How to get email addresses for email marketing
One of the most important ways online companies can build their businesses is to create an email marketing campaign. Email marketing is somewhat akin to direct mail in the non-digital world, but, is far more cost effective. Having a targeted list of email addresses of potential customers is a very valuable asset for just about every online business that is trying to make a profit, further a cause or dispense some type of information.
It would be nice if the publishers of hard-copy phone books also included the email address with each listing, but they don’t. It would be nice if you could go online and get a free targeted list of email addresses, but those types of sites are usually not very comprehensive. If you want to get a targeted list of addresses for an online marketing campaign, you are going to have to invest both money and time to achieve your goal.
Paying a Fee To Build Your Mailing list
There are numerous online databases that contain millions of email addresses. You can pay a fee and have access to lists or be able to look up individuals by name and find out their email address or addresses. These services have sophisticated software and special programs that can sort and separate lists by relevancy. For example, you might want a list of doctors practicing in the state of Florida. You might want to break that list down by specialties such as cardiologists, oncologists and so forth. You might further want to narrow the results to physicians in a given specialty practicing in a certain zip code. In general, the more specific information that you want, the higher the cost per email address.
Companies like getresponse.com provide software that will help you start a successful email marketing campaign, but they are not the only way to be able to send emails to potential customers. Many companies take advantage of their website and create landing pages or squeeze pages that encourage visitors to leave their online addresses.
Landing Pages For Your Email Marketing Campaign
A well constructed landing page or squeeze page is created to do one thing – get the email address from the visitor. The page should be uncluttered and draw the focus to a space or box where the viewer might place his name and email address. Avoid clutter and other options such as links to the rest of your website as that will only entice the viewer to surf around your site and not leave the information you are hoping to obtain.
You can get people to give you their email address in any number of ways. You might offer them a free subscription to a newsletter or some other gift that they might find enticing. Visitors to sites that are for social, political or charitable causes can be asked to sign a list with their email information so they can be kept abreast of the particular cause. More aggressive marketing includes paying people to do surveys or sign up for free offers. Whenever you do that, you must give your email.
Finally, it is very important to state your privacy policy and assure people that you will never sell their information. In today’s crazy world, many people are hesitant to give out personal information, so, as a solicitor of email information; you must do whatever you can to reassure wary participants.