For Digital Marketing Managers, building your email subscription list is one of several email marketing goals within your overall digital marketing objectives, but keeping a high percentage of your email subscribers engaged with you is another subject. To increase your email subscribers engagement with you and prevent an unsubscribes, you need to start building relationships at the moment an email subscriber gives you their email address.

From the beginning of an email subscribers relationship with your brand, take these 7 steps to start building relationships:

1. Answer “What’s in it for Me?”
2. Tell Subscribers what Type of Content you will Send
3. Let Subscribers know the Frequency of your Emails
4. Reinforce their Privacy
5. Inform them about their Welcome Email
6. Send the Welcome Email
7. Give Subscribers Choices at a Subscription Center

1. Answer “What’s in it for Me” – Tell them right up front how you will meet their needs if they give you their email address.  Make sure your potential email subscribers can answer the “What’s it for me?” before they give you their email address.  This will decrease the number of unsubscribes on the welcome email because they know you can fulfill their needs.

2. Tell Subscribers what Type of Content you will Send – Inform your subscribers what type of information will appear in their emails.  Will you send product updates, general information, coupons, etc? You may even want to show a thumbnail email example. If they know what to expect, you can increase your chances of them opening your emails.

3. Let Subscribers know the Frequency of your Emails – Indicate how many emails they should receive from you in a week or in a month.

4. Reinforce their Privacy – Let your subscribers become comfortable and build trust in you.  Reinforce that their information is safe with you, and you will not share their data with anyone.

5. Inform them about their Welcome Email – When subscribers first give
you their email address tell them that they should receive a Welcome Email. This is a good time to monitor delivery of your Welcome emails.

6. Welcome Email – You should include the following:

• Thank You
• Remind them about what they should expect from you and when to expect it
• Ask them to whitelist your email address
• Link to the Subscription Center where they control their subscription

7. Give Subscribers Choices at a Subscription Center – When subscribers are logged into your website, give them access to a Subscription Center where they can edit their information, control what emails you send them, and control how frequently they receive emails from you.

By telling email subscribers what they should expect from you, they will start to build trust with you.  By allowing them to tell you what messages you send them and how often they receive your email messages, you give them control over your interaction with them.  Through these steps, you are starting a relationship at the very beginning. By creating a relationship, you create trust and can start conversations, and then, your email subscribers can start engaging with the emails you send and engage with your brands.

Experian Marketing Services just released it’s 2013 Email Marketing Study. Of the marketers included in the study, For Customer preferences, 60% of the companies do not give their customers an option in the types of emails they receive. If you start asking your customers what type of email they want to receive from you, you can separate yourself from everyone else and be unique.

Responses to the “Can your customers select the types of emails they want to receive?” from Experian Marketing Services 2013 Email Marketing Study.

If you establish a relationship in the beginning, you can increase your chances of engagement with your email subscribers and decrease the chance of unsubscribes.

Source:

Marketo‘s The Definitive Guide to Engaging Email Marketing

Experian Marketing Services 2013 Email Marketing Study

Additional Email Marketing Information

• For more Welcome email examples go to Send Smarter
• 5 Smarty-Pants Ways to Collect Emails from Facebook Fans
• B2C Email Marketing – Boosts in Revenue-per-Email via Customer Appreciation Promotion
• Email Marketing Case Study – Dell lifts revenue 109% using Animated GIF’s

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough