Email List Management Best Practices In 2021

One of the company’s most valuable assets is its email marketing list. From it, the company has information not only from e-mail addresses but also from contacts of customers, prospects and people who may become great consumers of your business. However, to achieve good results in your actions, you need to do very efficient in email list management. Want to know how? Then continue reading this post!

The return of email marketing

A report released by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) pointed out that the return on investment through this campaign format is, on average, 4000% (that’s right, 4 thousand, we don’t put an extra zero!). This means that it surpasses social media, SEM ( Search Engine Marketing ).

“But how is it that so many people are still against this wonder?”, You may be wondering. The answer is simple: it is not enough to send electronic messages, it is necessary to take care (very well!) Of your mailing.

What is the best practice for email list building?

These 5 simple steps guarantee a flood of contacts for your business:

Preparing to generate Leads
Initial configurations and offers for generating Leads
Creation of Landing Page for conversion
Landing Page promotion for new visitors
Evaluation of results and planning of next steps

We will detail each of the following steps:

1. Preparation for generating Leads

It all starts with a basic question: why do I want to generate Leads? This issue is important to align expectations. Lead generation is an investment in the relationship and bears fruit in the long run. In general, the higher the ticket and the complexity of the purchase, the more the Lead should be educated until deciding on the purchase.

Take for example the difference in the process of purchasing a course at a university and a cell phone case. While in the first case the buyer weighs a series of characteristics before closing a deal, in the second, he usually buys in an impulsive and unplanned way.

In this context, it is clear that the education company has much more perspective of being able to direct Lead through information and relationships than the mobile accessories store. But even she can see value in relating to a base and making occasional sales if she thinks about the long term.

It is time to reflect on a second question: what kind of Leads am I looking for? To answer it, we need to know who the consumers of our product or service are.

A good way to formalize this information is through the creation of personas, which is the personification of the characteristics of your consumer. The more the Lead looks like your ideal persona, the greater the chances of him becoming your customer.

Being fully aware the second answer is the basis for the final question: how to attract the interest of these Leads? Here it is up to us to think about the best possible offer for our personas and where to communicate it so that the right people can find it. We know that each business is unique and therefore these choices will vary according to the segment.

Throughout the text, we will detail the main types of offers and acquisition channels better, so that we can put our first hypothesis into practice.

2. Initial configurations and offers for generating Leads

Among so many possibilities of offers to attract Leads, it is up to you to identify what is most interesting to your audience. We separated the possible baits into four large groups according to the cost-benefit and the indication of the use of each one.

2.1 Content

They are eBooks, webinars and short courses, all with the aim of educating Leads on how they can solve a problem or take advantage of a business opportunity. Empowering the market gives your company authority over search engines like Google.

2.2 Tools

These are simple spreadsheets and templates, which help Lead to recognize a problem or solve it. The interesting thing about this type of offer is the ability to attract advanced Leads in the purchase process, who are looking for ways to put their ideas into practice.

An example is our Marketing Automation Planning worksheet, which helps you think about what content to create and how to organize it within a Marketing Automation flow.

2.3 Promotion

It is a classic but still very effective way of drawing attention. Discount coupons or sweepstakes are examples of this type of resource, whose great advantage is the potential for buzz and virtualization.

An important caveat: be careful not to attract Leads that have little or nothing to do with your persona. Sometimes people can come who just want the prize and have no interest in creating a relationship with their business.

2.4 Contact offers

Examples are the contact links on the company’s website, budget requests and the marketing assessment request, in the case of RD. As these are Lead requests for the company, these offers are able to bring more advanced people in the purchase process, who have clear doubts or are evaluating the acquisition of your solution.

It is worth noting that the company often has internal materials that can serve very well as an offer. Be it a manual, training for the team or a spreadsheet used in the work routine, it is up to you to think about what is relevant to share with your audience.

3. Creation of Landing Page for conversion

Having defined the most relevant offer for your target audience, ask for the user’s information in return. For this, we use a Landing Page, a page designed exclusively for conversion and designed to generate the least possible friction in this action. The elements that must be observed when creating a Landing Page are:

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Doing SEO is a way to make your offer more likely to be found by those who search for it on tools like Google. Generally, offers are interesting and tend to have some repercussions, so the page has a lot of potentials to be in good positions.

Conversion optimization

Here think of the text that explains the offer. It should convey to the visitor the value and benefit of the content and be professionally designed. In the conversion form, include fields that reveal essential user information.

After conversion, the Lead is usually directed to the company’s home page. Our tip is to make better use of this moment, taking the user to a thank you page that offers a second offer, related to the previous one. We have gathered in this link everything you need to know about thank you pages.

