Growth is life. This is something everyone is looking forward to. When it comes to online email marketing, everyone wants to acquire new fans, new visitors, new followers, and much more! This is extremely important. Additionally, it is crucial to care about your existing visitors. Now the question is what have you been doing precisely to increase the odds to drive them closer to doing business with you? The growing email list must be considered a primary strategy for any online marketing strategy. Did you know your email marketing database holds a potential to degrade by around 22.5 per cent each year? Many things happen! The email addresses of your contacts may change once they move from one company to another. They may even opt-out of your email communication, give up on old address etc. You, as a marketer needs to emphasise on adding fresh contacts on a regular basis to all of your email marketing campaigns. This helps with keeping your numbers rising up and towards the right. Strictly avoid purchasing email lists. Here are top 18 ways to grow your email list: 1. Develop an Excellent Email Content Make sure your content is amazing. This is how people will stay subscribed. They may even forward your emails to loved ones, friends, and colleagues who aren't already on your email list. 2. Provide Value This is something you must seriously focus on. Try sharing your latest posts and a unique message to all of your subscribers on a weekly basis. This may be a discount, a solid advice that your audience may put to use, etc. You must aim at providing value to each subscriber in emails that you send. 3. Online Contests Promote an online contest such as a free giveaway. Here, you can have your entrants sign up or submit via using their email addresses. Also promote your contest on social sites. 4. Social Sign-Ups It is important that you add a Signup form to your Facebook page. Now offer your fans and followers an opportunity to sign up once in a while. Also try pushing it out there on a monthly basis. 5. Opt-in Campaign Perk up a stale email list by using an opt-in campaign. If you have an older decayed list, simply great an engaging opt-in message. Also send it to your old list to inspire contacts who wish to re-opt-in. Additionally, remove all contacts who don't respond. Remember that emailing engaged contacts is the best way to boost your deliverability. This enhances the odds of getting your email shared with those outside of your present contacts database. 6. Keep it Simple and Easy Strictly avoid enquiring for a ton of fields. All you need to do is ask for a name and an email address. This is a good way to kick start. Additional information can be asked once your folks opt into other offers. Remember your email sign-up is not the same as someone looking forward to do business with you. They are simply engaging a a bit deeper. So avoid all things that may scare them off! 7. Links to Signature You must add a link to signatures of employees leading people to a landing page just where they can sign up for a mailing list. 8. Privacy Policy This makes for one of the most important part of efforts involving with growing your email list. Ensure your readers that their information is safe with others and you will not share or exploit it. This is easier via setting up a Privacy Policy web page. Here, you must provide the link to it right under your opt-in form. In case, you aren't well versed with the process, use some Privacy Policy generators available online. 9. Lead Generation Offers This is very similar to a free ebook or white paper. You simply need to ask your visitors to provide with their email address to be able to download it. 10. Samples are Important Let folks see an example of your newsletter! We often publish a link to our last newsletter when pushing folks to subscribe via social media. When they see it, they know what to expect and they opt in. Create a free, online tool, or resource and have users sign up with their email address. For example, we've created quite a few free tools, like Marketing Grader, to gather email addresses. 11. Archive Keep an online library of all past newsletters and articles. This is appealing as well as very useful to your visitors and helps building credibility as an authority. In case, you have articles developed with excellent SEO techniques. These are very helpful in boosting traffic to website through best of search engine positioning. 12. An Offer Goes a Long Way! If you have never tried this one out, simply do this. Whenever one of your sponsors has a discount or giveaway, use that to impress and inspire your existing and potential customers to opt in to your next newsletter to get benefits from the offer. These benefits will definitely keep all of your subscribers opted in too. 13. Word of Mouth Always offer a link in your email. This is the place where your subscribers can easily share your newsletter with their network. Remember that word of mouth is a very powerful way to add subscribers! 14. Share Your Content sharing your content with other outlets is a great way to attract their audience into your email marketing list. Folks are always looking to share great content – give yours away and have them just provide a subscription link where folks can sign up for more! 15. Sign Up Make sure you have a subscribe button in your email. It is a crucial part as it gets forwarded to others. It is crucial that you have a SignUp button in each newsletter that is sent out! 16. Focus on Conversion Add a comment as soon as you see people signing up on a landing page. This is also important when they try and engage with you anywhere on your website. You should also offer a means to opt-in to your email marketing list. 17. Testimonials It is important to include testimonials on subscribing and squeeze pages. So try including at least one or two strong testimonials from all of your happy customers on a squeeze page. You may even get permission for using genuine customer names, locations and/or urls to boost authenticity. Strictly avoid using fake names and regions. 18. Blog Without Fail Blogging is known to be an excellent way to establish effective communication with prospects and potential customers. It works towards creating amazing synergy with email marketing. Do not forget to include a newsletter sign-up form on every page of your blog.
