A Retailer’s Guide to Growing a High Quality Mailing List

Email marketing starts with a list! A high quality mailing list, means a more captive audience, higher open and click through rates, and most importantly there’s more chance the audience will take you up on your call-to-action.
Of course, it’s not all in the list. Targeted and relevant email campaigns are a must have for successful email marketing. But that too, starts with your list. A mindfully created list has the data in it to help you segment your audience and create targeted and personalized emails that are relevant to each segments’ interests and preferences.

So how do you build a quality mailing list that has all this useful data? All you need to do is make sure your collecting the email addresses of the right audience and the list will build itself.

Your customers are your best audience

Your customers want to hear from you. If they love what you’re offering in-store or online, chances are they will want to receive updates from you. In fact, the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70% [Marketing Metrics]. Compare that to a promotion sent to a potential customer, at less than 1% [Kiss Metrics]. So the answer to a quality mailing list is that it should be made up of your customers – the customers who already buy from you.

3 sure fire ways to grow a mailing list of your actual customers:

1. Online store

If you have an eCommere store you likely already require an email address from customers, as part of your purchase process. Customers who buy from you online are tech savy and big users of email, making them your perfect audience. Plus, you’re collecting it anyway – you might as well be using it.

• Make sure you have an email opt-in checkbox. It’s a good idea to have this pre-checked. They can opt-out it if they don’t want to hear from you.
• Include a consent statement in your terms and conditions for email newsletters and marketing. It’s a good idea to check your country’s legal requirements around this and make sure you adhere to them.
• Now that you have their email address, use it. Send them a little thank you offer for their purchase. 10% off their next purchase might prompt them to go back online and purchase that pair of shoes that they were umming-and-ahhing about. Not to mention, a nice little surprise in one of your first emails is a great way to increase engagement with your future emails.
• And keep using it. Keep your customers engaged and updated with new stock, promotions, and products they may be interested in. Consistency is key. Decide how often you are going to email customers, and stick to it.
• Get personal. If you collect their name, use it. The email will feel much more thoughtful and personal. Use merge tags to insert your customers’ names into the email body or subject line.

Productivity tip: MailSync automatically syncs your eCommerce customer database to your GetResponse mailing list. Meaning, you don’t have to waste time exporting and importing CSVs. It’s always up-to-date, so you don’t have to worry about customers missing out on your emails.

2. Newsletter subscription

While they are browsing your website, make sure they can see a newsletter subscription form. This is a great way to capture the details of potential customers, who want to hear from you. They may not have made a purchase yet. But, because they are volunteering their details they are likely to make for a captive audience.

• Convert them to an actual customer early. They like your products, otherwise they wouldn’t have signed up for your newsletter. Send them a promotion to help them make their first purchase. Once they’ve bought from you once, they are more likely to buy from you again [Consumer Insights Group].
• Give them what they signed up for. They signed up for your newsletter. So, make sure you wrap any marketing promotions or product updates up in the form of a newsletter.

3. In-store

Train your staff to ask every customer if they want to join your mailing list, while they are making a purchase. Your staff are already talking to customers over the counter, so they don’t have to go out of the way to ask for a name and email address. But, make sure they are properly trained to ask in the right way. Yes there is a wrong way! These are your customers’ personal details. It’s important to make them feel comfortable giving them away.

• Tell them why you are collecting their details – Let them know that they will receive email updates on new stock and promotions. 90% of consumers prefer email updates, over social media announcements [Nielsen Norman Group].
• Give them something in exchange – Ask if they want to join your loyalty program and let them know what rewards they could earn, in exchange for their email address. If they are getting something out of it, they are more likely to give away their details.
• You’ve got their name, so use it in conversation – “Enjoy the rest of your day, Chester”. They will feel connected to you on a more personal level. Now, when your email comes, they are more likely to remember you, and open it.
• Make it fast and easy – People are time-poor and frustration will ruin their shopping experience. Choose a point-of-sale that has the capability to add customers to the sale. That way, you can collect email addresses without holding them up, fumbling through paper, or switching screens or devices.

Productivity tip: If you’re using your point-of-sale to collect customer email addresses, MailSync is a useful tool that automatically syncs the customer data you collect to your GetResponse mailing list. Meaning, you don’t have to waste time exporting and importing CSVs. It’s all done for you.

Growing a quality customer database can seem like a big task, but it doesn’t have to be. Once you have the right tools set up, you’ll find you can actually automate the process. Using MailSync and GetResponse is a great place to start. Once you’ve set up MailSync, you can forget about importing and exporting CSVs, and instead, you can focus on creating great email campaigns. For more useful tips and everything a retailer needs to know to get started with email marketing, check out this helpful affiliate marketing.