Open rate and list building basics

A couple of articles for those new to the topics:

Dr. Ralph Wilson has 12 tips on how to grow your list. (Found via Tom at the Messaging Times.)

Quick note: tip 4 is to provide a sign-up incentive of value to your subscribers. Important to remember that the incentive should match the email list's theme, too.

Otherwise you end up with a lot of subscribers interested in the incentive, but not the subsequent emails. Is that bad? Yes, when they all start reporting you as spam.

Say your list is for men interested in building their own golf clubs...

Bad sign-up incentive: Free beer. Valued by a lot of men, but you'd soon end up with millions of names who are never going to respond to your emails. Expensive, ineffective.

Good sign-up incentive: Free 10-page download "A guide to golf grips." Valued by exactly the kind of people who you want on your email list. Cheap, effective.

Meanwhile, SubscriberMail's recent newsletter had an overview of the various factors that go into improving your open rates.

More on list building and statistics | Tags: email open rates, email lists

Permalink | July 31, 2007 | 2 comment(s)
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2 Comments:

i am very much intrested to grow my list.but don't you think its too much to offer Offer white paper to our subscribers. give me some more tips to enhance more subscribers in my list.
By Anonymous, on 02 August, 2007

Hi, you'll find lots of list building tips in the articles and links listed here.
By Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on 02 August, 2007

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