Today on the Demand Gen Pod, Episode 19, In this podcast episode, Ryan discusses the importance of building a high- quality email list. He emphasizes that using good email lists leads to successful email marketing and a great experience for both businesses and audiences. Ryan suggests several strategies for building great lists, such as creating great content, optimizing website forms for better conversions, promoting subscriptions on social media and hosting webinars or events, and utilizing partnerships or collaborations with other companies. He also mentions the use of lead magnets to encourage email subscriptions. Ryan highlights the importance of ethical considerations when building these lists, including being transparent about data usage consent and providing an easy opt-out option. He explains that businesses should follow data privacy regulations like CCPA and ensure that opting out is simple without requiring account logins. Furthermore, Ryan discusses double opt-in mechanisms as a way to confirm subscribers’ interests while reducing spam complaints and eliminating incorrect email addresses from the list. He advises implementing segmentation based on demographic data, behavioral data (such as past purchases or engagement levels), preferences, and interests to send more relevant content. Ryan concludes by emphasizing permission-based marketing practices like gaining explicit opt-ins from subscribers who have given their consent and consistently delivering value and relevance through emails. Implementing double opt-in mechanisms can convert the list into a high-quality one with reduced risk of spam complaints. He encourages listeners to subscribe to the podcast on various platforms before wrapping up the episode.
Summary notes from Episode 19:
Importance of using good email lists for successful email marketing Ways to
build great email lists: provide great content, optimize website forms,
promote subscriptions, use partnerships, leverage lead magnets Ethical
considerations in email list building: transparency on data usage, easy opt-
out options, compliance with data privacy regulations Double opt-in process
explained for obtaining explicit consent List cleaning and maintenance: remove
inactive or disengaged subscribers, reduce bounce rates, improve
deliverability, ensure accurate data for targeted emails Handling inactive
subscribers: reengagement campaigns, offering incentives, providing
unsubscribe options, segmenting for personalized messages Segmentation leads
to more relevant and personalized content Use demographic data for
segmentation and dynamic content Dynamic content tailored based on user
actions or preferences, improves engagement and deliverability Personalization
in emails increases open rates, click-through rates, reduces unsubscribes and
spam complaints
Full Transcript:
00:01
Welcome to the demand gen pod. My name is Ryan. Today we are talking about building high quality email lists and why it’s so important. And some of these things may sound really obvious, but if you’re in a situation where you feel as though your emails are not performing very well, we’re going to talk about maybe some of the reasons why. And even if you do think they’re performing well, these are some things to kind of double check and make sure that you’re keeping up and honest about. So let’s get going. Listen, it’s so important for us to use good email lists because it leads to successful email marketing and it also allows our business to have and the audiences to have a great experience doing so right.
00:42
So we really want to be able to reach targeted audiences who have expressed interest in our products or our services. And some of those benefits extend beyond that because you get increased conversion rates, improved customer retention, personalized communication opportunities. And it’s also significantly cheaper, particularly if you have large lists and you’re paying for those contacts inside of marketing automation tool or a CRM, then you’re paying for those people you want to make sure they actually want to be hearing from you, especially in your marketing automation tool. A couple of things you can do here for building great lists is including things like great content, optimizing your website forms for better conversions, promoting subscriptions on social hosting webinars or events, and utilizing partnerships or collaborations with other companies. And you can leverage things like website pop ups and lead magnets.
01:35
And lead magnets are pretty much anything that requires an email address or some sort of conversion in order to receive. So it might be signing up for a text message in order to get a discount. It might be submitting a form with your email address in order to get an ebook or some sort of exclusive content, discounts or promotions, things like that. So all of those encourage email subscriptions and you can leverage all of them, but at the end of the day, it’s sort of like a give and take. So you’re getting something and you’re giving something in order to get what you want, which would ideally be the email address. Some ethical considerations though, when you’re building these out, let’s think about being transparent about your data usage consent that they’re supplying.
02:19
They’re providing you their consent in order to take their email and what you’re going to be doing with it. Also, let’s make sure that we use a really easy opt out option and we follow data privacy regulations and things like CCPA. They have requirements in there on how easy it is to opt out. You’re not allowed to require somebody to log in to an account, for example, to manage to unsubscribe. You could allow somebody to log into an account to manage preferences, but you cannot force somebody to create an account in order to unsubscribe from emails. There needs to be an easy option. So two things to keep in mind here. One you could do in your opt out section of your email, you could simply have it say opt out. Click this button to opt out.
03:06
One touch opt out, they click the button, they’re opted out, end of story. Okay, you could have managed preferences without an immediate opt out. If you have a managed preferences button, which is definitely, I would say, preferred, you can have different options for what they can opt in and opt out of. But there just needs to be a simple option down at the bottom or at the top to say opt me out of all communications. I don’t want to hear from you anymore. So both of those are fine. You don’t have to have a one button opt out inside of an email to be compliant. You just need to make it easy. So the not easy version of that is log in to manage preferences. And if you haven’t logged in, then create an account to manage preferences. You cannot do that.
