action button such as, ‘Access Your Free Gift Now’. Once they click on the button a box pop-ups asking for their email address. This multi-step opt-in strategy can increase opt-in rates by 33% or more. The psychology behind this is that when someone clicks once, they are more committed to finishing the process. Most popular landing page software have this multi-step opt-in feature available.”

  • Test, Test, Test – “Many entrepreneurs who are new to digital marketing underestimate the power of split-testing. One small change to your landing page, or your call-to-action can make a significant difference in the success of your campaign. Do be afraid to test. Make sure you track your test results and scale the ones that perform the best. Never stop testing.”

Lu Gravelle

Attract, connect, convince and convert. Boost your online profile and turn prospects into loyal customers using relevant, quality content marketing that lets you make more sales without hard selling.
https://oodarocket.com

  • Create “Gifts” that Provide Real Value

    – “Create three to five items of value, whether that’s an eBook, an infographic, a resource guide, an educational PDF, or a video. The point is to really think about what will serve your audience. Then direct people off of social media or your blog and over to a landing page where they must opt in to your email list before receiving the gift. There, create an urgency to sign up by using ethical scarcity – i.e. make it a limited time offer, or only offer to share a limited number of your item, and stick to it. If you have a B2C business, test out your various offerings using Facebook ads and take note of which incentives as well as what types of ads convert the most subscribers. You’ll want to pay attention to which images and copy have a higher conversion rate as well as your gifts. If you’re working in the B2B sector, consider looking at sites like LinkedIn to offer exclusive content through an email opt-in targeted at specific groups. A simple way to do this is by offering an exclusive opt-in when sending a welcome email to a new connection.”

  • Collaborate with Businesses that Complement Yours – “Take the time to refine your offering by looking at conversion rates for the various incentives that you shared on Facebook or in LinkedIn (per Tip#1 above). Make sure to engage in conversation with your customers so you can get a sense of what is most important to them, and what their main issue is – then refine your offering to meet that need.

    When you feel you’ve chosen the right gift and that it is genuinely helpful to your audience, a great way to bring in more signups is to share it with another similar business or person’s list. Ideally they should be in a related business but not a direct competitor – think a software provider paired with an online marketer, or a life coach paired with a retreat.

    Once you’ve found a good partner (or 3), team up with the business or blog to exchange free offers and opt-in forms on each other’s websites or newsletters. You can also offer helpful content, such as a blog or article, to their website and include an opt-in and a free gift.

    However you do it, it’s important that you are providing value to this person or business as well as to their audience so that the business or site owner is happy to spread the word – and their audience is happy to sign up and receive the gift.”

  • Offer a Free Webinar Training Series – “Demonstrate your value as an expert in your field by offering a free training series in the form of a webinar.

    By providing excellent free education to your audience you can clarify your services and your message as well as establish trust between you and your possible future customers.

    Your webinar should show just how much knowledge and content you have to share on this topic. It also should provide a teaser about what future information you plan to share in your newsletter so that your viewers are inspired to join you and sign up for your email list.

    You can also use a webinar to give away a free gift through an opt-in at the end. For YouTube you can structure it as a giveaway bonus for watching the video. Create a button on the video that links to an opt-in page. Make sure your free gift furthers the training provided in the webinar so that your subscriber feels he or she is getting the complete training by receiving the gift.

    In the end, the greater service you provide your audience, the better chances you have of building up an email list and converting those subscribers into clients. By learning what your customer wants, refining your offering, and finding a variety of ways to incentivize signups, you’ll be building a much bigger email list in no time.”

Jenny Lassi

As a seasoned digital marketing professional and Digital Marketing Strategist for Infinity Direct, I have a passion (really more of an obsession) for solving business problems with technology. My other passions are brand awareness, martech stack consulting and expanding agency capabilities through strategic partnerships.
https://infinitydirect.com/about/jenny

  • Survey Existing Subscribers

    – “Survey your existing constituents to know what interest areas they have in common to know how you can help them become better at what they do. That is really how you will fine tune your value proposition and offer value to future subscribers. Building your list must be equally beneficial to both you AND the subscriber. The type of email address given (Primary, Secondary or Junk) will vary based on the perceived value of your content so a little pre-list building preparation will go a long way to building a quality list.”

  • Killer Content + Refer a Friend Functionality – “Once you fine tune your value proposition, craft or curate killer content that is immediately useful to readers. The content is immediately consumable to existing subscribers using a “refer a friend” functionality of your communication platforms to motivate them to share content that is relevant to their connections. A content teaser is immediately available to non-subscribers and access to full content is behind a subscribe widget or data/sign-up collection form. The teaser should contain enough text to motivate a non-subscriber to give their email address to you.”

  • Make Use of Every Opportunity to Promote Your Email List – “Have the subscribe/sign-up form available on your website’s header ideally and all social media profiles you have a presence on. Also add links to sign-up to all transactional emails (receipts, registration confirmation, triggered notifications) and outbound SMS/Text Messages. Also add links to sign-up in the footer of the email in the event an email was forwarded to them but are not currently a subscriber. A side note to make sure forwarded HTML messages don’t have many or any layout shifts (it’s common that HTML layouts break when forwarding an email using the forward button in any email client) is to stick with a single column fluid layout.”

Ian Deshays

Ian is a marketing automation specialist who has worked with many of the world’s largest organisations helping them make the most out of their CRM, loyalty and marketing cloud platforms. His thing? Highly personalised lifecycle marketing.
https://alchemyworx.com
  • Turn Buyers Into Subscribers

    – “Whenever you have contact with your customers it presents an opportunity to gather their email address. A newsletter sign-up form at the bottom of websites is common place and increasingly you’ll see a pop-up with a sign-up form. These are good and a best practice, make sure though that the pop-up isn’t too obtrusive, just have it happen once.

    Remember, the best value email address to capture is someone who has just completed a purchase or converted on your site so make sure there’s an opportunity to subscribe to your list in your shopping cart.

    Another customer interaction is either in-store or over the phone. At the register, for example, asking for an email address is a good opportunity to capture a highly engaged customer’s email. Staff who are informed about the benefits of being a subscriber can help win people over to provide their details.”

  • Quality Information is Much Better than Quantity – “Incomplete or inaccurate addresses are costly, 1) because of the time wasted capturing details, 2) to your reputation as a sender and 3) you’re still charged for sending to a non-existent email address by your provider.

    If you’re often on the move as a rep or at trade shows, or even in-store you can use a tablet with a subscription form pre-loaded so people can enter their details themselves. People are much more likely to enter their own details more accurately than your team member.

    Do make sure people know why they are handing over their email address, that you’re taking it with the intention of sending them emails – you don’t want recipients to think they’ve been tricked into subscribing, that only leads to a very bad perception of your brand and a poor sender reputation when they hit the SPAM button!”

  • Offer an Incentive – “Offering an incentive is a good way to increase your overall subscriber list, however, quality over quantity comes into play again. Think about what the incentive is and whether that is really what your customer wants – no sense running a competition to win a caravan if you’re running a motel, you’ll end up with lots of people interested in caravans but probably not your motel!

    For competitions, in Australia, there are rules and legislation to adhere to, each state and territory has different rules so watch out you don’t fall fowl of these! ADMA has some good guidance on this subject on their blog. https://www.andmine.com/blogs/competition-permit-australia/

    A common incentive is to give a % discount on subscribing which is often sent in the “welcome” email. Sending the voucher or discount code in an email ensures people are giving you a valid address in order to get the discount. The welcome email also provides a great opportunity to engage with your new subscriber, set their expectations on when they’ll next hear from you and start building an advocate out of them.”