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Instagram is one of the most popular apps among casual phone users and business owners these days. Emerged as one of the most popular social media networks across the globe in short time, it started with users casually sharing and liking images, only a few considered it an important element for business. Presently, it is one of the fastest-growing social media networks across the globe. It has also proved to be a goldmine for those looking forward to enjoy success in their business. Now the question is what you would actually require for making a mark on Instagram? 'Followers'! It is certainly the ultimate Instagram metric, that shows how popular you are. For businesses, it shows the number of people seeing images you publish. The more followers you have, the better off you are. So how do you get more followers on Instagram? In order to make your business explode, here are some tips to get you around 20k followers in just one year! 1. Post As Frequently As You Can Getting bigger is not easy, especially if you don't plan to post regularly. So start posting daily (once in a day minimum). This helps you to reach more number of people through hashtags daily. 2. The Best Photos Try focussing on posting ONLY the best pictures possible. Once you have the best of content the audience wants, you’ll instantly get followers and engagement. So strive hard to take the absolute best pictures possible. Also focus on investing in your pics too. Although it may cost you a lot, it really helps! 3. Assess Picture Performance First, you must know it is more about your audience. What you like and prefer doesn't matter. It’s about your audience. Being a great photographer and having ability to take technically-beautiful pictures may not appeal your target audience. They may like casual pictures, travel related stuff of something unique that's in nature. So know what your audience likes and start posting it. 4. Engage with Community Keep responding to comments and engage with your community. This is very important if you have under 50k followers. Focus on commenting, chatting, and starting conversations. You should also be present in your community as much as possible. Accounts with over 100k followers yet only 500-1000 likes on photos is nothing great. This happens due to lack of presence in the community. These individuals simply look for the big numbers so that they can show their brands off. Unfortunately, they don’t care about their followers. Don't make this mistake and get to know your followers. It will not cost you a anything to say hi, engage, like your followers' (community) content and comment. In fact, it does wonders! 5. Experiment with Different Styles, Filters You must post a wide range of pictures focussing on varied interests and hobbies. Also keep a close watch on how your audience reacts to these photos. In case, you get very little to no engagement, it is clear that the photos simply don’t resonate. When you get an amount of engagement, you get to know the kind of stuff you must post. Last but not the least, it is more about what your audience wants to see posted on Instagram than what you want to share on Instagram. The idea is to know what your audience resonates with, holds relevance to your work and post the same. 6. Trending Hashtags Keep search through your “search feed” in Instagram. This will help you know what’s trending for the day. You can receive more traffic naturally to your account by using trending hashtags for the day or week. 7. Post Trends You must stay on trends. Know what's trending and keep posting relevant pics in your feed. It should also have trended hashtags. For instance, you may use #nationalchocolateday for a day that's dedicated to chocolate. This helps with getting more relevant exposure, especially when there is more traffic to a hashtag. You can get good amount of exposure by staying on top of the national days such as dog day, pet care day, donut day etc. 8. Let Top Accounts Inspire You It is not possible to keep up with the continuing demand of creating amazing pics all the time, especially when you don't have any inspiration. Keep a log of various accounts you love. You must go through these as frequently as possible and take clear note of the types of pictures you love. Take care that your audience love them too. You must use this inspiration for your upcoming Instagram shoot. Keep taking screen shots of your favorite pics and add them to a gallery. Name this gallery and keep inspiring yourself. 9. Instagram Meet Ups It is important that you plan or participate in a number of Instagram meet ups. This is one of the best things you can do to meet with other Instagrammers. Connect with other individuals in your sphere (on Instagram through the messenger). You may even plan to organize these things under meetup.com. Always keep your ears and eyes open when others plan meet-ups on Instagram. Attend these the moment they happen! These meetings will help you meet many other awesome individuals and kick-start collaborations. 10. Devote Time Each Week / Month for Shooting Avoid situations where you have nothing in hand when it is time to post pictures. This is very similar to not having something to wear in the morning when you need to move out of the house. Most Instagram experts believe in setting aside some real-time to take photos for their IG. They take out time at least once in a month. So you need to schedule it out in calendar and even take some attractive pictures. Practise this for around one year (daily or weekly). Consistency is the key to success. Develop a habit and maintain it for several months. Practise patience and put in hard work. You will soon get to see desired results. It is not impossible to get 20,000 followers in a year. You simply need to work for it. Being consistent is the only thing you must focus on. 11. Additional Resources and Consulting If nothing works, get some consultation. It may be a very brief session from someone who are experienced and know what they’re doing. This can make a huge difference to your efforts. Just as any other consulting, try and speak to as many experienced individuals as you can. They will have a clue about what you are doing and things that can be immediately done in order to enhance your results. Properly management and maintenance of contact lists is crucial. Unfortunately, this is also one of the most overlooked components of effective email marketing. After having an organic list of high quality contacts, it is time to manage it well in order to ensure the overall integrity of the list that's constantly moving forward. Maintenance of list is necessary for success of email marketing. Having hard / soft bounces and unengaged subscribers will negatively impact on your business' email deliverability and KPIs of email marketing. Listed below 5 best practices for managing and maintaining email marketing lists: 1. Welcome New Subscribers This is one of the best practices for successful email marketing. Focus on setting up a triggered response email. It will send “welcome email” to all of your new subscribers. This is to thank them for subscribing and requesting them to add your email address to the approved list of senders. This happens in the event your initial email lands in a junk folder. You may want to inform them about ways to get in touch in the event they have any issues. They can also know how to adjust their preferences or opt-out altogether under circumstances they decide not not to receive any communication from your organization. 