Keeping your email lists fresh is critical to the success of your online marketing and e-commerce efforts. In the early days of the Internet, the novelty of web sites and free e-newsletters made acquiring customers online all too easy. With customers signing up in droves to hear your latest offers, there was no need to worry about email address attrition rates or errors during registration.
Unfortunately, those days are over! Due to error-ridden databases, privacy concerns, excess spam, and the high turnover of email addresses, many companies are now finding they are losing email addresses faster than they can gain them. Customer retention has reemerged as the key to profits.
Here is what you can do to bounce-proof your email lists and increase your customer retention rate:
DONT LET ERRORS GET INTO YOUR LIST
Utilize a double-entry system during registration
This will reduce typos and help your customers recognize how important an accurate email address is to you.
Validate email addresses at the point of registration
Examine your current methods for validating email addresses at the point of registration. Consider upgrading your software or using a real time validation service so you can catch your prospects when they want you most.
Confirm your registrations
Present all new registrants with a confirmation page, which lets them review what they have typed and correct any mistakes made.
Implement a double opt-in process
Require visitors to check their email and click through on a custom link to confirm that your email was successfully delivered to them. Note: you may realize a significant drop off in your registrations and annoy some prospects, but it will ensure that only valid email addresses are introduced into your list. Decide if this trade-off makes sense for you.
Examine your off-line data entry procedures
Review the other ways that email addresses get into your database. Provide your data entry staff with a list of common top-level domains (.com, .net, etc.), domains (hotmail, yahoo, etc.) and standard email address formatting rules. If you do any significant off-line data entry, investigate implementing aggressive validation on these addresses at the time of entry.
IF ERRORS SNEAK IN, CATCH THEM ASAP
Send a confirmation message
Immediately email a welcome message to each newly registered email address. If there is a bounce, quickly implement an email address recovery attempt. The longer you wait, the greater the chance your customers will forget why they gave you their email addresses in the first place.
Utilize a list hygiene and correction service on a regular basis
List hygiene services can identify and correct a majority of the invalid email addresses that result from domain errors, formatting problems, misspellings, and typos. Again, the longer you wait, the more difficult it will be to reconnect with your customers and engage their interest.
EVEN GOOD ADDRESSES GO BAD - PLAN FOR CUSTOMER RECOVERY
Face the facts
People change their email addresses daily. 30% or more of your email addresses are going to need updating each year.
Determine how much a working email address is worth to you
Properly analyze the results of all of your online efforts. Be sure to separately analyze the value of a new customer versus a recovered customer. Loyal, repeat customers are the stable of every successful company. Dont focus your efforts solely on new customer acquisition.
Put someone in charge of customer recovery
Many companies lose sight of the basics. Customer retention may be less sexy, but it will likely yield you a higher ROI. Make sure you have identified the resources, budget, and priority for your customer retention efforts.
Plan your email address acquisition methods to assist with later recovery
Consider collecting a name, an alternate email address, a postal address, or a phone number.
UPDATE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS LISTS
Provide email address update links on your site
Make it easy for your customers to update their email addresses for you whenever they are interacting with your website.
Put email address update links in your email communications
Enable your customers to update their email addresses with a simple click-through. Many companies require their readers to unsubscribe and then re-subscribe. This is too cumbersome for the visitor and often results in the loss of valuable historical data.
Utilize an ECOA (email change of address) service
ECOA companies provide you with current email addresses for your old or dead addresses. Moreover, they will update your list with your customers preferred email addresses, solving the problem of infrequently checked email accounts.
Utilize an email appending service
If you have names and postal addresses in your files, an email append service can help you find 25% or more of the associated email addresses.
Develop a customer recovery plan and follow it
Determine how much time you can let pass before your customers or prospects will forget why they came to you in the first place How frequently are you planning to do your database updating What is the most cost-effective process for recovering a customer Review the costs and benefits of your options and decide what is best for you.
ITS ALL ABOUT ROI!
The payoffs for bounce-proofing your email list are substantial: lower customer acquisition costs, increased response rates and sales, reduced messaging and support costs, and the decreased likelihood of winding up on some system administrators blacklist due to high bounce-back rates. Follow the basic suggestions above and you will maximize the return on your marketing investments. Isnt today a good time to start
Bill Kaplan
CEO
FreshAddress, Inc.
FreshAddress, Inc., The Email Address ExpertsTM, provides a comprehensive suite of industry leading database and email deliverability services to help companies increase their e-commerce revenues. For more information on how we can help Build and Update your email list, visit or email .