Shane Barker

Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, product launches, sales funnels, targeted traffic, and website conversions. His vast wheelhouse includes business development, marketing blueprints, SEO, and social media marketing. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers, and a number of A-List celebrities.
https://shanebarker.com

  • Reward People Who Sign Up and Provide Their Details

    – “One of the best ways to get customer information for your email lists for your email marketing initiatives is to run an offer. Provide discounts, or any sort of reward for customers who provide their details. I have used this tactic and it really works. In fact, I am currently running one such offer on my website. I provide people with a free report on their mobile app or a website analysis, but ask them to enter their information first.”

    Shane Barker Email List Growth

  • Add Opt-Ins and Email Registration Forms on All Main Pages – “Optimizing your website to include opt-ins and registration forms on all main pages is another great way to build email lists.

    I have multiple such forms on my website, across various web pages. I also include an option to subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page on several landing pages.”

    Shane Barker List Building

  • Add CTAs and Email Registration Forms to Your Blog Posts – “Blog posts are a good place to engage with your audience and get their details. People who visit your blog are already interested in your brand or content and have a high likelihood of signing-up for future content.

    Use multiple calls-to-action on your blog posts to get readers to sign-up or provide their details. Use these CTAs to link to your website’s registration forms and opt-ins.

    You can also ask for an email address before a reader can comment on your blog posts. Anyone who engages with your content and wants to comment will likely be happy to provide their email. But make sure that you limit the form to 2-3 fields, otherwise it will be a hassle for your readers to comment.”

    Shane Barker How to Gain Subscribers

Chuck Hester

Chuck Hester is an integrated marketing executive and LinkedIn power connector with more than 18,000 direct connections. He is also a sought-after trainer and workshop leader on using LinkedIn for business. He is one of the original directors at iContact
www.linkedin.com/in/chuckhester

  • Put Sign Up Forms in Various Places

    – “Be sure to have a newsletter/email list sign up form on your website (may be a given), but also in your email signature. The more touch points you have, the better chance you have to build a solid list.”

  • Promote Your Email List in the Author Box – “Add a sign up form to your “about the author” section of any content you create. Make it the last sentence: “For more tips, sign up for my email list…”

  • Reach Out to Your Social Followings – “Use social media to build your list. Offer incentives to join your list, such as an eBook, and let your network know they’re available.”

Dylan Baxendale

I have worked within the email marketing space for over 13 years, gaining extensive experience through several verticals including Retail, Finance, Travel and Entertainment, Gaming and Deals/shopping. I have spent time in both client facing and agency roles.
www.integrated-media-group.com

  • Leverage Affiliate Marketing Networks

    – “Ensure that you have set yourself up across all the top affiliate networks offering email marketing as a traffic source, potentially the main traffic source on your campaign.

    If you have PPC/SEO set-up already, email marketing with the correct content is an excellent tool along with search in growing your database by allowing the content on both to work together and increase visibility on search engines.

    When running an email marketing campaign, you need to ensure that your email creative is content focused, providing the reader with all the relevant and important details of the product you are selling within the email. By providing the focused content you can then direct the reader/user to the purchase/checkout page and cut out any middle landing pages that could become drop off points within the process. This will encourage a much higher conversion rate, or opt-in from the customer to be contacted again without them dropping out during the process.

    You need to ensure that you have an opt-in on your checkout pages and get permission for you to market to the user. These opt-in boxes may not be pre-ticked under GDPR regulations, but once you have the double opt-in, which is the customer accepting the terms and privacy and to receiving future emails, you will be growing a solid high-quality email list with interested parties that have shown intent.

    Affiliate marketing gives you access to email marketers that already have their own data lists and can be targeted correctly, to ensure that your product and email is being seen by the relevant demographic.”

  • Re-Targetting – “Retarget marketing is becoming more and more relevant these days. A pop-up providing the customer with an incentive to return to your website when leaving the page or site altogether is a sure way to increase your database, either by them making a purchase from the incentive or asking them to opt-in to receive future communication within the pop-up.

    There are also GDPR ways of retargeting your customers directly through email marketing. Companies such as SmarterClick provide technology that allows you to engage to the fullest ability that you can and not miss out on those all-important email addresses and the customers potentially moving onto the competition.

    In some cases, it is known that up to 80%+ of traffic can leave a website without engagement. By hitting this leaked traffic, you are sure to increase not only your email list, but your sales and future email communications too.”

  • Never Rent or Buy an Email List – “Under no circumstances should you use rented or bought email lists. These lists are very dangerous as there are loads of fraudulent and bad lists out there. These can cause great damage to your company/brand name and can also lead to large fines, especially now with the new GDPR regulations that are in place. Always ensure that when working with email marketers, they have legitimate opted-in emails and the provider is registered on ICO – https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/what-we-do/register-of-fee-payers/ – and they are fully GDPR compliant.

    Working with reputable networks and data-list owners will go a long way to ensuring that this happens, but my advice to you is to always be vigilant and ensure you know who you are working with. This also gives you comfort that the targeted email data is trusted, high quality and relevant and will grow your own email list with the same quality.”

“All the above are the best ways to grow your data lists outside of your standard search and seo marketing. Content is king and run correctly through the right partners, you can grow your lists with high quality email addresses.”

Malcolm James Forrest

Malcolm Forrest is a certified Digital Marketing Expert who specializes in transforming small time business owners & already established business owners into BOOMING brands that generate 25%+ on ROI, client base, and following engagement. He’s an author, CEO/business owner, and coach. For the last 6 months to a year, he has relentlessly taken over nightclubs, athletic coaches/fitness, retail and real estate niches simply starting off with email marketing.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolm-forrest-82a375161

  • Get to Know WHO You’re Targeting

    – “So, you’re looking to build a list? Well first things first, you need to narrow down WHO your potential follower will be. Typically, someone who can benefit and/or needs your service. Once you do your demographics, start looking in areas you can find these people! Facebook groups, Instagram, Twitter, Live speaking events, business events, etc. Do this and you’re well on your way to building a list.”

  • Create a Free Offer Product – “Alright my friend, once you figure out WHO you want on your list, you need to create what we call a “free offer product”. This could be an e-booklet, pdf guide, or short video training. Once your product is created and ready to be launched, you’ll need to set-up some type of business funnel to draw in traffic. This can be done by using ClickFunnels or any other site you can set funnels up with. Now, all you have to do is advertise your free offer & start capturing information!”

  • Use Paid Advertising to Send Traffic to Your Funnel – “Last but not least, using paid advertising to get traffic drawn to your funnel is the FASTEST way to start building a list. With my clients, I use referrals systems & word of mouth to continue adding onto the list. If you found this information helpful, share this article! Good luck!”

Melanie Diehl

Melanie Diehl is a digital marketing expert who helps businesses profit from the digital marketing tools available to them to maximize their market reach. Melanie offers email and social media workshop and seminars, and private training.
melaniediehl.com

  • Text to Join

    – “Without a doubt, my favorite way to grow my email list is using the Text to Join feature in Constant Contact. It’s so simple: grab a unique, branded key word, get a short code assigned, and you’re good to go! Now, it’s as simple as prompting potential subscribers by saying, “Text ‘keyword’ to 22828” and boom! Your list is automatically updated with your new subscriber! No handwriting to decipher, no work on your end, and you know the subscriber wants your info! Now that you have that keyword and short code, you can add it to all your print collateral, like business cards, rack cards, and print ads; you can even create graphics and post them to your social media platforms! One really super way to use Text to Join is at events: create eye catching posters, hang them all around your booth, use a creative Ask and Welcome message, and connect with your event visitors on a more personal level!”