2. One Automated Mission Control Center Your business must manage from a single mission control center. Managing multiple control centers are of no use. It is important to learn from each of the email marketing platforms used. This way, your clients can benefit from stats, lessons, and insights you receive from campaigns of other clients. Email marketing integration across all clients is a must to use this. Try managing various campaigns in a single email marketing mission control combined with built-in marketing automation. Remember that this platform needs to be one is capable of managing separate lists and subaccounts for all of your clients. It should also be able to aggregate reports for clients about their campaigns, automate various campaigns based on profiles, triggers, events and templates and helps you get a bird’s eye view of campaigns and experience. 3. Subscription Management Researches have revealed that around 66 per cent of email users list frequency of emails due to unsubscribe. Hence, it is important not to lose a contact permanently, owing to the tiredness of receiving a certain type of email or a lot of emails. Efficient management of subscription facilitates users manage their email preferences. It also helps with customizing content they receive from you and/or manage the emails receiving frequency. The process ensures ability to a contact to “unsubscribe” from some specific kinds of emails as desired. One can also opt out completely. Management of subscription facilitates your business ensure compliance with CANSPAM. It can also avoid losing a contact altogether in case issue is volume or content but not the sender. The best part is many of the reputed email service providers (ESPs) offers subscription management functionality. These are built in and users simply require enabling it. 4. Experiment With New Options Once you have established yourself as an expert, it is common to swell with pride and get into the mode of stagnancy. Keep yourself from falling into this trap. You must focus on improving non-stop. You can always learn new things. Emphasise on testing brand new theories and try on some new channels. For instance, you can think of adding an SMS text message drop to an upcoming campaign. You may even add geotargeted content. The moment you locate a formula that works, stick to it. Also keep discovering new ones as you may get a formula that works better. 5. Maintain A List Hygiene Personal hygiene is important in every sphere of life. Email lists are no exception. List hygiene is considered crucial to your ongoing email marketing success. This is one specific area that many businesses struggle. According to statistics, it is revealed that up to 25% of email lists can drop on an annual basis. People change jobs all the time. This also makes them change their email addresses. Hence, purging old, invalid email lists are extremely important. You must focus on eliminating all of the hard bounces and recurring soft bounces from email lists. Remember that sending of invalid emails many times together can put a negative impact on sender reputation. This ultimately affects ability to reach the inbox of various contacts. It works to consider a purging process scheduled on a regular basis, such as weekly, monthly, or following each major campaign. The idea is to keep all of your lists clean and score of your sender high. So what does the future of email marketing hold? One can sense a lot of changes, varying trends, and consistent factors presented by industry rulers. Here's a brief insight on the future of email marketing – a sum up of what’s happening at present and what’s coming up. The Inbox Is a Visual Treat Google is still ruling as the king of email. Hence, it is certainly worth keeping close tabs on the latest trials closely. Email marketers were pushed to send more targeted and tailored email content via introducing promotions tab filter. This filter effectively places all of marketing emails in a single folder. It is similar to the modern day catalogue drop. Users can also benefit from a native unsubscribe button. Reinvention of Email with Google Inbox The big question is whether the Grid View ever rolls out? Well, it seems as if most of the innovations of Gmail have been moving in the direction of doing something bigger and better. One of the classic examples is the launch of an all new application referred to as the 'Google Inbox'. It is built precisely on the tab concept and introduced by Gmail. Brand new series of features as well as workflows are also added. These features are powerful enough to completely change the way people manage their email. Improved Data and Personalization According to a latest news, new trends are being discovered on a consistent basis. These continue to shape the future of the industry in an impressive manner. The data and personalization elements of email marketing are being looked at. Online Marketing Will Continue to Grow Although email design requires good amount of growth and improvement, it may not be fair to predict the same for email code. Presently, email design requires supporting a huge number of platform/email clients ranging from AOL to Microsoft Outlook. The major relief comes from a heavier range of tools that make it easier to build bulletproof, custom templates for email. One can also gain easier access to dynamic template builders too. Development of new features and addition to existing tools are a consistent affair. These are also customizable for newer email coder. The Gateway Email marketing served as a unique marketing channel several years back. Later on, with establishment of increasing communication channels, email concept took a backseat. People have found many different number of ways to reach consumers. Today, marketers require approaching email as part of an omnichannel marketing strategy as their consumers do. Presently, email does not work as a silo. It is a gateway to social media. It works as an alternate sale on any website. Experts and industry giants consider it as the only reliable, future-proof marketing channel against social media trends that constantly changes. Although it has been predicted that email will lose some of its traction to mobile digital channels, it will still work remain the gold standard for reliably reaching consumers. Experts also believe that it works as an outbound digital communication vendor agnostic technique. Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter do not operate as open Internet Protocols. These are privately held entities. Hence, email will certainly remain relevant in future. |