5 Reasons to Build an Email Subscriber List

Email marketing is one of the most cost effective online tactics for generating sales for your business.  It’s relatively inexpensive and often can contribute to a significant percentage of your overall sales.  For some businesses it’s even the leader of their online sales efforts in terms of both profit and revenue.  Here are five reasons you should be building an email subscriber list and marketing to it on a regular basis:

1. The first and most important thing an email list does for you and your business is that it allows you to educate prospects about important updates.  This means that every time you add a service, open a new office, or are planning a special event, you can easily educate the people who are most likely to be interested in hearing about it, participating, or purchasing.
2. Having an email subscriber list and sending regular mailings keeps you relevant and on the minds of potential customers in your list.  As an example, if your company sells web services, then by sending out regular updates about changing website standards and other important news related to the field you will stay top-of-mind for your prospects.  This means when someone on your list needs website help, your company will be the first one that comes to mind and they will most likely give you their business.  And as a bonus, by adding a few social media share buttons into your newsletters they can also pass your information on to friends, building trusted links in your network.
3. There is no better way to qualify leads than giving people the option to join your mailing list.  Anyone who is asking to hear from you on a regular basis and who took the effort to enter their information into your signup form indicates they have a high level of interest in your product or service, and has a good chance of becoming a customer at some point.It’s like the difference between trying to sell a subscription for an Outdoor magazine in Times Square and a hiking expo.  Sure, you may find a few people in Times Square who like outdoor activities even though they’re in a highly urban setting at that moment, but you’ll get a much better conversion rate at the hiking expo since those people have demonstrated their interest in outdoor activities by showing up at the expo.  The same thing goes for your newsletter subscribers.  They went through the effort to “show up” on your email list because they’re interested in your business, so you know they’re more likely to make a purchase at some point in the future.
4. An email list lets you employ advanced customer segmenting.  For example, you can send emails only to existing customers and offer them a discount to make repeat purchases or higher-value purchases.  You can send a different email to customers who haven’t purchased yet, but who frequently open and click your emails, to try and get them to finally take the leap to becoming a paying customer.  Since they regularly are interested enough in your newsletter to open and click on them, these customers are a prime target for a great introductory offer designed to turn them into a first-time customer.  Yet another option for segmenting your list is by recency.  You can offer new subscribers a special offer that they have to use in 30 days or else it expires to leverage the effectiveness of a limited-time offer.
5. You can use an email subscriber list to test new copy, creative, and campaign concepts to see what works and what doesn’t.  Simply split your list into at least two groups, and then send a different message to each one and compare the results.  You’ll want to use a special calculator to make sure that the conclusion you come to for which one is better is not just caused random variations, but is actually statistically significant.  The UserEffect Split Test Calculator & Decision Tool is one great option.  You can vary everything from the email subject line, to the headline in the body, to the product pictures you include, to the offer you give to see what connects with your customers.  For a more detailed look at split testing in emails, see the post 4 Reasons You Should Be Testing Emails.

Building an email-marketing list has one of the best returns on investment of any online marketing tactic.  If you capitalize on the five advantages it has that are listed in this post, you will be well on your way to using emails to drive increased revenue for your company.

Let us know why you built your company’s email list in the comments!