<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=520757221678604&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Suzanne Carawan

By: Suzanne Carawan on November 5th, 2015

Print/Save as PDF

Best Practices in Email Marketing: Buying & Renting Email Lists

Email Marketing

mailto:demo@example.com?Subject=HighRoad Solutions - interesting article

I've been reading Litmus' awesome email book this week & came across this 'lil nugget of marketing gold that I think is particularly important for associations to know & adopt: 

"There is one more way to obtain subscribers: buying or renting ists. There are a number of companies that collect and sell email addresses, usually at very large volumes. While it may seem like a great way to quickly gain subscribers, these lists are, without fail, of terrible quality. The likelihood of those subscribers actually receiving and reading your messages is almost non-existent. When you buy or rent a list, you're actively becoming a spammer, since none of those people signed up to receive your emails.

Although it can be frustrating to build a list from the ground up, doing so ensures that your list will be specific to you. Your email program will be all the better for it."--Jason Rodriguez, Modern HTML Email

 Many of our clients get annoyed and exasperated at the idea of growing email lists organically because it doesn't feel like they are DOING anything and it takes TOO LONG. We get it, but today's world is about quality, not quantity. When we focus on growing lists organically, we need to ask ourselves if we're using the following:

  • Do we have a "subscribe to email newsletter(s)" on our website(s)? 
  • Do we have our tab enabled on our Facebook page to allow for sign-ups, or better yet,a custom page that includes our email sign-up widget so that the user's email goes directly into our email or other marketing database? 
  • Are we consistently promoting our newsletters to our non-members through social media channels to encourage them to subscribe? 
  • Do we do direct mail campaigns to push email newsletter/blog subscriptions? 
  • Are we cross-checking who is registering for events and marketing back to those who aren't subscribed to our newsletter lists? 
  • Are we using smart modal pop-ups to collect email address sign-ups for people who are visiting our website and/or partner/affiliated sites? 
  • Are we including dynamic messages in our ecommerce email receipts & confirmations to allow people to opt-in and/or re-opt-in (if they globally opted out or opted out of an option at some point) to email newsletters? 
  • Are we using banner ads and online advertising effectively to market our email newsletters? 

If the answer to any of the above is 'no', the big question is why not? Email marketing must be integrated into an omni-channel communication strategy, and if it's not? Contact us because with email being association's #1 way to communicate, you can't afford to get it wrong.

In fact, this is exactly why we created our Optimum 5 program!

Learn More about HighRoad's Optimum 5 Email Progam