Ruben Zantingh

Ruben is an independent Online Marketing Strategist with over 15 years of experience on both client and agency side. He specializes in email marketing and has worked successfully for over 40 customers, ranging from small startups to big corporates.
www.marketingenzym.com

  • Great Content

    – “In my opinion, it all starts with great content. Whether it is on your website, weblog, YouTube channel, a live presentation, or whatever other platform you have. If you’re content is great and it leaves me begging for more, I’m willing to share my email address with you. Good examples to me are www.benlcollins.com (about data analysis) and https://conversion-rate-experts.com/ (self-explanatory address). This way new great content will find its way to me without me having to check every great website every day. This is not the easy way, since you have to make great content first, but it will pay off in the end. www.emailmonday.com, my friend Jordy’s international blog about email marketing and more, is another great example.”

  • Give Something Away – “Yes, I know, it’s a cliché: give away something in exchange for an email address. But hey, it works. Keep whatever you give away close to your other services / business though. So no free iPads for every 100th subscriber. Unless your business is selling iPads of course. You want to attract the proper audience, not people who are more interested in your free goodie than in the value your business really ads. A good giveaway could be a whitepaper, an hour of free consulting or an exclusive video with tips. Again Ben Collins’s website is a good example, he provides you with a free eBook packed with ‘35 unusual tips & tricks for Excel & Google Sheets’. Conversion Rate Experts give you a free CRO Toolkit. And the aforementioned Jordy holds back his best tips and shares them exclusively with his newsletter subscribers.”

  • Ask Everywhere! – “Ask for an email address in as many places as possible. In your web shop. In your blog. But also offline. The worst thing you can do is hide your email address sign up form in the caverns of your website, although I see this happen all too often. Also do not use the caption ‘stay up to date’. This is way too vague. People don’t care about staying up to date most of the time. Tell them why you deserve a place in their crammed inboxes. (It starts with Tip #1 actually: great content). If you’re allergic to the concept of ‘newsletters’ get creative. www.wildaudience.com promises to ‘help 6 and 7-figure entrepreneurs automate their processes to accelerate growth. They send you emails on a regular basis but never call their program ‘a newsletter’.

    I teach about email marketing and marketing automation a few times every month. To help my students-and myself-prepare for class I use Typeform to ask them a few questions about their situation, behavior, needs and wishes. I email them their answers as a future reference. At the end of the questionnaire, when they know more about me and how I can help them, I also ask them for their consent. This way I can keep them informed about email marketing developments. I get a 95-100% opt-in score every time.”

Ellen Williams

I help small businesses improve their processes and systems so they can make data-driven decisions that take their business to the next level.
www.thedatachick.com

  • Let Your List Grow Organically

    – “The most successful email marketing campaigns revolve around sending information to the people who want to hear from you. When your content is focused on what you do best and delivers value to everyone on your list, they spread the word. An email list does not have to be large to be effective in bringing in business, both new and repeat. It’s not about the size of the list, it’s about how many people are opening and reading your message and then doing business with you.”

  • Make it Personal and Ask – “Whenever you exchange business cards, take a moment to discuss the type of information your send in your emails, as well as their frequency, and simply ask if it’s okay to add that person to your list.”

  • Offer Something of Value in Exchange for Signing Up for Your Emails – “This can be done through forms on your website or in person such as at a trade show or business expo. The more you educate someone on the benefits of working with or buying from you, the more interested they’ll be. Remember that we all receive more emails than we want, especially when we’re added to lists that we didn’t agree to. Luckily, that hasn’t stopped us from continuing to sign up to lists that are meaningful to us.”

“Email marketing is about being part of a relationship. When you deliver great information that people want to read, they read it. They also talk about it and share it. So, no matter what tactic you use to create and then grow your list, if your email content does not resonate with the people reading it, they’ll unsubscribe faster than you can add the next person. Many things in business come down to a numbers game, so of course you must grow your email lists and you grow your business. My best advice is to take care of the people who are on your list and not worry too much about how many new people are joining.”

Martin Wilson

Martin is a freelance digital marketing consultant with clients that includes universities, recruitment agencies and even commercial space businesses that send payloads into orbit. With over 10 years of experience he has helped a great many small and large businesses achieve ongoing growth via SEO, PPC and Email Marketing.
martinwilson.info

  • In-Depth Articles + PDF Downloads

    – “Write in-depth articles that appeal to either your potential customers or competitors who are in the process of learning about digital marketing techniques that will give them a deeper understanding on how to go about attracting more traffic and converting that traffic into sales. Always be sure to add as many insights that cut through general marketing techniques and give practical information on how to achieve their goals, whether that be via bullet points that list the exact process of how to implement such strategies or by including screenshots of the implementation process. Take the best of these articles and turn them into pdf downloads that users can access when they sign up to your list.”

  • Subscribe Forms + Pop-Ups – “Include a range of subscribe forms including simple static forms in the sidebar of your blog posts to popups that list the downloads they can access once they have signed up. Popups should redirect to a “thanks” or “download” page that is tracked as a goal in Google Analytics. I currently use a range of MailChimp forms and those that pull contact 7 forms into popups that appear once the user has scrolled down the page. This can be done with WordPress plugins that not only add the form but also automatically add the subscriber to my MailChimp lists.”

  • Personalize Your Emails – “Create a set of auto responder emails that are worded personally to build up a rapport with your subscribers, but also bring them back to the most popular articles on the site via links. Best also to make a brief bulleted list of the things they will learn from the article and also include an invite for them to ask any question. This set of Auto responders is a great way to get in their inboxes for the next few weeks after they signed up and ensures they know about the articles that others have found of use on your site.”

WordPress Plugins to Use:

  1. “Contact form 7 – to create the forms that appear in popups
  2. Contact form 7 Controls – to redirect the form to a tracked download page
  3. Contact Form 7 MailChimp Extension – to automatically add subscribers to your list
  4. Slick Popup Pro – to create and design popups
  5. Flamingo – to keep a record of all your form submitters in case you find emails have not been sent or subscribers have not been added to your MailChimp lists”

Joel Book

Joel Book is a powerful and popular keynote speaker and considered one of the industry’s leading strategists on digital marketing and customer experience. Most recently, Joel was Sr. Director, Digital Marketing Insight at Salesforce, where he served as spokesperson for the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Prior to joining Salesforce, Joel was a senior marketing executive for ten years at ExactTarget and helped grow the business to $400M+, resulting in a successful IPO in 2012 and $2.7B acquisition by Salesforce in 2013.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelbook/

  • Encourage Subscribers to Share and Forward your Emails

    – “Consumers and business buyers trust recommendations from other customers. This is why Word-of-Mouth marketing is so very effective. Include social sharing buttons and a “Forward to a Friend” button in your marketing emails. That way, you’ll gain access to their friends, colleagues, and networks and expand your contact list. At the bottom of your emails, include a “Subscribe” call-to-action (CTA) button as a simple text-based link so that the people receiving the forwarded emails can easily opt-in, too.”

  • Use Email Signature Marketing to Attract New Subscribers – “Every day, your employees send hundreds or thousands of emails to individuals at current or prospective customers. With Email Signature Marketing, you use the email signature block to promote new content like eBooks, research reports, podcasts and events that are relevant to the interests or needs of the email recipient. Hyperlinked email signatures lead these people to a landing page where they can sign up for these offers via their email address.”

  • Use your YouTube Channel to Attract Email Subscribers – “Video has proven to be one of the highest-converting form of content a brand can use to engage consumers and business professionals. One email list building tactic I’ve found very effective is creating specific opt-in offers that are related to the content in the video. Just add hyperlinked “end cards” to your YouTube videos that encourage people to subscribe to your channel via their email address. And by including links to other useful content, you give yourself another opportunity to convert that video viewer to an email subscriber.”

