by Tracy Needham

So what works when it comes to building your email list?

According to Marketing Sherpa’s Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008, that depends on who your target subscribers are. They surveyed more than 1,200 businesses as to what techniques generated the highest volume and best quality subscribers (i.e. people who are good prospects). 

If your customers are other businesses, the tactics that rated highest were:

No-cost trials and downloads. The proverbial “ethical bribe,” freebies are still an effective way to attract high quality prospects because they provide the subscriber with valuable information as well as insight into the value of working with you. That being said, people are getting pickier about giving out their email address so you have to sell them on the freebie–explaining exactly what they’re getting in exchange for their email.

Sales alert/product announcement offers. Think Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula or oodles of other products from big name information marketers these days. These guys mimic concert promoters by announcing a date and time for sales to open and then selling out quickly. But to get the actual instructions for buying, you usually must get onto their pre-launch email list.
 
Trade events. Trade shows, workshops and other speaking gigs–any time you can actually meet members of your target audience in a group environment, you have a great shot at getting a lot of quality newsletter sign-ups.

For business-to-consumer firms, the best tactics are:

Sweepstakes and contests. People always love the chance to win something and this technique has the added bonus of possibly getting the attention of local press. While contests are pretty simply, sweepstakes come with a plethora of legal rules–so you should consult a lawyer before going that route. (Basically, contests are based on skill while sweepstakes are based on chance.)

No cost trials and downloads. The advantage of no-cost trials and downloads is that the subscribers actually get something that shows off your expertise or gives them a taste of what they’ll get when they hire you or buy the product. So you can educate your prospects and build credibility while you build your list.

Checkboxes on registration/order forms. You often see them when you’re buying a product to capture people who may have been so intent on buying they bypassed the newsletter sign-up. This is also common when you have multiple newsletters to offer. For example, a visitor opts-in for one newsletter to download a no-cost report. But then at the actual download page, they’re given the option of subscribing to other newsletters from the same company.

One notable difference–sweepstakes and contests also produced the third highest amount of subscribers for business-to-business companies, but the subscriber were low quality.  Techniques that received low marks for both markets were buying ads in other people’s newsletters, co-registration services, and buying email lists.

The study also found that 50% of people will not hesitate to report messages as sp@m and 85% of people who have done so, consider newsletters they didn’t sign up for as sp@m. So whatever technique you use, make sure it’s clear that people are going to be added to your email list when you ask for their email. Or, wait until after the event and email them once to invite them to join your list. Because getting them on your list is never worth making them mad.