(c) 2003 FRESHADDRESS.COM
Bill Kaplan is the Chief Executive Officier of FreshAddress, Inc.
FreshAddress, Inc. is a privately held company, founded in 1999, helping business and individuals stay connected when email addresses change.
WHY BUILD YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS DATABASE
Gaining your customers email addresses will:
With ongoing postal and telemarketing pressures impacting marketing budgets for many organizations this year, email marketing could become the silver lining for many marketers. But how do you create a successful email marketing campaign if you do not have a substantial email database That question may be one of the largest Internet related challenges facing companies this year.
Research shows that the majority of organizations have email addresses for less than 10% of their postal files. So how do you level the playing field and start to add quality permission - based email addresses to your database
Here are some tips that you can use to cost effectively build your email address database and increase your customer participation and retention rates:
START TO ASK FOR IT!
Every communication or touch point with a customer should start or end with a request for an email address. By utilizing the four points below, you should be able to add email addresses for 5% to 10% of your postal file over the course of one year.
1. Direct Mail Collection
Think about how much time and money you spent for copy and design on your last new direct mail piece. Most companies have started to ask their customers for their email address information within these mailings. This is a great step forward. However, companies need to look at one major improvement if they want to increase their email address collection rates.
To date, most requests for email address information have been pushed, shoved or jammed into whatever white space remains. It should be no surprise that the success rate has been less than stellar.
To improve on these efforts, you need to provide your members with a reason to release their email addresses to you. E-newsletters, purchase confirmations, petitions, and special discounts and offers are but a few of the benefits that will encourage your members to come on board.
2. Web Page Collection
Many companies have an email address collection function in place via the web. To improve your sign-up rates, add text below the email request box that informs your visitors of the special email benefits that they will receive (i.e. e-newsletters, purchase confirmations, delivery updates, etc.) upon registering. You can also utilize a pop-up link to inform users of these special benefits.
Finally, your email address request function should be available on your home page. Dont make your users go and look for it. Every click away from your home page reduces the chances of your users taking an action and providing you with their email address information.
3. Existing Email Database Collection
Dont forget to ask the members of your existing customer base for email addresses of their friends, family and associates. Viral marketing is a powerful tool to use and is extremely cost effective! You could ask them either to provide you with additional addresses or simply to pass on your newsletter, email specific offers, or other information to others they feel have similar interests.
4. Telemarketing Collection
Dont assume that your telemarketing agents are asking for email addresses from potential customers. Ensure that your agents have an updated script, which outlines the previously described benefits to potential customers of providing their email addresses.
The suggestions above are a great start! Yet they really should be viewed as a secondary plan for building your email database. To exponentially and expeditiously grow your email database, please read on!
EMAIL APPENDING
Utilizing an email appending service enables you to add email addresses for up to 25% of your postal file, all within 3-4 weeks.
Email Appending - is the process of adding an individuals email address to that individuals postal record in side your existing database. This is accomplished by matching the postal database against a third party, permission based database of postal and email address information.
Best Practices - Email Appending is not a prospecting tool. The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) and its interactive arm AIM (Association of Interactive Marketing) have guidelines in place that dictate that email appending only be used to append email addresses to your existing opt-in postal record house file.
The Process - Your opt-in postal file is securely transferred to an email appending provider, who will do an initial gross email address match of your file against its opt-in database of postal and email address records. Your appending provider will then send these matches a permission-based message prepared by you. All bounces and opt-out requests will be removed from the list. At that point a valid permission-based email address file of your customers will be delivered back to you.
Cost - Less than the price of a postal stamp!
IN SUMMARY
The first step of any successful email marketing effort is to build a permission-based email address list of your customers. The simplest, quickest and most cost-effective way to do this is through email appending, which will enable you to add email addresses for up to 25% of your postal file. Secondary efforts of email address collection via focused direct mail, web, viral and telemarketing practices are also important and will enable you to add email addresses for an additional 5% to 10% of your base on an annual basis.
Best of luck in building your email address database. As many companies have already learned, the ROI and cost savings to be achieved will far exceed your expectations.
Bill Kaplan
CEO
FreshAddress, Inc.
FreshAddress, Inc., The Email Address ExpertsTM, provides a comprehensive suite of industry leading database and email deliverability services to help companies increase their e-commerce revenues. For more information on how we can help Build and Update your email list, visit or email .
(c) 2003 FRESHADDRESS.COM
Bill Kaplan is the Chief Executive Officier of FreshAddress, Inc.
FreshAddress, Inc. is a privately held company, founded in 1999, helping business and individuals stay connected when email addresses change.