Email Marketing: Turn Your Email Misses into Hits
For any professional who starts his career online, the greatest asset is undoubtedly his list of subscriber emails that he has been building in an Email Marketing strategy. So, if a subscriber is hard to come by, the road to becoming a customer is quite a feat. The first thing you must internalize is that a user's inbox is a sacred place and is reserved for the chosen ones because it is nothing less than the place where everything is decided and where the greatest commercial relationships are established. Not understanding this and not respecting this space is to condemn any strategy to the loudest of failures because if you manage to make your way to a user's inbox, but do not meet their expectations, you will be just one click away from ending up in the tray of spam, a place of impossible return. Whether due to clumsiness or ignorance, many professionals do not accept this reality and are not aware of how fragile the relationship with users is.
The Subscriber Mailing List: A Renewable Trust Agreement
Many professionals think that anything goes on the internet and that once they have an email address they are entitled to everything. The truth is that obtaining an email address rather implies a series of obligations that are not always sufficiently attended. When you learn to engage with your subscriber mailing lists effectively, it opens up an inexhaustible source of customers. You may not have yet reflected on all those responsibilities that you must assume since you capture an email and get ready to manage it, Seth Godin, the great master of permission marketing, defines it masterfully:
“The actual permit is different from the presupposed permit or the legal permit. Just because you have somehow gotten my email address doesn't mean you have permission. Just because I don't complain doesn't mean you have permission. The fact of writing it in the fine print of your privacy policy does not mean that you have permission. - Seth Godin
The fact that they have obtained an email in a lawful way does not mean that that address belongs to you and you can do whatever you want with it.The permit is something that you must constantly renew. It's like a love relationship, pretending that someone who has chosen you at some point will do so in perpetuity is reckless naivety. You must strive to be worthy of that trust and for this, you must be loyal, transparent and live up to the responsibility that means having the privilege of being in a user's inbox. If you know how to do it, you will be able to retain your mailing list, get customers constantly and make it grow indefinitely.
Mistakes You Should Never Make With Your Email List
Having mailing lists imposes the need to know how to manage them properly and legally, taking into account the rights of these users, their own professional ethics and having a sustainable strategy that allows those subscribers to become clients. The opposite of growing your email list is abusing the trust of your users and subscribers, therefore, avoid falling into any of the following catastrophic mistakes.
One of the worst mistakes you can make when managing a subscriber list, is buying subscribers and get them without user knowledge. Firstly, it is against the law to have emails whose holders have not provided, authorized or requested to be on your email list There is nothing more counterproductive from a marketing point of view than receiving commercial emails from companies or people that the recipient does not know at all Buying mailing lists is the online equivalent of gas company commercials that show up at your door without warning and without being invited to interrupt and compromise your privacy. You feel violent, overwhelmed and not willing to listen to what they have to tell you. It is unpleasant, intrusive, and violent.
The same happens when you break into an inbox of someone who has not authorized you to be there in any way and in no way. Therefore, this practice is the first that you should banish and instead, you should learn to get contacts in an organic and clean way. You must commit to never buying an email list or using unclear or misleading strategies to get them to subscribe to your list.
Other ways that you should banish if you want a healthy and close relationship with your users:
- Do not participate in a webinar, contest, etc. where users who sign up end up subscribed to 12 different lists without being notified
- Do not accept any exchange of subscribers or leads without them having been warned and having previously given their consent
- Do not use deceptive or tortious strategies to get them to subscribe, such as a sweepstakes for a trip to the Bahamas to similar, they will soon lose sight of you
- Never request personal data without warning of your true intentions and your complete data
- From a legal point of view, you must also remember that the data collection process imposes different obligations, the non-compliance of which can lead to complaints and sanctions, in addition to reducing your credibility.
Something you should NEVER forget:
When users commit to you based on their own convictions and in an act of free will, their commitment is more likely to last and grow. But for that commitment to be consistent, they must know in advance about your intentions and agree to them. Forcing, conditioning or using tricks to increase your list of subscribers is the worst business decision and believe me, you will soon regret it. Let the users freely decide to be part of your subscriber mailing list, without pressure, without urgent messages and without false promises. The secret of the success of a list of subscribers always depends on how you have obtained them.
It is always preferable to have 300 subscribers truly committed to your brand and convinced of the reasons why they want to be on your list than 3,000 who do not know exactly why they are receiving your emails. Therefore, getting an email cleanly is only a first step, you must avoid more mistakes if you want to keep it.
How to keep permission and get it back when you're losing it
1. Decide what you are NOT going to do
You have made a promise and generated an expectation to add subscribers to your list.It is important to understand what you have to do to fulfill it. But it is also important to know what you are NOT going to do to jeopardize the relationship and the trust they have given you.
2. Question your lost contacts
Why have they unsubscribed from your mailing list? This kind of information, if you can get it, is incredibly valuable.Frequently, it will reveal errors that you were making without realizing it and that have an easy solution, a fairly simple way to obtain this answer is by generating an autoresponder at the time of cancellation that allows the user to express the reason for their abandonment voluntarily.
3. Start a process to recover the lost relationship
If a person is not interested in a certain moment, it does not mean that you have lost them forever.Learn to identify users who are starting to cool down and try to seduce them again. If you notice that some subscribers have stopped opening or interacting with your messages, start a follow-up process to get them back.
If you have an email list full of subscribers you have a treasure. Not only must you know how to take care of it, you must also assume the responsibility of managing it properly if you want to preserve it and make it grow. Follow these tips and you will see how you will quickly distance yourself from your competition.