Filed Under: Email Marketing

We Surveyed 104 Experts to Find the Best Email Marketing Software for Small Business

by Chris Herbert | Last Updated March 23, 2021

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, meaning, at no added cost to you, we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Email marketing rocks. It can be a hugely effective marketing channel for just about any small business when done right. But what isn’t so fun for many, is trying to figure out which ESP your business should use, particularly if you’re just getting your feet wet with email marketing. There are literally hundreds to choose from in 2018. Who has time for that when running a small business?! So where do you start?

That’s precisely what we set out to help you with in this article. We reached out to over a hundred email and small business marketing experts to ask them one simple question: “Based on your professional experience, what is the best email marketing software for small business currently available?” We’ve posted the results below, as well as a summary of the most recommended small business email marketing services, and all of the contributions that our experts kindly made. There are some real pearls of wisdom in there!

So whether you’re looking for your first ESP to put together your company’s very first email marketing campaign or you’ve been growing this channel for some time already and have outgrown your current ESP, this article should serve as a useful starting point in your search.

Best Email Marketing Solutions for Small Business: How Our Experts Voted

ESP# of Votes
#1. MailChimp77 Votes
#2. Constant Contact27 Votes
#3. ActiveCampaign13 Votes
#4. Campaign Monitor10 Votes
#5. AWeber9 Votes
#=6. Drip8 Votes
#=6. dotmailer8 Votes
#7. Infusionsoft7 Votes
#=8. Klaviyo6 Votes
#=8. HubSpot6 Votes
#9. Adestra MessageFocus4 Votes
#=10. ConvertKit3 Votes
#=10. Emma, inc3 Votes
#=10. SendGrid3 Votes
#=10. IBM Watson Campaign Automation 3 Votes
#=11. GetResponse2 Votes
#=11. Robly2 Votes
#=11. ONTRAPORT2 Votes
#=11. iContact2 Votes
#=11. SendinBlue2 Votes
#=11. eSputnik2 Votes
#=11. Sharpspring2 Votes
#=11. ReachMail2 Votes
#=11. Maropost2 Votes
#=11. Salesforce2 Votes
#=12. MailerLite1 Vote
#=12. Sendlane1 Vote
#=12. EmailOctopus1 Vote
#=12. Benchmark Email1 Vote
#=12. FreshMail1 Vote
#=12. AllClients1 Vote
#=12. BombBomb1 Vote
#=12. SendPulse1 Vote
#=12. Clickback MAIL1 Vote
#=12. Pure3601 Vote
#=12. UserEngage1 Vote
#=12. TrafficWave1 Vote
#=12. Kartra1 Vote
#=12. Oracle1 Vote
#=12. RedEye1 Vote
#=12. Response Genuis1 Vote
#=12. Mad Mimi1 Vote
#=12. MailPlus1 Vote
#=12. Adobe Campaign1 Vote
#=12. Cordial1 Vote
#=12. MailPoet1 Vote
#=12. Laposta1 Vote
#=12. Surefire Local1 Vote
#=12. TinyLetter1 Vote
#=12. Zoho1 Vote
#=12. Bronto1 Vote
#=12. DoctorSender1 Vote
#=12. Autopilot1 Vote
#=12. WhatCounts1 Vote
#=12. Clang1 Vote
#=12. Flexmail1 Vote
#=12. Mautic1 Vote
#=12. Kentico1 Vote

All in all there were 58 different ESPs recommended (we told you it was a crowded marketplace!), but there were definitely a small group that stood out, as you’ve probably already realized from looking at the results table above. And these are the email marketing providers for small business that we’d recommend you check out first.

At the top of our survey tree, MailChimp was by far and away the most frequently recommended platform. Constant Contact also got a lot of support from out experts as being a great option too. In fact, in many cases these will probably be the two default email marketing services for small business, and should be more than sufficient if your requirements are relatively basic. They’re both on the easy end of the spectrum in terms of learning curve, affordable and the toolset provided is more than enough for most small businesses’ needs. AWeber is another program that scored well in our survey that could be added to this group as another option.

If you’ve reached a point where you want to take your email marketing to the next level and introduce more automation or you’ve used and outgrown one of the providers just mentioned, ActiveCampaign, Campaign Monitor, Drip and dotmailer are the ‘next level’ platforms that scored well among our experts. These options are certainly among the best small business email marketing software if you’re looking for a more sophisticated platform that gives you more control and customization over your campaigns, to make sure the right message is being delivered to the right person at the right time. Klaviyo is another good option in this category, and was highly recommended for ecommerce businesses by numerous experts in our survey.

Rounding out the rest of the top 10 are a couple of powerful systems that may well be overkill for basic email marketing activities and novices, but in the right hands could be a small business’s secret weapon. We’re talking about HubSpot and Infusionsoft. They would require a greater time investment to get up to speed, particularly in Infusionsoft’s case, but they can handle so much more than just your email marketing. They are marketing automation platforms that are equipped with just about everything you’ll need for digital business growth.

Other Articles You May Find Useful:

  • Need Help to Improve Your Open Rate? 42 Experts Offer Advice
  • How to Improve Email Deliverability Rates: Expert Advice + Strategies
  • Best Email Marketing Books: What Do The Pros Recommend You Read?
  • How to Build an Email List: 75 Experts Share Their Secrets
  • All Email Marketing Resources

TL;DR

1) If your business is venturing into email marketing for the first time, you have basic requirements and/or limited resources, try one of these:

2) If you’re looking for more automation and control over your email marketing, but still want something that’s easy to use and cost effective, try one of these:


3) If you’re running an ecommerce business, try this ESP:

4) If you have some experience with email marketing or someone dedicated in your team, want to put to put together a more sophisticated program and/or have greater resources, try one of these:

 

Read What The Experts Said

Below you can read exactly what each of the experts had to say when we asked them for their recommendations. There are some real golden nuggets in there! If you’re interested in a particular software, you can use the filter below to skip to the recommendations that were made for that specific product. Enjoy!

{"filter_mode":"masonry"}
  • All
  • ActiveCampaign
  • Adestra MessageFocus
  • Adobe Campaign
  • AllClients
  • Autopilot
  • AWeber
  • Benchmark Email
  • BombBomb
  • Bronto
  • Campaign Monitor
  • Clang
  • Clickback MAIL
  • Constant Contact
  • ConvertKit
  • Cordial
  • DoctorSender
  • dotmailer
  • Drip
  • EmailOctopus
  • Emma
  • eSputnik
  • Flexmail
  • FreshMail
  • GetResponse
  • HubSpot
  • IBM Watson Campaign Automation
  • iContact
  • Infusionsoft
  • Kartra
  • Kentico
  • Klaviyo
  • Laposta
  • Mad Mimi
  • MailChimp
  • MailerLite
  • MailPlus
  • MailPoet
  • Maropost
  • Mautic
  • ONTRAPORT
  • Oracle
  • Pure360
  • ReachMail
  • RedEye
  • Response Genuis
  • Robly
  • Salesforce
  • SendGrid
  • SendinBlue
  • Sendlane
  • SendPulse
  • SharpSpring
  • Surefire Local
  • TinyLetter
  • TrafficWave
  • UserEngage
  • WhatCounts
  • Zoho

Rick de Wit

Rick de Wit is co-founder of 100%EMAIL: your email department, but only when you need it. He is experienced in both marketing and technology. Due to this combination he is able to point out the problem of customers directly.
www.100procentemail.com
  • ActiveCampaign – “For small businesses that want to start taking e-mail marketing (automation) serious, Active Campaign is one of the best ESP’s in the market right now. The software offers a full range of email marketing features for a competitive price. The strength of Active Campaign is its user-friendliness. The user-interface works intuitively and the template builder, email builder, automation builder and form builder all have drag & drop interfaces. This enables you to build personalized automations and good looking responsive e-mail campaigns without technical knowledge of HTML, CSS and SQL. To help you on your way, Active Campaign has also pre-installed some e-mail design templates for inspiration or direct use. In addition to this, the automation builder offers a selection of pre-build automations such as Abandoned Shopping Cart, Product Interest Follow-up, Webinar Reminder Series, Accessory Upsell After Purchase and many more to be generated in a few clicks.

