Following on from my discussion the other day, When Do You Agree To Join A Marketing List, and the excellent comment by Justin Premick from Aweber, I thought I would discuss some practical ways that you can invite people to join your update list and avoid (most) of the angst and being labelled a Spammer.
Remembering that the basis of Permission Based Email marketing is PERMISSION, the strategies I’m providing all focus on receiving your subscribers approval to send them information.
I find the article from AWeber, Can I Use This List, to be an excellent guide as to what you can (and can’t do) when adding people to your list. The list is specific to AWebers Terms Of Service however, the guide is so good it should be applied by everyone.
Method 1: Simply Ask People To Subscribe
Send a personal thank you note to my new connections and invite them to review my website and subscribe to my newsletter – if they feel they will benefit from it. Also provide other ways they can connect with you to learn about what you do – Twitter is a great medium for this, as is a RSS feed to your blog or even the RSS Feed to your newsletter.
The benefit of this approach is that you are really qualifying your subscribers – you know that people who have joined your list are interested in what you are saying.
The downside is the time required to send those personal notes to each of your contacts. This can be alleviated by working with a Virtual Assistant and outsourcing some of the work to them.
You certainly will not get everyone subscribing to your newsletter using this method – in fact, you may find that you get a tiny percentage of your contacts subscribing. This may be because many of your contacts don’t read their messages on the network – and if that is the case, what have you lost? If they aren’t reading their messages, they are not likely to read your newsletter or be an involved contact.
Method 2: Subscribe them yourself and use Double Opt In
This method may not be allowed with certain providers – it is certainly on the fringe and it’s not something I would implement for myself, or my clients.
You can use the Double Opt-In process that is available on most of the email marketing tools today. Essentially, you are seeking the permission of the contact to add them to your list – but I feel the way that this will present to you contact will be detrimental to your relationship.
With Double Opt-In, when someone subscribes to your email list, your system will automatically send a confirmation email with a link that they must click before they’re added to your list.
If they don’t click the link, they don’t get added to the list. If they do, they are added to the list. (It is advisable to record the IP address they used to confirm the request, the confirmation date and time and how they were added to the list).
Quality email marketing tools will allow you to customize your verification method (the message that is sent when the email address is added to the list) so that you can let your contacts know:
- Why they are receiving the request
- What they will get when they confirm the request
- How to accept or reject the request
By taking the Double Opt-In approach, you are allowing your contact to decide if they wish to join your list and ensuring that you have a record of their approval to receive information.
Whilst this approach is very similar to the first method I suggested, it removes the personal touch and complete right of choice from your contact – you aren’t asking them to take the step to subscribe to your newsletter based on their assessment of whether your business is relevant to them.
Offline Contact Management
Using Method 1 above is an excellent way to follow up with your Offline contacts and maintain contact with them.
In addition to an Email Marketing tool, I recommend you use a contact management tool like your Outlook Address Book, Google Contacts, Highrise or even a spreadsheet. You should track their contact details, when you met them and try to keep a journal of contacts you have had with them for future reference.
Either of the strategies above will work effectively in gaining qualified subscribers to your newsletter. For the contacts who don’t subscribe, you will need to work through the network you connected on to determine how best to work with them.
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