03:43
That won’t fly. Businesses can also ensure opt ins and consent are obtained from customers by using really clear language, providing checkboxes on consent forms. You don’t necessarily have to opt everybody in if they submit forms. This is probably more relevant to bigger companies. So if somebody doesn’t want to hear from you, allow them to tell you that when they’re submitting a form. So they might want to hear from sales regarding something, but they may not want to hear from marketing. And you can provide checkboxes to allow them to do that. You can also provide checkboxes not for like a global opt in, but specific list opt ins as well. So if you have, for example, a contact us form, you could add a checkbox to be signed up for your mailing list as well for some sort of monthly newsletter that goes out.
04:24
So you can do that as well. And then the other thing that you could certainly consider is implementing double opt in mechanisms and then obviously making sure that you have a privacy policy. Double opt in, for those of you who don’t know, is relatively straightforward. Sometimes it’s managed entirely by your marketing automation tool. Sometimes you actually have to build it. But the way that it works is that you submit a form that then sends an email to the form submission, whoever submitted the form. So the contact, and then the contact needs to click another button to say, yes, I am choosing to opt in. So they don’t actually get opted in until they click that button. That then goes back to your marketing automation tool and that is what actually opts them in.
05:05
But just because they submit the form, they are still required to go and click the button in the email. Why? What does this do? Okay, so it is a point of friction, which generally speaking I would say is a bad thing. But at the same time it does an additional thing for you, which is really confirm that they actually want to provide their email address and they actually want to hear from you. This will translate to, I suppose, one obvious factor. You get a valid email address. So that’s great. You’re now not opting somebody in who has an invalid email address and then turns out that email either bounces or whatever, you know that it’s valid. That’s the best part of it. The second best part is that by providing that second opt in, they are now seeing things like your brand.
05:49
They’re actively integrating and leveraging your email and your brand. And so they’re clicking through it, right. So they’re engaging. That’s the word that I wanted. And then additionally you have the opportunity to link them over to another page that tells them more about the company, more about the offers, more about the products. So that’s also really good. And then that trickles down. So while I’m not so sure the trickle down economics works, this definitely works. Trickling down. And what you have the ability to do is really know that the people who are clicking that and opting in are way more likely to open your emails in the future, way more likely to click through. So all of your numbers we talked about benchmarks, I think just two weeks ago are going to go up. Everything’s going to go up because everything is doing.
06:36
Everything that you’re sending, you are sending the people who have provided a double opt in enough on that. And then the privacy policy, if you don’t have a privacy policy, you can literally google it. It’s not that complicated. Just make sure that you swap things out. And you also make sure that you read it so that you understand what you’re actually agreeing to. And then make sure that you have the steps in place in order to do that. The best practices for obtaining explicit consent, you can use things like a GDPR compliant consent statement, which you can also search for. You can also provide context for why the data is being collected and then make sure they understand how they can easily modify their preferences as well. And that can all be done inside of a footer.
07:17
It can be done on a thank you page, it can be done on the form as well. And then in order to be able to stay compliant, what you really need to do beyond obtaining that consent is explain how data is going to be used. So are you going to sell it? Are you not going to sell it? Are you going to use it simply to send emails? Is it going to be marketing emails? Are they going to hear from sales what happens? Are you going to text them? You can also request opt ins for each of those steps. So you could request opt ins for I agree to receive marketing emails, I agree to receive phone calls, I agree to receive text messages. So you could opt into each of those and then you could follow those rules for each person.
07:58
Just make sure that you’re including these things with your email sent. So if they’ve opted into phone but not email, then make sure that you’re not opting them into email at all. We already had a whole episode on this, but the next step is list cleaning and maintenance. So I’m not going to spend a ton of time here, but list cleaning and maintenance is really important because it allows you to maintain that high quality email list and remove people who have been inactive or disengaged. It also reduces bounce rates, it improves deliverability, and it ensures that you have accurate data. And when you have accurate data, you can do more targeted emails. So you can use that to send targeted emails. Hello, first name. We know that your birthday is this. We know that your phone number is this.
08:46
We know that your last purchase with us was this. So you have all of that data. And when you know and you trust it makes life a lot easier in order to make things like dynamic content and to really target lists, kind of cohorts within your main database and have different segments. It’s also really nice to just be able to remove those bounced or invalid email addresses and so you have an accurate number when you’re going to send something to you can practice. The practice of actually cleaning lists goes beyond just getting rid of bounced in or valid email addresses. You can also work before you remove people who are not engaging, making sure that you’re actually sending them things. So reengaging inactive subscribers and targeting the engaged subscribers. You can even split them.