    Active Campaign also has some downsides, but you will only start noticing most of these when your e-mail database grows beyond a small business size. We noticed that the user interface slows down when the database exceeds 125k contacts. The API is also limited to ~5 requests per second. This limits the ability of one of our customers to send bulk e-mails with Active Campaign that are triggered through other systems. We also observed that e-mails created with the drag & drop editor are not displayed correctly on all popular e-mail programs and on mobile devices. Active Campaign offers the possibility to send custom HTML e-mails, but this requires vast knowledge about HTML and CSS for e-mail to use.
    Despite these disadvantages, the superior user-friendliness makes Active Campaign one of our most recommended ESP’s for small businesses.”

  • MailPlus – “MailPlus is a leading email service provider in the Netherlands with over 5000 customers. Both big and small businesses use this software to engage with their subscribers through email. The pricing structure for using the software is fixed, meaning the price doesn’t change as the number of contacts in the database grows. This makes MailPlus ideal for when you expect a large growth in the number of subscribers, but have a limited budget for your ESP. However, in addition to the fixed price, you also have to pay a small but fair fee for every e-mail you send.

    MailPlus has all the features that you need to get started with professional email marketing (automation). The features include (but are not limited to) a HTML template based e-mail and landingspage editor, an automation builder and an integrated form builder. At the moment of this writing, the user interface is a bit old-fashioned. But MailPlus is working hard on a new interface and plans to update it before the end of this year. Creating e-mail campaigns and building automations is user-friendly, but not as user-friendly as Active Campaign. If you encounter some difficulties working with the software, the top-notch customer support of MailPlus will help you out, free of charge. MailPlus also has an extensive partner network with marketing, communication and internet agencies who are ready take your email marketing (automation) to a higher level.”

Kenny Van Beeck

I have over 15 years hands-on experience as a marketing automation and crm marketing consultant and business developer. I worked as a consultant for several international clients such as Unilever, Sara Lee, Thomas Cook, 3M, Microsoft, Colruyt, De Lijn, KitchenAid, Le Pain Quotidien, ... Specialties: Digital transformation, biz dev, inspirational workshops, consulting, training, conversion mechanics, marketing automation, email marketing, crm, lead scoring...
www.linkedin.com/in/kennyvanbeeck
  • Flexmail – “Flexmail is a super nice, very simple and affordabale scenario driven email automation tool. No need to know anything about coding or technicalities. All features come out of the box and bring you a very high value for money.”
  • Mautic – “Mautic is one a the very few open source marketing automation platforms. So if you want to bring your marketing automation to the next level, yet at an affordable price, this is the thing. Webtracking integration, social media connectors, super slick journey manager builder, … it has it all. You will need a bit of digging in the beginning, but ones you discover the magic of leadscoring, that will all be fine ”
  • Kentico – “If you really want to play it big, pay a bit more, but have your entire eco-system into one super platform. This is it. Kentico has a CMS engine (can be used in headless), runs e-commerce like a swiss clock and has the entire marketing automation system integrated. Now, if you want to only grab the online marketing platform, that’s fine. But the real power in terms of speed and effectiveness comes on the full suite. Gone are complex API or file-based transfers. Just let the system handle all the work.”

Kim Derkx

I like to do almost the whole spectrum of email marketing. From creating campaign ideas, to briefing design and copywriters, coding HTML, create list segmentations and personalisation, send out and statistical analysis.
www.linkedin.com/in/emailgeek

First of all, which ESP is best for your company, depends on your number of subscribers and the amount of emails you send per month.

  • MailChimp – “I would recommend Mailchimp, because of their friendly pricing and ease of use.”
  • Clang – “If you are looking for more advanced and innovative features, Clang might be a better choice. Clang is an ESP developed by Dutch company e-village.”

Kokchin Chow (KC Chow)

KC Chow is an entrepreneur and email marketing expert. He helps business owners, entrepreneurs and e-commerce brands explode sales with email marketing automation.
https://www.kcchowconsulting.com/
  • Klaviyo – “Highly recommended for ecommerce brands/business, digital marketing funnels.
    Klaviyo is the top 1st ESP for e-commerce niche, Klaviyo helps marketers target their promotions more precisely using transactional as well as behavioral data. Better segmentation ultimately results in sending more relevant marketing campaigns, while the segments also update in real-time. The software allows combining and excluding different segments for even more powerful targeting and lets marketers specify multiple criteria for their segments. For example, marketers can target female customers who bought a purse during the holiday season.
    The custom web-tracking system uses browsing behavior and helps target people who meet specific criteria e.g. male customers who looked at t-shirts 5 times during a week. This means virtually unlimited targeting opportunities, thanks to the variety of available options. Klaviyo makes it easier for marketers to use existing segments to target Facebook Ad campaigns, while events, custom attributes and properties can be used to personalize emails.”
  • AWeber – “Good for business’ newsletter, infoproducts business
    According to my experience, the first benefits of Aweber is their deliverbility, Aweber will ensure most of your emails will send to inbox folder instead of spam folder.
    It is cheaper when compare to Klaviyo, and it is easier to use, most of the beginner won’t take long period of time to learn how to use it.”
  • ActiveCampaign – “Suitable for business’ newsletter, infoproducts, digital marketing funnels.
    ActiveCampaign is slightly more advance platform than Aweber, ActiveCampaign also allows you to create email flows like Klaviyo. It is very similar to Klaviyo, however it is more towards general business’s email marketing.”

Nick Whiteacre

Nick is a qualified digital marketing expert with over 10 years of experience in CRM, database and retention marketing, website analytics, customer journey optimisation, email, mobile and social media. He is passionate about using digital media to foster strong relationships with customers, develop loyalty and drive sustainable value. Throughout his career Nick has worked closely with a wide range of major global B2C and B2B companies in order to develop and implement creative and effective communication strategies.
www.calibrate.co.nz
  • MailChimp – “MailChimp is the most popular email platform in the world among small businesses for good reason. It combines powerful functionality with an extremely user-friendly interface at an affordable price. Over recent years, MailChimp have expanded well beyond email and the platform now offers landing pages, social advertising and even direct mail in the form of postcards.
    MailChimp’s campaign design and templating features are the best on the market at this price, no question. The drag & drop editor gives users a lot of flexibility and freedom to design their own campaigns, while the template language enables designers to load in custom modular templates.
    MailChimp’s offers excellent e-commerce integration capabilities with plugins available for many popular platforms such as Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce. They also provide a fully featured and robust API for developers who want to build custom integrations.”
  • ActiveCampaign – “ActiveCampaign is the platform I recommend for small businesses who are looking for an email and automation platform combined with built-in sales and CRM features.
    In addition to conventional email marketing, ActiveCampaign also offers excellent marketing automation capabilities including a slick visual workflow editor, site and event tracking, contact tagging, lead scoring, SMS and more.
    The platform packs all of this functionality into a well-designed user interface which is really intuitive and easy to learn and at a very reasonable price point.”

