The biggest problem with email marketing is acquiring a list of good potential customers. I am constantly asked about purchasing lists. But the problem with that is the quality of the list. Email list sellers purchase their lists from other sources. You don’t know who else may have also purchased those addresses, what list those subscribers signed up for originally, or the date those subscribers signed up. While the company selling the list may say it’s “Opt-In” or “Verified,” you have no idea what content they first signed up for. So it is almost certain you will have a lot of unsubscribed recipients and poor open rates.
To keep people from unsubscribing and get them to open your emails, you need a list of people who know you, and are interested in what you have to say. The right way to do this is to seek those people out. You may already have a lot of potential subscribers in your address book. You may have company records with emails of people who have done business with you already. These are some quick ways to get emails from people that know you and would be interested in what you have to say.But if you want to find good new prospects, it takes effort and possibly some financial investment. The most common way to build a good quality list for your business is to gather emails from people you contact directly. Some of the best ways to do this are:
- Ask people who visit your business to subscribe to your newsletters. They are almost always your best prospects because they know you and your business.
- Ask people to register for a chance to win something from you at events. Make sure you display the rules of the contest or sweepstakes. Include in the rules that when they register they are agreeing to subscribe to your newsletter. Chances are, if you are attending an event, many of the other people attending are interested in you or your business.
- Make sure you have an email signup form on your website.
- Do on line contests or offer free information when people sign up with their email addresses.
But the Fastest, easiest, and one of the best ways to gather emails from people who may be good prospects for your business is with Facebook. What makes Facebook so good is its ability to target by life style. It is relatively easy to do and you will get fast results. But there is an investment.
We have been building email lists for our clients through Facebook for several years, and typically it costs from as little as 50¢ to $2.00 per email. Here’s how it works.
Run a sweepstakes and give away something a potential customer of yours would be interested in. If you sell RV’s, a gift certificate from Cabella’s might make a great gift. You can give away something you sell. That way you can be sure anyone interested in what you are giving away may be interested in what you are selling.
The next thing you do is to create a Facebook post that you can boost with information about your sweepstakes. Include a link in the post that will take them to a signup form. Of course you will need to have a signup form online. There are a lot of services where you can develop these forms. Below are just some suggestions.
- Easy Promo App – https://www.easypromosapp.com/facebook-sweepstakes/
- WishPond – https://www.wishpond.com/sweepstakes/
- Contests For Pages – https://apps.facebook.com/my-contests/?ref=aw
- Heyo – https://heyo.com/
- Votigo – https://www.votigo.com/
- Short Stack – https://www.shortstack.com/
Once you choose a good prize and develop your signup form you need to create a post that you can boost. Your post should have a picture, perhaps of the prize to be given away. But in order to boost it no more then one third of the picture can contain text. When you click on the boost button, you will be asked to create an audience. This is where you tell Facebook to whom you want to show your post. You can target by geographic area, age, and gender. But what makes Facebook most unique is you can also target by lifestyle. If your target audience is into sports you can tell Facebook to show your post to sports enthusiasts. If your target audience is looking for home remodeling you can tell Facebook to show your ad to people that watch HGTV. I recently ran a post targeting men who like Chevy Camaros. Sure enough, within a 50 mile radius Facebook was able to identify several thousand Chevy Camaro fans on Facebook.
If you want to build on to your email list or are starting from scratch and would like some help, give me a call. I’d be glad to talk with you and answer any questions you may have at no charge, no obligation.
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