email marketing best practices

Email Marketing Best Practices Include Selling Your Signups

So often companies think an email signup box on their website home page is all that’s required to grow an in-house email list by leaps and bounds.

If only that were true! If only that was a simple email marketing best practice that one could implement once then forget about!

But it’s not true. People must be sold on signing up for your emails just like they need to be sold on your products or services. Email marketing best practices, therefore, require a page that sells your email program to a prospect so they will be willing to part with their email address in exchange for what you are offering.

Adding the signup page to your website isn’t enough if it’s not selling email signups. An email address is an item of value. It will only be surrendered over to you if the giver receives something of equal or greater value in return.

When you’re adding an email signup page to your website (or blog or Facebook page), think long and hard on why someone would want to subscribe. Sure, you’d subscribe without a sales pitch but you are you, and you’re too close to be objective.

Here are some possible benefits you might want to consider for selling your email signups to potential subscribers:

  • Special pricing that non-subscribers don’t get
  • In-depth information (appropriate for a B2B audience)
  • Cartoons, humor or other forms of entertainment
  • Tips, tricks and techniques
  • Anything that saves money and/or time
  • Anything that increases beauty and/or decreases weight
  • Access to online content not available to non-subscribers
  • Exclusive sales, or pre-sales

And, of course, we always recommend that you test, test, test multiple offers and find the one the resonates best with your audience.

How do you answer when a prospect asks, “Why should I?”

Published On: September 23rd, 2010Categories: Email marketing best practices

About the Author: Sharon

Sharon Ernst from BetterFasterWriter.com is on a mission to improve the business and marketing writing skills of today’s workforce with her blog, newsletter and online classes. Her newest class on intermediate email copywriting covers 19 tips and techniques non-copywriters can put to use right away for better results. The class has real-life examples and before/after comparisons to make the lessons stick. Find her class at www.betterfasterwriter.com/intermediate-email-copywriting-class. When she’s not busy helping employees, managers and marketers master their writing skills, she and her husband are busy raising pigs, cows, chickens and vegetables on their 20-acre farm.

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