Priya Bransfield

As a senior manager and account strategist with ten years’ plus experience in email marketing and Multi-variant testing, working for market leading firms. My work focuses on cutting edge approaches and in depth experience of multiple platforms in the market.
www.linkedin.com/in/priya-bransfield-4582564
  • IBM Watson Campaign Automation – “This ESP will always be the top in my eyes (maybe a little bias as this is where my email career started). The ease of use of the system is great for small businesses and the marketing automation allows for businesses to set up workflows to ensure each email is sent to the correct target group and follow email best practices. The dynamic templates and fixed template set up is really easy to use and allows for all levels of skill to be able to set up an email to broadcast. The cost may not be financially feasible for the smaller businesses, however if it is something that can be afforded I would definitely recommend this ESP.”
  • MailChimp – “One of the largest email platforms used by the smaller businesses and it offers the ability to send out automated emails to your database. While having the same best practices and (some) functionality of the bigger ESPs – MailChimp is a more cost-effective platform that anyone can use. The drag and drop functionality of the template design is a definite positive, and the ease of uploading data and segmenting assists in sending the campaigns out without hassle. This could be the best platform for the small businesses as it allows for integration between all the social channels as well as event bookings through the platform. Landing pages and surveys are also part of the platform which can help any growing business. The pricing starts from $0 a month, however with this set up customising and ensuring that you have your own domain is not possible. For a start-up this is a great option and the platform can grow with the business.”
  • Infusionsoft – “This is a new one that I have only known of for a little while, however it is fairly easy to use and offers a free trial that you can use to see whether it fits your needs. The usual basics that any ESP can offer come as standard and the ability to integrate with your CRM is also a big plus. The ability to connect with your payment system and collect without additional stress is also a plus for the small businesses.”

Martina Heinzle

I am an ambitious, committed and results driven Digital Marketing specialist with over 4 years of experience. I have worked on client-side and as a consultant for start-ups across different industries. In the course of my career I have gained great knowledge of email marketing, aimed at customer acquisition and retention. The last couple of years I learnt to especially relish the fast-paced environment of the paid side of online advertising. This recently led to the decision to start an agency, offering marketing insights and strategic guidance as well as implementation of paid acquisition campaigns and on-site conversion rate optimisation.
www.linkedin.com/in/martina-heinzle-b3403469
  • SendinBlue – “SendinBlue is a great choice if you want more than just very basic functionality for a good price. For small businesses that do not want to commit to any paid re-occurring monthly plan SendinBlue is a solid and much cheaper alternative to the classics such as MailChimp. Offering more or less the same features you get 5000 email credits for only 30€. Compared to $150 with Mail Chimp, this is a bargain, which has its perks too.

    Pros
    + transactional and automation emails (also on the free plan)
    + neat developer API (makes integrating your own system really easy)
    + awesome customer support (very responsive and helpful)
    + HTML Editor (for users that do know some coding this offers another level of customisation)
    + supports SMS campaigns (also on the free plan)
    + good price

    Cons
    – no A/B testing functionality on free plan
    – delivery (they don’t like to hear it, but I did have some problems with the delivery of emails in key times, which is not so great and someone might not want to risk.)”

  • MailChimp – “Probably the widely known and most popular email marketing tool is definitely a good choice for small businesses to get started. In terms of design functionality Mail Chimp tops many other basic ESPs. With an easy drag and drop email builder and the ability to customise almost everything you can think without knowing too much code, anyone can build great emails with Mail Chimp. In addition Mail Chimp offer most of the features you would expect from a good ESP already in their free plan.

    Pros
    + many useful integrations (WP, Magneto, Eventbrite, GA, Salesforce, Facebook, etc.)
    + A/B testing supported with any plan
    + intuitive delivery times (based on your user’s time zone)
    + survey feature
    + extensive knowledge base

    Cons
    – limited audience segmentation
    – transactional emails are only available in the paid plans”

  • SendGrid – “Probably not the most typical ESP, SendGrind actually started with transactional email services and only added main email marketing features later on. For a small business with people managing email that know how to programme, I definitely do recommend SendGrid for the management of transaction emails.

    Pros
    + extensive transactional email services
    + A/B Testing
    + high delivery rate and scalability (delivers a large volume of emails effectively)
    + multiple dedicated IP addresses

    Cons
    – no templates available
    – many standard features are only available through an API (e.g. GA or Autoresponder)
    – rather expensive”

LisaMarie Dias

LisaMarie Dias helps business professionals create effective digital footprints showing you which tools and platforms are right to meet YOUR goals, given YOUR skills, bandwidth and budget. Considered an ‘Enews Evangelista’, she specializes in email marketing set-up, and management.
LisaMarieDiasDesigns.com

“98.4% of people surveyed have said that they check their email daily and email marketing is still one of THE best ways to reach and interact with your customers, patients and clients. Email marketing is an excellent tool for:

• Building brand awareness
• Establishing your own/ your firm’s expertise
• Driving web traffic
• Creating and nurturing leads
• Getting your community to ‘know like and trust’ you
• Filling events
• And of course, Driving Sales!

Your choice of Email Service Providers should be based on YOUR goals. Consider integration, functionality, if needed, your budget, bandwidth (how much time you have) and your comfort level with the basic interface.

If you are just starting out, have a small mailing list, NO budget at all and/or are a non-profit trying to grow from scratch, I recommend Mail Chimp. It is free and while you get what you pay for, in terms of lower deliverability rates and the hassle of double opt-in, it does offer a fairly professional end product with limited technical skill required.

If you are a serious enterprise with thousands of people on your mailing list and a staff to monitor results and integrate your email marketing with your advertising and sales efforts, I usually recommend Salesforce or Infusionsoft. These are powerful tools which, in the right hands, can really help you build your bottom line.

In many cases, the companies that I work with who HAVE one of these advanced programs rarely take advantage of all the bells and whistles. They end up spending a lot of time and money on software they don’t fully utilize.

For small to midsized businesses who are looking to grow and nurture their customer base, I always recommend Constant Contact. CC is an easy to use tool, built to send effective, attractive mailings at an affordable price. Your mailings will look great on any device, you can schedule delivery and posts to your social media profiles and there are a number of useful applications like list segmentation, survey options and contact building tools that help YOU build YOUR business.”

  • Constant Contact – “Attractive Templates:
    Yes, the CONTENT is really what matters but if the recipients don’t bother to even LOOK at it, you won’t get the conversions you need!

    Constant Contact offers templates for any number of mailing types from event invitations to sales mailings, plain text emails and of course, enewsletters. All of them have the option of including high resolutions graphics (they offer a library or you can upload your own), call to action buttons, links and surveys.

    The easy to use drag and drop interface makes it easy to create branded, professional looking mailings, quickly.

    Contact Management:
    If you are already using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool, Constant Contact integrates seamlessly with most of the more popular tools. If you are NOT already using a CRM, CC provides you with the functionality to TAG, SEGMENT and monitor the actions of your mailing list members so you can be sure the right people are getting the right message and that they are following through on your calls to action.

    They also offer a number of list building tools such as website sign up widgets, applications to connect this tool to your existing email and social media accounts, ‘text to join’ and point of sale integration to keep your list growing.

    Scheduling and Social Media Integration:
    While I am NOT a fan of the ‘set it and forget it’ school of marketing, I DO highly recommend creating (and USING!) an editorial calendar. This way, you can build and schedule your mailings in advance so you are not struggling at the last minute to figure out what you will send.

    The social media integration allows you to ‘push’ your content out to your social communities, amplifying your message.

  • As you can see, I am a huge fan of email marketing and could go on all day about how to use it to build YOUR business. If you need help getting started and/or would like to design an effective strategy to make the most of these powerful tools, please reach out to me.”

Vanessa Lanham-Day

Vanesa’s delivers intensive business growth mentoring programmes to business owners. As she says, “If you want to grow your business, you need to get good at marketing – it really is that simple. Understanding the art – and the science – behind attracting and keeping customers is the only sure way to achieve growth. Everything else is just admin.”
www.linkedin.com/in/vanessalanham
  • AllClients – “Things I most like about it …

    • It’s very fast to get set up and start working – you don’t need a degree in CRM!

