How to Build and Maintain Your Email Lists

Do you have a business idea or just getting started in the email marketing arena? One of the very first things you will need to do is build your email list. It’s the main way to reach out to your audience that you can control, and your direct contact with them, as we say in marketing it’s your lifeline to success.

Quality over Quantity

When building your email list you will always want to have quality leads over quantity, as much as saying I have x many emails in my list sounds cool, in reality it is not helping you at all. Here our top 3 reasons why;

1. You will not be reaching your correct audience which can lead to damaging your brand image.
   • You want to be relevant to your subscribers. If your email just sits in their inbox, or worse gets pushed into SPAM ,then that’s not cool at all.
2. The more email bounces and unsubscribes you have, the higher risk you have of your email being marked as SPAM.
   • Your email list is your lifeline, treat it with care and it will treat you back. If you don’t keep it clean and maintain it then your emails will be blacklisted and no matter how many times you email you will not get anywhere.
3. It is a waste of time and your ROI will show this.
   • No one likes wasting time, no one…

How to build and maintain the list

1. Use the sign up forms
   • From your website to your Facebook page your sign-up call to action needs to be clear and visible. Be transparent about what they are signing up for. A blog update, newsletter, promotional emails or something else. This way your reader will know and expect that time of email from you. Here are some great tips on how to build an Ethical Mailing List.
2. Use your offline events
   • All events provide a great opportunity for you to capture potential clients, from events that you host to events that you attend, trade fairs, industry conferences, exhibitions are all great places. Either going old school back to paper and pen or using a QR code for easy sign up to an tablet to collect addresses. You can be creative, but also be clear what they are signing up for.
3. Double opt-in
   • You want a quality email list, right? One of the best ways to build a quality email list is to have a double–opt in process. This means that once a person has signed up to your email list they will have to go to their email and confirm their email address. It is a great way to reduce fake email addresses because you know that the email address is real.
4. Maintain your email lists
   • This is probably the most forgotten step in maintaining an email list and yet is one of the most important. In every email list you will always have some emails which will bounce (where your email cannot be delivered). These emails need to be ‘cleaned’ from your list as every time you send out an email to these bounced emails higher risk that your sender reputation will drop and your emails will not reach the inbox. Most ESP’s look after this for you automatically, just as we do here at Ungapped.

Just as much as it comes down to building and maintaining the list you also need to provide your readers with valuable content, Content which will keep them engaged and wanting to keep opening your newsletters.

If you follow these 4 steps you will be on your way to building and maintaining a great email list. Get started with yours today!