09:35
We’ve talked about that too in the past, where you’re actually splitting them into two different groups. You’re targeting unengaged contacts. And you’re also targeting engaged contacts in the exact same sending them the exact same email with two different segments so that you can see them differently. How are they behaving differently? So something else to keep in mind there. Now, you can also handle inactive subscribers by sending them reengagement campaigns. You can offer them exclusive content or incentives. You can provide options to unsubscribe or modify their preferences, and you can also segment them to make them as personalized as you can with those messages. Something else that you could do. I know it sounds somewhat counterintuitive, but particularly if you add an opportunity for them to receive something. We have a client who actually started building.
10:28
We’re actually sending it about, well, sent 8 minutes ago. So we did a three way test, but what we ended up doing was we sent a survey to customers who had lapsed and they had lapsed by twelve months or more. So this is going back pretty far. And we sent them a survey. Why, you think the response rate is going to be pretty poor. But the upside is that we’re offering them a pretty substantial reward for doing it. And so maybe we got 50. I think we have about 50 thank you boxes. They’re worth several hundred dollars each. That’s how valuable this information is. And we’re just trying to not only reengage people, but also understand why they left. So why do they leave? How can we change things for the future?
11:07
And in return they get a reward, which is a thank you box of goodies. So beyond that and kind of leading into it segmentation. Right. So the segmentation really contributes to the quality of an email list by allowing us to target specific interests or specific demographics or specific behaviors. And that really results in more relevant and personalized content. And that’s really helpful. So whether you use it to do dynamic content, you use it to just segment different emails. So you send one email to one group, another email to another group, or if those emails overlap in content except for specific areas, then you might use dynamic content in there instead. And you can segment those lists, like I mentioned, using demographic data.
11:51
So that’s like age, location, behavioral data like past purchases or engagement levels, what they actually engaged with, and then preferences and interests as indicated by your subscribers. How do you calculate things like that? So how do you capture them? So you can capture things like preferences and interests? Well, through email or your website, right. So if you’re tracking somebody on the website, you know that they’ve engaged in certain product pages, they’ve engaged on certain blog posts, they have indicated through links that they’ve clicked inside of emails that they are looking at specific products or specific services. You can use all of that data, assuming that you’re capturing it, you can use all of that data in order to actually decide where somebody’s going to go, what they might see or what they might not see as well.
12:36
So dynamic content doesn’t necessarily mean there’s two versions, one for one group and one for another, meaning that there’s actually some content there for both of them. You might just have, if you meet criteria a, then you don’t see anything special, nothing changes. You don’t see anything at all for this section. And if you are in group b, then you are going to go and you’re going to see some additional snippet or something like that. One thing that we do, for example, in this regard is we have dynamic content in emails where if somebody’s completed a contact form, it won’t keep showing them contact us here. So if we’ve already had somebody who’s converted and they’re maybe an account or something with us, then they might receive marketing emails still, because our marketing emails might be helpful for people like the podcast, right?
13:24
But we’re not going to keep saying, we’re not going to dedicate a section of the email to say, click here to contact us because they’ve already contacted us and we’re already talking to them in other regards. And that doesn’t make any sense. So that’s one way. We just don’t show anything in that situation. Unless you haven’t submitted a contact form and then we would show it to you. But that personalization really improves engagement and deliverability. It helps to provide really relevant content. I think my example is a pretty good one there and then it really does end up enhancing the subscriber experience.
13:58
And I think that something to keep in mind, again, whether you’re adding something or you’re just not including something, it enhances the subscriber experience because they’re either seeing something that’s relevant to them or they are not seeing something which is not relevant to them. So two ways to think about that. The result, increased open rates, increased click through rates, and you are also going to see reduced unsubscribes and spam rates, spam complaints. And hopefully your spam complaints are really low anyway because you’re engaging your subscribers and they’re only doing opt ins or double opt ins and you’re not scraping them because that leads to all of those things. High unsubscribes high spam complaint, low click through rate, low open rate.
14:43
So as you’re going through all of this, that permission based marketing practice of gaining permission only, including subscribers who have explicitly opted in and providing an easy way to opt out and then respecting their preferences, really important and consistently delivering value and relevance, all of these are going to help. Implementing the double opt in mechanism really converts your list to a super high quality list. By confirming their interests, it will reduce your risk of spam complaints, it will completely eliminate your incorrect email addresses. And then you just want to make sure that if somebody submits a form and they get the double opt in and then they don’t actually finish opting in, you need to make sure that you’re taking care of that and getting rid of them right?
15:28
Deleting them out of the system because you don’t want them there if they didn’t actually go and finally opt in. Speaking of opting in, I would really love it if you have the opportunity to please subscribe to the podcast wherever you get it, whether it’s on YouTube or on Spotify or Apple Music, wherever you listen to it. That would be great. Thank you very much. And with that, I think that we’re pretty much wrapped up for the day. So again, gone through a whole bunch of stuff. And then next week we are chatting about, what is it? Next week we’re chatting about building out meaningful attribution reporting, which I think will be a lot of fun to discuss that. And we will see you in March. Thanks so much.