    • Really simple 3 or 4 level structure allowing easy codification of contacts and very flexible / powerful searching allowing highly targeted campaigns

    • Automation for email campaigns – not all CRMs have this, bizarrely

    • To-do-lists and Action Sets which allow you to automate your sales and business process

    • Intelligent links that you embed into emails, making instant responses to campaigns really easy – eg. Do you want to upgrade to X plan …YES or NO?

    • They have some very sexy in-built landing pages, making use of an external landing page providers unnecessary

    • It’s really easy to use ‘on the go’ – eg. On mobile and iPad etc. Which makes a massive difference if you are trying to track campaigns, respond quickly etc. A great way of leveraging small businesses resources as it means it’s not all queuing up for when you ‘get back to the office’.

    • The support is outstanding – online and same day responses by email. They must all know me on first name terms by now – I ask, they reply. Unusual tbh.”

  • Infusionsoft – “I was an InfusionSoft user for several years before I ‘downscaled’ to AllClients. Infusionsoft is right at the top end of the market in terms of functionality and price. But it comes with an equal measure of complexity – resulting in its moniker ‘confusionsoft’.

    • I stopped recommending it to clients because most people do not have the skill set, mind set or commitment to make it work for them or explore its functionality.

    • However, for those who do, it’s unbeatable in terms of function – it can track every aspect of your campaign, with its drag&drop graphical interface. You create pathways for every conceivable eventuality…if they do watch the video; if they don’t; if they’ve click on the link but not acted upon it, etc etc.

    • Which means your planning time for campaigns is longer – but the outcomes more measurable.

    • You probably need someone ‘in house’ who is prepared to commit to being ‘the InfusionSoft guy’. Playing with this part time won’t ever work.”

As in all things, it’s horses for courses.

Tracy O’Clair

Tracy O’Clair is one of Maine’s best-known, most go-to web-based-solutions leaders and digital media marketers. A Solutions Provider for Constant Contact and President of TOCmedia, Tracy earned her undergraduate degree in Marketing Management from Thomas College. Tracy’s passion is marketing and communications.
www.toc-media.com
  • Constant Contact – “I’ve worked with Constant Contact since 2012. Employees of the software company offer excellent customer service and consultative support services. Constant Contact is affordable and dedicated to small business. Constant Contact is an innovative company and their consistently evolving email marketing product comes with many bells and whistles for a low monthly fee making it attractive to businesses.”
  • MailChimp – “MailChimp is a secondary option to Constant Contact. It allows small business owners the ability to create and distribute email newsletters with ease and at a very affordable rate – free. Their customer service is not as available as Constant Contact; however, they rate number two in my book of email service providers.”

Tom Welbourne

Tom started his career as a Marketing Assistant at a National Retailer before advancing to the Head of Marketing for an Investment company. It was in this role, Tom got a taste for working with startups, helping to create valuable opportunities.
www.thegoodmarketer.co.uk
  • MailChimp – “MailChimp is a great ESP for small businesses because it is simple to use with easy navigation and helpful tutorials but more importantly, it is also free for up to 2000 subscribers. As a small business, money can be tight so having a system which actually works and you can use for free is great.”
  • Campaign Monitor – “Campaign Monitor is also great for small businesses, allowing for greater functionality than MailChimp. Although a small fee is involved, the benefits of Campaign Monitor outweighs this by far. The ability to easily set up drip campaigns and having greater control over the branding of individual emails is what makes Campaign Monitor.”

Tom Ehart

www.linkedin.com/in/tomehart
  • HubSpot – “Having used numerous other ESP platforms in a corporate setting, including MailChimp, Real Magnet (Higher Logic), HubSpot and Vertical Response, hands down the only one I would recommend is HubSpot.

    It is by far the easiest ESP platform to use, with better templates, easier customization and editing tools that work consistently. But above that, HubSpot has absolutely the best Customer Support in the business. They have solved every problem, every time I have called them. They are responsive, courteous, and always offer alternative solutions. The other vendors are typically poor responders, have limited work-arounds, are very buggy and have flawed editing tools.

    Because of HubSpot’s tremendous support and superior email platform, we’ve moved our website and social to HubSpot as well, which makes integration with those marketing tools seamless. HubSpot’s workflows work great so we can run multiple, interactive campaigns just like you can with larger platforms like Marketo and Eloqua, but having tested those two platforms, HubSpot is light-years ahead of them in terms of ease of use.”

Terry Nugent

Angel investor focused on B2B healthcare ventures. Marketing consultant to startups and small and medium business. Content marketing writer. Data science strategist. Advisor to Fortune 50 pharmaceutical companies and their agencies. Recognized authority on email marketing in the healthcare professional marketplace.
www.linkedin.com/in/terrynugent
  • IBM Watson Campaign Automation – “I have extensive hands-on experience with the platform. It is affordable and provides excellent scalability and sophistication, great support and effective deliverability services.”
  • WhatCounts – “A lesser known ESP, it has proven deliverability excellence, excellent informational resources to help you maximize the efficacy of your email marketing program, and robust data management capabilities. It is extraordinarily scalable as your business grows.”
  • AWeber – “A great fit for small and medium businesses, particularly publishers.”

Susana Fonticoba

Business Growth Strategy for entrepreneurs is my passion and my mission. As a content marketer, mentor and workshop leader, I help entrepreneurs craft a customized marketing plan that resonates with their ideal client.
LinkedIn.com/in/SusanaFonticoba
  • Constant Contact – “I’ve promoted email marketing for small business and non-profit since 2011. Over the years, I’ve looked at and worked with several companies. I keep coming back to the best of the best, Constant Contact. It has everything you need for the small business who wants to develop a continuing relationship with customers and prospects. While they have tough competition which often features lots of whiz-bang technology, the truth is that most of the small business community neither wants nor uses that extra techno-bling. It serves to over-complicate the experience of using the software, and features meant to attract simply go unused. I’ve interviewed people who spend hundreds per month on complex software while they only use 10% of the capabilities. Waste of money, no?

    In Constant Contact, there are a host of valuable features and the development team works hard to LISTEN to their customers (yes, they listen to your feedback) and deliver features YOU asked for. How cool is that?

    As a company, not just a product, I love that Constant Contact is committed to the two most powerful goals for the success of small businesses like yours:

    First, they firmly believe that your company will flourish with up to the minute marketing EDUCATION. They support trained independent business owners like me to deliver their world class marketing educational seminars. I love presenting their thoughtful marketing workshops through independent events as well as powerful national partners like SCORE and the SBDC. Attendees walk away feeling as though they just took a college level marketing course. And Constant Contact does not charge anyone for this – they do it to fulfil their mission.

    Secondly, they believe that if you’re going to deliver a powerful tool to all business owners and non-profit organizations, you want to seal their success by providing stellar SUPPORT. The software itself is designed to be user-friendly for the average, non-technical person so you don’t have to be flustered with complicated steps and technical processes. However, if you do have issues using the software in any way, there is LIVE and LOCAL support available and waiting for your call. They are in Massachusetts and Colorado. I’ve met the support team – all real people, no robots. They are positive, friendly and energetic. They consider it a pleasure to help you, not a burden.

    As a small business owner myself, I’ve selected Constant Contact as the only company I feel worthy to promote. While there are a host of competitors, no company offers Education and Support to their customers. None. This is a company that believes in the success of entrepreneurs like you and me. Other tools are geared toward technical developers, completely ignoring the customer experience of the business owner. Constant Contact serves the business owner completely.

    I hope this has helped you choose the best tool for your company and for your own experience.”

Susan Wilcox

Susan has 25+ years of marketing experience helping companies like Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Arm & Hammer plus hundreds of emerging companies build their businesses. Susan's strategic thinking and ability to simplify the process helps make your marketing easy and effective.
www.edynamicmarketing.com
  • Constant Contact – “For the business owner who is crunched for time and needs an ESP that is not too complicated and has great customer service, Constant Contact is at the top of the list. Constant Contact has an easy-to-use platform with just enough bells and whistles to make it very effective for many business owners. The most valuable part of the Constant Contact service is their help desk. They are there to support you and can reduce learning curve time and frustration, so you can quickly and easily put out a great looking campaign. Monthly Subscriptions start at $20.”
  • ActiveCampaign – “For the business owner who is ready for the next level and willing to put in more effort to get more advanced features like dynamic content, split testing and marketing automation ActiveCampaign is a great solution and still reasonably priced. Active Campaign does require more input time.”
  • MailChimp – “For the budget-strapped business-owner I recommend MailChimp. MailChimp offers a basic service for free. While free can be good, be advised that you will have to be prepared to go it alone. MailChimp does not offer customer service and many owners quickly out-grow the complimentary version. If you have the time and the technical skills to create your own campaigns, MailChimp can be a low-cost entry point. Be prepared to move on to other more advance service providers in time.”

Steven T. Smith II

General Manager for outsourced telesales and winery marketing company in Napa Valley.
www.chatterboxwinemarketing.com
  • MailChimp – “If you run a lean organization, you want to spend more time developing content and less hand coding email campaigns MailChimp is the ESP for you. MailChimp provides the end user a full suite of marketing tools and an impressive platform to develop email campaigns. The list builder is intuitive and allows you to segment on the fly. The email builder offers the novice a myriad of pre-built design options and the power user automations and lifecycle marketing capabilities you’d expect at far most expensive options. Documentation & support are quite robust and integrations are seemingly endless. I’d recommend MailChimp to any SMB who needs a platform they can afford and scale with their business.”

Stefanie Amini

Stefanie is Co-Founder of Gossip Media and expert in developing marketing strategies for Startups. She is lead advisor and avid internet lover. You can find her mentoring startups at Google, or meeting cool people for coffee and discussing strategy with them.
www.gossipmedia.co
  • MailChimp – “MailChimp is the cheapest of the options and easy to use. They have recently added more features including creating landing pages, automation, which is great for grabbing users who subscribe and engaging with them immediately. They also offer pop ups for your website. The tool also integrates well in to WordPress, Salesforce etc and other platforms so it really streamlines the whole process.”
  • AWeber – “AWeber is an easy to use drag and drop platform that I mainly use for heavy automation. Integrates well into most platforms and allows great variety in automating your email campaigns to really nurture your users. They recently added a feature that allows you to create subscriber segments based on open and click engagement and not necessarily on sign ups. Their app is a nice feature if you want to track results on the go.”

Siu Yen Wong

A Marketing Consultant, Brand & Communications Strategist with experience working in a variety of B2C and B2B sectors in both established brands and startups. Interested in all things related to tech, startups and sci-fi.
www.linkedin.com/in/siuyenwong
  • MailChimp – “Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing products of today, especially for small businesses. Its campaign builder lets you easily craft emails that suit your message—whether it’s for a product launch or news announcement, for a start. Some of its features include email templates, in-suite apps, integration to e-commerce platforms, and targeted analytics, among others. You can also target your customers based on previous sales, preferences, and behaviour.

    MailChimp offers a ‘Forever Free’ plan which allows you to send 12,000 emails per month for up to 2,000 subscribers. This includes automation, built-in signup forms, report and data insight, and campaign creation without coding required. Their paid plans start from $10/month. This unlocks unlimited sending, email delivery by time zone, predicted demographics, and email and chat support.”

  • ActiveCampaign – “ActiveCampaign combines your email marketing, automation, with CRM and sales. It comes with all the tools you will need to create smarter email marketing campaigns. It’s easy to use, and one of the most feature-packed email marketing & automation tools around. On top of that, it’s also one of the most affordable tools.

    What sets ActiveCampaign apart is the fact that it has its own CRM system for managing leads, and marketing automation for nurturing your leads into customers. In short, it’s an all-in-one platform. Unlike some of the other tools that do this, ActiveCampaign is affordable starting at $9/month.”

Simon O’Day

Based in Melbourne, Australia and since 1999 have worked in Email and Customer data driven software and services businesses. Was part of Responsys (acquired Eservices) and Emma Inc and now co-founder of The Lumery and HItchdata.
www.linkedin.com/in/simonoday

The SME space is full of ESPs now and so I split them a few ways. First as a stand alone I think CampaignMonitor/Emma highlight the best of breed in being creative and technically led. Followed by MailChimp for its scale and extensibility. For B2B or more Sales led and not consumer comms, I lead with Autopilot.

  • Campaign Monitor/Emma, Inc – “These both are built on a heritage of creatively and customer focused thinking. From the top down they are about how to make it easier to create and deploy either manual or automated campaigns. The founders and leadership are still driven by this. For SMEs making things elegant and easy to use is critical based on the lack of staff and time (have been fortunate enough to know and work with the leaders of both companies).”
  • MailChimp – “MailChimp is the power player in market for sure and has a lot of scale. Their founders came from web dev and data driven thinking and since day one have used this data analyst model to drive innovation and insights for customers. This bedrock has allowed them to achieve scale, deal with topics like bad senders and deliverability, but also extend the product across the overall ecosystem allowing SMEs to tie MailChimp into a large part of their business tech needs.”
  • Autopilot – “Autopilot is my attempt to shift from B2C to more sales and marketing automation. There are many players in this space but I point out Autopilot because of their great UX approach and power for the SME customer to use. They have made automation something that SMEs can aspire to do.”

Overall:

“When choosing an email channel tool as an SME, there is a bigger question to consider. You have to take into account the people, process, tech and data included in the wider goals of the business. Buying tech is the easier of the 4. I find too many just buy tech and don’t consider if they have the skills to use it, the associated tech that ties in, the data they need to do the work and the time needed to do the work. I see companies who buy SFMC and have staff who can only use MailChimp for instance. Or they buy an ESP that does not easily tie to their Ecommerce site for stronger customer comms programs. Or they buy an ESP for doing customer emails and are manually doing their sales acquisition without lead nurturing.

We live in a time where we have endless technical choices and I have listed the ones I see as leaders – but I feel strongly you have to pair these choices with understanding how they fit into your people, your current martech and how you work. Then you will succeed and grow.”

Shelly Berman-Rubera

Shelly Berman-Rubera is the Founder and President of SBR-Small Business Results, Newton, MA. She is a Certified Small Business Coach, Emotional Intelligence Leader, and Lifestyle Management Consultant. It is the combination of her credentials and experiences that offers small business owners, coaches, consultants and independent professionals unique and inspiring personal and business development coaching and programs.
www.smallbusresults.com
  • Constant Contact – “I recommend Constant Contact for the price point and the capabilities. I have found customer service to be eager to please. I have also found Constant Contact to be quite easy to use and learn. There is an enormous number of webinars and support to ease the curve of learning. The editor has drag and drop capabilities, as well as the ability to insert pictures and videos. I really love the website match templates you can get at Constant Contact. They are like emailing your live website to your prospects and clients.”

Shane Barker

Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, product launches, sales funnels, targeted traffic, and website conversions. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.
www.shanebarker.com

The way I see it, a good email marketing tool needs to have the following attributes. It should allow you to easily manage your contacts, create groups or segments, and track the performance of your campaigns. For small businesses, it is essential that they’re cost-effective too. With that in mind, my top choices for an email marketing tool for small businesses are:

  • Drip – “Drip is one of the most user-friendly email marketing platforms, perfect for people just starting off with email marketing. They provide some cool features to create smart segments or groups from your email list. They offer a free account for less than 100 subscribers and thereafter, you need to pay $41 per month for up to 2500 subscribers.”