A well-maintained, well-organized email list is digital marketing gold.


Email is by far the most cost effective way to digitally market to your prospects. But don’t just take my word for it, check out these statistics:

According to the DMA email marketing has an ROI of 3800%
McKinsey found that Email has an average order value at least three times higher than social media channels.
Email generates $30 in ROI for every $1 spent, according to Campaign Monitor.

Those are some pretty compelling numbers, wouldn't you agree?

Is it worth getting right? You bet! 

Like everything else in digital marketing, you need to get it right to get results. Building a huge email list of people who have no real interest in what you offer is just a waste of time and money. Likewise, sending a broadcast email to everyone on your list is usually not effective.

To get good results, you have to have a well-maintained list that is segmented. What does that mean? First, you need to build your list organically, don't make the mistake of purchasing a list and just spamming everyone hoping to get results. You won't, and maybe worse, you may get blacklisted as a spammer.

How do you build an email list of prospects who have an interest in your business or product? You use "lead magnets".  A lead magnet is an offer, think of it as trading something of value for a visitors email address. For example, a landscaping service might offer a guide to planning your landscape. A catering company might offer a 10 step plan for hosting a successful event. You get the idea, trade something of value (your knowledge) for their email address. Do it right, give away something helpful, don't cheat them they are prospective customers!

When someone gives their email in return for your lead magnet you need to "tag them". Segment them so you know later how they got to be on your list, what lead magnet sparked their interest. This is very important, you don't want to send the same marketing emails to people who are interested in building a deck to those who are interested in personal landscaping their apartment terrace.  Segmenting is the key to having the ability to send targeted email marketing and getting prospects into the right sales funnel. (Read about sales funnels here.)

Most email automation services have some form of tagging or segmenting subscribers. Be aware some services may charge you for each instance of the same email address. If you just separate them by adding them to different lists you may get charged for the same email address over and over. If your email automation service doesn't have a way to tag a subscriber, I highly suggest you change to one that does.

Maintaining your email list is very important, don't be afraid to "trim", get rid of emails that no longer show any interest. If they aren't opening your emails, maybe they have solved their issue or moved on. Don't just delete them because they didn't open two or three emails, (you will need to decide on the threshold) send one last one and try to get them to re-engage,  try a subject line similar to "I guess this is goodbye," or "I hate to see you go but..." If they ignore that one then maybe it's time to move them to a different list or just delete them altogether. 

Having people on your list that aren't really interested not only costs you money (most email services charge by the subscriber) but they are also way more likely to tag your email as spam which hurts your overall deliverability rate over time. People are lazy, they will hit spam instead of unsubscribing. 

You do have an unsubscribe link right? If not add one. Don't be afraid of unsubscribers, you don't want them if they aren't really interested anyway. You can always attract them with another lead magnet latter if they return to your website. It's all about the quality of your contacts, not the quantity. 

Use a good email automation platform. Don't be afraid to pay a little more to get the features you really need. Segmentation, tagging are a must have. The ability to build workflows and rules can save you hours of labor.
Rules and workflows can help you maintain your list, trim the fat, move subscribers from one segment to another, add tags etc. This will go a long way to helping you automate your email marketing and move prospects through your sales funnels. 

Look for a platform that allows you to automate as much as possible while still allowing personalization of the emails. We use, and highly recommend a service called Drip. It's not the only one out there but we think it's one of the best.

If you need some help or advice on setting up your email marketing system for success, reach out to us, we're happy to help.

Until next time,

Scott Williams
Director of Digital Marketing
Cotts, Inc.


 Cotts, Inc. is a digital marketing agency specializing in helping small businesses. We are located in the small city of Pottsville in Schuylkill County, PA 17901.

We build results-driven websites, expert social media content & strategies, custom interactive kiosk systems, digital signage systems and print campaigns so your business can compete in this digital world.

If your small business needs help with marketing in the digital world, reach out to us, our contact information is:
Website: https://cottsinc.com
Email: cs@cottsinc.com
Phone: 570.399.5662