List Building

Email list building

One of the major benefits of using modern software for distributing email newsletters and other marketing material is the way results can be compiled and compared over time.

These numbers allow us to separate what we know, from what we think we know – the former being hard facts and figures, the latter the all too common and expensive ‘gut feeling’!

Frequently a business owner  knows an awful  lot about their business that can’t be quantified or charted on an excel spreadsheet – and that kind of inside track knowledge about customers, habits and local anomalies has value in it’s own right – but stats taken from actual results  are hard facts – because of that they give us the opportunity to put a stake down, to create a known, fixed reference point.  Once this marker is placed we have something to measure against.

Consider for example the ‘open rate’ statistic – thats the percentage of people on your list who actually opened the email you sent them – is it high or low, how do you judge? It’s certainly an important consideration – if folks don’t even open the email, how can you communicate with them? Looking at this figure over a period of time tells you whether or not it is consistent, and which factors play an important part in determining the open rate of your mailings.

If changing the time or day you send on, or altering the subject line of your mailings doesn’t appear to make a huge difference, try to find out what the average is for your industry and compare. It’s not easy, because no one will just give you the data, but some idea may be gleaned by diligent ‘Googling’

For example it would appear that the average open rate in the restaurant industry is in the order of 20 to 30% for any particular mailing.

That’s pretty staggering, but my own experience show that it is probably a reliable number.

So consider this – even if you are currently in the upper regions of that range 70% percent of your target audience don’t even bother to read your newsletter!

Once we have this fact established, and our attempts to increase open rate have maxed out – We need to explore other ways to get our messages read by more people!

Remembering that 7 out of 10 people don’t bother to check out our information when it lands in their inbox is a sobering thought – and means we need to really focus on list building.

Our new found knowledge tells us that a list of  1000 email addresses is really a list of 300.

Then when we take a look at the next  part of the statistical process we learn another painful fact – of the 300 folks that may have opened and read the email we spent so much time creating, only around 6% will click through and take action! So from our original list of 1000 subscribers we can expect to generate just 18 prospects!

Don’t get me wrong -  because of the low cost of email marketing, those 18 prospects will have cost way less to generate than say a newspaper or radio advert. But there is a simple lesson to be learned from these key numbers - List Building is Paramount.

A list of several thousand may make you feel warm and comfortable, but breaking down the numbers into hard facts tells us,that just as it always has been -  the process of selling is a numbers game .

Lists become old very quickly in the digital age – people change email addresses more often than their clothes, free email addresses are often briefly used then discarded and college or university addresses are ditched.

In addition to this there will always be a number of people who decide that they aren’t interested in your offerings any more – they will  simply opt out of your list.
My understanding of the numbers tells me that it’s not unreasonable to assume a 3 to 5% ‘attrition rate’ with each mailing sent out.

All of the above leads to one inescapable fact – Data collection needs to be right at the heart of your marketing strategy, there needs to be a clear process in place to gather information about customers and prospects – Otherwise your list just fades away!

The  great temptation with all online campaigns is to try changing too many variables at once – just because you can!

Actually it’s  better by far, to focus on a single key issue and change one thing at a time – observing the effect on results.

However, without a viable list there will be no results to observe!