You can reach your audience using email if your content is relevant and your email lists are up to date. There are so many reasons why we all need to keep our email marketing lists fresh and well organized. When left without review for too long, email lists are clogged up with old expired email addresses and sometimes unhappy recipients and you may even be breaking data protection laws.
To make sure the receivers of your emails are still reading, and are still happy with the content they receive implement the following practices:
1. Does Your Email Marketing Approach Comply with New GDPR Legislation?
The recently introduced EU GDPR (European General Data Protection Regulation) means a few changes to the usual email marketing practices and if not followed, you run the risk of being fined. And despite it being an EU regulation, this “applies to all companies processing and holding the personal data of data subjects residing in the European Union, regardless of the company’s location”.
In short, email marketers need to ensure that they have a detailed record of subscribers consent/opt-in before sending any email content to them, and just having subscribers submit to pre-ticked boxes is not enough. You’ll also need to keep your usage policy clear and accessible, including keeping T&Cs separate from your consent forms.
Now is the perfect opportunity for your organization to audit your email list and consent processes to ensure that they comply with GDPR and start a re-permission campaign if further consent is needed.
2. Have a Routine and… STICK TO IT
Manage your email lists from the beginning, to lessen time spent cleaning in the long run. You should schedule a time each week or month (depending on how frequent your email blasts are) where you sit down to review how your audience are engaging with your email content, and sort through any bounced emails. Bounced emails are the emails returned to your email server as ‘undeliverable’ and identify which email addresses are no longer valid.
Having a consistent routine not only allows you to fully understand real-time engagement statistics (e.g. what your audience is or isn’t interested in via ‘click through’ and ‘unsubscribe’ stats) but it will also make your job so much easier when it comes time to train others on how to manage your company’s email lists.
3. Keep It Real
Do the addresses that make up your list(s) belong to real and relevant recipients, that you recognize? A few ways to check this include referring to location stats or checking the domain location, and sending out personalized ‘update details/feedback’ emails each quarter.
You want your lists to contain high-quality recipients, rather than high quantity – so don’t ever bother buying email marketing lists (especially now that the new GDPR has been implemented). An easy way to find quality contacts is in real life via exchanging business cards at every networking event and trade show that you attend.
4. Make it Personal
This trick is one that focuses on keeping a loyal audience – which will in turn keep those lists of yours happy and healthy.
So, the trick is to make sure your content resonates with every single member of your audience. There are enough ways to effectively, and ethically, know each and every individual on your list(s) through statistical data collection. On platforms like Clikcloud, you can also include personal fields that will automatically generate an individual’s details (e.g. name, email address) based on the information you have stored, giving every email a personal touch.
5. Ensure that it’s Easy for People to Subscribe and Unsubscribe
Is there an easy-to-find ‘subscribe’ button on your website’s home and contact page, and all other ‘most visited’ pages? Do your social media pages regularly invite viewers to sign up for your quality email content? Do you confidently and concisely explain to your audience the value of signing up for your emails, at the right moments? If you answered ‘No’ to any of these – contact us now.
Basically, if you don’t give potentially interested people the opportunity to sign up to your email list then they probably don’t realize that you send regular informative emails, and you miss out on new sign-ups. Conversely, sometimes people just no longer need your services or knowledge, so having an easy way to ‘unsubscribe’ will allow them to remove themselves and will keep you compliant with GDPR.