To the email marketeer, the sixty four thousand dollar question is always ‘how do I build a quality mailing list?’ I have discussed before how and why purchased mailing lists are usually a waste of time. Essentially you cannot reach a wider market by simply buying an off-the-peg mailing list from a broker or marketing agency.  It will at best be of very limited quality and at worst will be damaging to the reputation of the sender because of the likelihood of  multiple spam complaints.

A good quality Email mailing list is valuable and there is no doubt that the best way to generate a list is from direct contacts through sales or enquiry sign-ups.  And the most effective way to get legitimate opted in sign – ups is via your web-site.

If you have committed time, effort and money in creating a good website on a good domain with a good visitor ratio (perhaps by using lots of search engine optimisation) and you have not included an embedded newsletter or information sign up form then you are missing one of the most effective ways of building your quality email list. And, of course, providing you have included in the form appropriate opt-in wording, you are fully compliant with the mandated opt-in rules for email marketing.

Several of the leading email marketing service providers now offer a newsletter sign-up form generator within the email marketing software. Email Blaster includes a newsletter sign-up generator as a free app within the suite of apps on offer.  With this app, the user can easily generate the graphics and text, using company logos and house colour scheme etc. of a newsletter sign-up form which will be replicated in HTML text for easy copy and paste into the web-site.

In exactly the same way in which credit card or similar pay now buttons can be generated and pasted into a web-site, so can the newsletter sign-up form. And all of the required links to the email marketing system are automatically embedded so that every time a visitor fills out a sign-up form, the address details are automatically sent and added to the selected email mailing list over the cloud.

So exactly how is this implemented?

1. Using the email marketing app (email Blaster UK for example), the design of the sign-up form is created to appear in the web-site exactly as it appears in the app.
2. For conformance with agreed protocols, wording should be included stating that; the sign-up details will not be used for any other purpose other than sending a newsletter, will not be passed to a third party (very important for legal compliance) and that the addressee will receive communications of your products or services no more than, say, monthly.
3. Select the address list you wish the new sign-ups to be added. Email Blaster recommend setting up a ‘website sign-ups’ address list which can then be added to a campaign send, or melded into a master list as may be required. (The advantage of the latter is that a de-duplicate test can be run on the revised list to ensure that a new sign-up is not creating a duplicate – very annoying to the recipient).
4. Once complete, the html text will be displayed. This should be copied (mouse right click etc.).
5. Entering the website contents manager, simply paste the form into the appropriate space.
6. A new sign-up will be emailed to obtain a double opt-in by a confirm response. This is the best failsafe for a double opt-in and also prevents you list being polluted by automated bots that circulate the internet looking for exploitable points of entry (eg. A sign-up form) from which malicious code can be input.
7. Now you’re done, all new sign-ups on your website will be automatically added to your selected address list.

Newsletter sign up forms can, with a popular website, generate large numbers of new addresses and everyone is a genuine potential customer who has declared an interest in your product or service. Why are you not already doing this?

Mike

Email Blaster UK