Email Marketing: Do I need a mailing list and what should I do with it?

Email marketing isn’t new and has fallen out of favour for some businesses as a marketing tool. So, is email marketing still relevant, and should your business be doing it?

Thursday 20 January 2022

Email Marketing: Do I need a mailing list and what should I do with it?

A very brief history of email marketing

Believe it or not, the first marketing email was sent in 1978 and generated $13million in sales! By the late 90s, the novelty factor had worn off and email providers created junk folders in response to consumers intolerance of ‘spam.’ We also saw new data protection regulations making opt-out compulsory for all communications.
Today we have GDPR and iOS 15 Mail Privacy Protection to deal with as well, which leads us to the question….

Why should we bother with email marketing?

Like all digital marketing channels, you need to decide if you have time and resources to do it. You may need to swap it for something else or outsource to make it work. Here are 5 reasons why you might want to add it to your toolbox.

1. You own the data

When you create a mailing list, that data belongs to you so you can interact with it whenever and however you want (within GDPR guidelines). When you build up followers on social media, those followers belong to the social media company. If your profile was deleted or the social media platform decided to close (remember Bebo?), then you lose all of those contacts. When Facebook and Instagram went down last year, businesses without a mailing list couldn’t contact their customers. It’s good to not have all your eggs in the social media basket.

2. It’s a great way to generate traffic to your website

By giving people direct links to new products, services and blogs on your website, you should see an increase in visitor numbers to those pages. This can also help with your SEO as search engines will see the increase in traffic/engagement with the page and think it must be worth sending people there.

3. You can segment your audiences

With social media, all your followers will see the same message unless you set up sub-accounts for different parts of your business.
With email marketing, you can segment your mailing list so that you can send targeted emails to the people most likely to be interested. Imagine you started stocking a new product targeted at 50+women. You can filter your mailing list to send it only to people within that category, depending on how much information you store in your mailing list.

Word of caution: Make sure any data you hold on a person meets GDPR guidelines and has a purpose, the most common for marketing being ‘legitimate interest.’ For example, asking for a date of birth so you can offer a birthday discount or provide tailored marketing better suited to the customer. Your reasons for collecting data, how you will store it and what you will do with it must be included in your Privacy Policy. Find out more about that on the ICO website, or speak to a solicitor.

4. You can see what works best with A/B testing

A/B testing is when you send out two versions to an audience with just a small tweak to see which one performs better. In the 2021 presidential campaign, Obama’s team tested several different email headers as part of their fundraising efforts. The best performing headline raised $2.2millon more than the worst performing headline would have for the campaign.

5. Provides a way to build a relationship

People choose to be on your mailing list, so you’re already starting with a warm audience. You can nurture that relationship to help them become a loyal customer, but you will need to put some effort in to work out the best frequency, type of content and style of email that will work best for you and your customers.

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Golden rule: No-one likes an email stalker. How many Black Friday ‘last chance’ emails did you receive?

Ready to give email marketing a try?

If you would like to give it a go, there are lots of email marketing tools out there such as Mailchimp, Mailerlite, Hubspot. They are pretty easy to use and most have a free starter package based on the number of contacts in your database.

Start collecting contacts for your mailing list through signups on your website, opt-ins at checkout, lead generation ads on social media (targeted to your followers). Some people find it useful to use a ‘Lead Magnet’ such as discounts or a free guide to download when you sign up. Have a think about what might work for you.

If you need some advice or help getting started, get in touch for a free consultation with Ivyhill Digital.