Five Tips for Collecting Email Addresses

Whether you're relatively new to email marketing or looking to make improvements, here are five things you can do to become more effective while collecting email addresses on your website.

1. Incent website visitors to sign up.
The incentive doesn't have to cost a lot of money, or even any money at all. The perception of value in the eyes of potential customers is important. 

If you're in a service industry, perhaps you can promise to include valuable tips to make your customers more effective business leaders. If you sell products, you might consider providing downloadable PDFs that offer creative product usage ideas.

Whatever it is, ask yourself: would you sign up for your email program?

2. Ask only for information you will potentially use.
Resist the urge to ask for a lot of information at the time of signing up. Most likely, the more information you require, the fewer sign-ups you'll receive.

Remember: email is about building relationships with your customers and prospects.  While your intentions are innocent enough - to build a complete customer profile - many people will shy away from providing "too much" personal information just to receive promotional emails.

Typically, first name and email address are enough (or just email address) to get started. Over time, you can ask questions and provide incentives to learn more about your subscribers and their interests. 

3. Use a true double opt-in.
You'll want to confirm new subscribers actually want to receive your emails by using a true double-opt in.  What does this mean?

A true double opt-in is a simple three-step process and goes as follows: 1.) someone opts into your e-newsletter, then 2.) you send them an email to confirm their subscription, and finally 3.) they are required to click a link in your confirmation email to verify the subscription.

This should be an automatic process, and your email application should be able to let you implement this in just a few clicks! 

While a true double opt-in is not necessary, it is best practice and an effective way to reduce your chances of being reported as a spammer.

4. Send a Welcome email. Automatically.
Once someone opts into your email list you'll want to send a Welcome email immediately, or at least within 24 hours. This should be an automated process!

Your Welcome email should, at minimum, thank subscribers for joining your list. You can do this in the subject line or in the email's body.  It's also an excellent time to include a special offer and/or reinforce the value proposition of being on your email list.    

5. Measure.
Measure the number of email addresses you collect. Getting to few?  Maybe your sign-up form needs to be more prominently displayed. Perhaps people are being distracted before seeing the sign-up.

It's also possible would-be subscribers don't realize the benefit of joining. Again ask yourself: what value is there in joining your email list, and how do you make it compelling?

Then, measure the performance of your Welcome emails. Are they being opened? Clicked? Generating sales? If not, you'll want to examine your content.

Welcome emails should receive high open and click rates since they're received right after a subscription confirmation.
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Not sure how to implement these processes on your website? We can help! Contact us today.

The Admiral Company offers email marketing campaign management and can utilize our email marketing suite to drive sales for your company!