Research shows that most organizations have email addresses for less than 10% of their regular mail files. So how can you create an equal footing and begin to add quality permission - email addresses based on your database? Before I tell you about all the basic that you could do I would like to point out an incredible tool that will help you build email lists for prospects in no time at all. This tool is called eBase Builder and it gives you a response rate of in excess of 50%. More about this tool later on. 

Here are some tips you can use to build your database of e-mail addresses and increase your customer participation and retention rates.

If you do not ask you do not get – so start to ask for it!

Any point of contact or communication with a customer should start or end with a request for an e-mail. Using the four points below, you should be able to add email addresses for 5% to 10% of your postal file over a year.

Think about how much time and money spent on copying the design and the last new piece of direct mail. Most companies have started to ask customers to provide their e-mail this way. While this is a great step forward, companies must look to a major improvement if they want to add more email addresses to their collection. So far, most requests for information by e-mail have been forced, pushed or jammed in the blank space that is left somewhere on the letter. It should come as no surprise that the success rate is less than stellar. To improve this response rate you need to use better tools which I will talk about later.  

Many companies have added an e-mail collection to their website. To improve the registration rates, they added a text box below the email request that informs visitors of the special email benefits that they will receive (eg, newsletters, purchase confirmations, the delivery of updates, etc) during registration.
You can also use pop-up link to inform users of these special benefits. The problem here is that the results are dismal since most people value their e-mail addresses and so not went to get their account jammed up by spam. It needs a strong argument to make them part with their e-mail address.

What has been done so far and with bad results?

You send a letter or flyer that states “Sign up for our newsletter” and you can expect a response rate of less than 0.1 percent unless your newsletter is written by a celebrity. 

You ask them to “ go to our website and register to WIN” . As this will definitely increase the chances that people are registering, you still end up with a registration of less than 5 %.

What we found in many tests is that the only thing that works to make people give up their e-mail address is the curiosity that they may miss something if they do not act. That is why this product eBase Builder works so well. It is an add on to a website that allows you to create a list of random number or letter strings and then assign them to different prize levels and prizes.

So you can give away a good prize like an iPad and you assign it to a random number in the list of numbers. Now you send out a mailer or flyer that is mail merged and has a unique number on each letter/flyer that asks: “Did you win this iPad? To check go to this website and enter your personal code.” No curiosity will make more than 50 % of all people who see the letter and read it go to the site to check if their number is actually the winner. It is actually amazing. Once at your website they will need to supply their e-mail address and name to proceed to the area that checks the code. You want to remind them that it is a good idea to supply correct information as they need to be contacted if they win. You may also asked more than just the e-mails address but that is up to you. Just remember that more people will bounce if you ask for too much too fast.

Now the system will check for the winning number and then display what ever it is that the person won. You can make everybody a winner by defining 9999 coupons as 2^nd price. With this little tool you can really build a great list of prospects for any industry.

 

Remember to ask members of an existing customer base for email addresses of your friends, family and associates. Viral marketing is a powerful tool to use and very profitable! You can ask them to provide additional addresses or simply send your newsletter, email specific offers or other information to each other, have similar interests.
 

Do not assume that your telemarketing agents are asking for email addresses of potential customers. Make sure the agents are updated script, which describes the benefits described above to potential customers to provide their e-mail. The above suggestions are a good start! However, what really should be considered as a secondary plan for building the database of e-mail. For the rapid and exponential growth of database e-mail, please keep reading!

5. Email Appending

The use of an e-mail appending service allows you to add email addresses for up to 25% of your postal file, all within 3-4 weeks. Appending E-mail is the process of adding a e-mail addresses to individual addresses of your existing database. This is achieved by matching the postal codes against a third permission based database for emails

This process is tricky as it becomes harder to find good shared address bases that also include the address details. If you have a large database and would like to add e-mail addresses, this is one way of achieving this. I still prefer a mailing to my address list using ebase Builder and – bingo- you got 60% of all clients e-mail address for the cost of a nice prize. 

IN SUMMARY

The first step in any e-mail marketing strategy is to build a list of successful permission-based e-mail clients. The simplest, quickest and most convenient way to do this is through the addition of e-mail addresses. And the best tool I found remains eBase Builder, especially at less than $30 for the software module.

This is building your email address collection via focused direct mail.

Secondary measures like web, viral and telemarketing practices are important, and allows you to add email addresses to a further 5% to 10% of your base year.

Don’t count on luck when wondering how to build an e-mail database or list. Start with a strategy and a target group, then use tools as discussed above to build your base. Next make sure you have a mailing schedule that defines what you will be sending out to whom and when. Now measure your successes and improve you lists and mailers as you go along.

If you are interested in the eBase Builder please get more information please fill out the form to the right.