17 Jun The Biggest Email List Marketing Mistake You May Be Making

While text messages and FaceTime are definitely major forms of communication in today’s digital society, when it comes to marketing, email is still a very effective tool. In fact, email has one of the best ROI rates, but this doesn’t mean you can just fire off an email and enjoy conversion success. Here’s the number one mistake businesses make when using email list marketing and three tips on how to increase your chances of success.

Don’t Buy an Email List

It seems like a good idea: You spend a little money and get all the legwork of identifying clients and accessing their contact info. But when it comes to practical usage, buying an email list is one of the worst things you can do. Here are five reasons why.

1.) The information isn’t useful.

Even the best email lists quickly become irrelevant as data goes out of date. Around a 25% of most email lists have decayed after a year, and you don’t have any way of verifying how old the list is. Even if you just bought it, the data could still be from years ago, which could make up to 85% of your list irrelevant.

2.) It lowers your email performance.

Because email performance stats depend on good data, using a bought email list can increase your bounce rates just because of the emails that are no longer valid. However, you’ll also likely see below-average open and click-through rates because you’re essentially cold-calling potential clients who may have no interest in your products or services.

3.) You’re more likely to get marked as spam.

On average, an office worker receives around 121 emails per day, and that number could be even higher if you take into account all personal and work email accounts. That’s a lot to sift through, and that’s why most emails from businesses never get opened. It’s also why businesses who send unsolicited emails get marked a spam. The more times your business is marked as a spam sender, the higher the chance email providers will start automatically filtering your emails into the spam list. This means even potential clients who haven’t marked you as spam may never even see your email.

4.) You could face legal issues.

By law, businesses must have contact opt-in to providing their email addresses and any other personal data before contacting them. This is very difficult to do with a purchased list. And in accordance with the CAN-SPAM Act, your business could face fines of up to $42,530 for each email that’s in violation.

5.) You may not even be able to contact emails on the list.

Because of the high spam rates, most email providers have strict policies to help protect their users, and many won’t even let you send emails to a purchased list. So, you could be spending that money to not even be able to do anything with the data.

Increase Your Email List Naturally

By now, you’re convinced that buying an email list isn’t the way to go, but what should you do? Here are three tips to start growing your email list without a purchase.

1.) Let contacts opt-in.

Let your clients and potential contacts show their interest in your business by giving them a sign-up form that makes it easy to provide their email addresses and opt-in to receiving communications from you. If you really want to go the extra step, ask contacts to verify their emails. You may not get as many contacts, but the ones you do will be more likely to engage later on.

2.) Make Use of Social Media

Putting a targeted ad up on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram can put your sign-up form right in front of the demographic you’re trying to target. One company was able to increase their lead quality by 22% just by running a Facebook lead ad.

3.) Get Face-to-Face

Creating in events gets you literally right in front of your target audience, and all you need is a pen and paper to create an email sign-up list to collect their email addresses.