We know that this third step can be difficult for those starting out in Digital Marketing, but ready-made templates can help in the technical part of the job. Also, don’t forget to create your privacy policy observing the LGPD rules and make it clear on the page, because only then can you use the information for an email list.

4. Promotion of Landing Page for new visitors

This step will help us to better understand how to answer the third question of the preparation, dealing with where we will seek visitors with potential for the Landing Page created. Below is a survey of the main acquisition channels:

Social media

You can use social networks, yours and those of the company, to indicate the offer and the Landing Page. More than that, remember to encourage people to share the offer: either via buttons on the Landing Page or via confirmation / thank you email etc.

CTA on website and blog

A cheap alternative that generates results is the use of banners and links on your own website and blog. Here are some tips on how to get your Calls-to-Action noticed and clicked. Links and calls throughout posts on topics related to the offer can work very well.

Paid Media

Working with paid media on Facebook, Google, Linked In or any other channel is an option with great potential and measurable return. Each of them has its peculiarities, but in short, they all use the power to segment users to direct a precise message to potential leads and customers.

The paid media, although demanding a financial investment, has great power to generate results in the short term.

Theme discussion groups

On Facebook, Linked In or other specialized platforms, find groups in which your potential market is present. Interacting with users is an inexpensive and effective way to attract qualified visitors.

Co-marketing

A golden tip is to try to share the action with other companies whose target audience is common to yours. The scope of the offer will be expanded with little effort or additional investment, benefiting both parties. Learn more about how to amplify your results using co-marketing in this post.

5. Evaluation of results and planning of next steps

Depending on the complexity of the product and the quality of the Lead generated, the sales cycle can vary widely. Therefore, do not rush to analyze the return generated by a crop of Leads.

Probably many of the users will still be educated or worked on by salespeople months after the conversion. You can predict the results to come by looking at previous stages of the sale.

It is important to monitor how your strategy is doing, analyzing each period and understanding the prospects. We suggest two basic studies to measure and optimize your efforts:

Lead Qualification

Of the Leads generated, how many have the desired profile and appear to be perfect for your company? Does that seem to be enough?

These are the customers you are looking for and, even if they have not completed the purchase, they are a good indication that you are on the right path.

Afterward, there will be adjustments in the nutrition of Leads, in the sales process and in other channels. But this is a good indicator of whether the actions have worked so far or not.

Origin of results

Among the channels you have been working on, which ones are largely responsible for your results? How much has it cost to generate a qualified Lead on each channel? This analysis will help you understand which efforts have worked, what needs to be corrected and which strategies to invest more in.

The analysis becomes more complex as your company evolves and Digital Marketing actions increase. Rest assured that the initial steps presented in this post are enough for you to start from scratch and generate Leads.

How to do an email list management?

The question here is: how to manage the email list management guarantee at least a share of the 4,000% ROI ( Return on Investment )? We have separated some actions to help you in the email list management. Check out!

Update base contacts

If you have a good customer base, how about making it a good email marketing list as well? Periodically update your contacts to ensure that they continue to receive your material. This can also be a great chance to win potential customers for your base.

Delete old contacts

Also, don’t forget to delete those emails that don’t interest you from your list. If you’ve already sent more than twenty campaigns and the person hasn’t opened any, the only thing they’re doing is lowering their open rate. Take a specific action to try to hook these contacts, but, if there is no return, nothing pity: delete.

Include new contacts

Use a subscription field on your website, take advantage of the newsletter subscription on CTAs for blog posts and think of other ways to win emails from more people. Expand your base to get more leads and close more sales. One detail: don’t forget to qualify them!

Target

A good list is one that has segments. You can separate by interests, product lines/brands, customers, prospects … Define according to your business and your marketing objectives. Thus, you only send what is interesting to your contact base.

Use a good shooting tool

There is no point in doing all this work if you don’t have a good firing platform. Research and invest in the one that offers you the best cost/benefit.

Email list management in Excel?

Imagine a table in which you manage many email addresses and their names in different columns. You now want to generate hyperlinks from this in a new column, which displays the name and sends an e-mail after clicking.

In newer versions, Excel automatically stores mail addresses with a link. However, this will not work if you imported the data from another data source or created it in earlier versions of Excel. This is how it always works:

Use the HYPERLINK function. It requires the arguments “HyperlinkAddress” and “Display name”. Assume that your table contains the e-mail addresses in column A and the corresponding names in column B. The list starts on line 2, as in the following figure:

Then enter the following formula in the cell in which the hyperlink should appear (for example cell C2):

= HYPERLINK (“mailto:” & A2; B2)

The addition “mailto:” means that your e-mail program will be opened after clicking the hyperlink. The formula enters the email address behind it. You pass the text that is displayed in the cell with the argument B2.

Now just drag this formula down and you will get a new column in which all mail addresses can be clicked immediately, as the following figure shows: