Tips to help you grow your email marketing list and boost sales.

I’m a big proponent of email marketing. So much so that I’ve written about email marketing being king – the main focus of your industrial marketing efforts.

Many of the manufacturers my firm works with want to expand their email marketing programs, but have difficulty executing their plans and growing their list.

Following are some great tips I read from Act-On Blog writer Sherry Lamoreaux. Her full post lists 11, but I’ve pulled out my top 5 most important for industrial manufacturers.

1. Establish a list-building target
   Building an email list is a numbers game. Establish a monthly target for the number of emails you’d like to collect each month, and increase this number each month.
2. Identify your target prospect
   Do you know who your best customers are, and how to profile others like them? Make sure to develop personas your can target, so you can focus your list-building efforts on the types of prospects that will deliver the conversion rates you need to hit your lead generation and revenue targets.
3. Specify the data you need to collect
   The data you collect depends on your business and target market. Some marketers collect only a small amount of information, like the person’s name and email address. Others collect additional information such as company name and title. The more information you ask for, the fewer people will fill the form out, but those people will be more motivated and better prospects.
   You might balance the amount of data you ask for with the value of the offer. remember too that you can use progressive profiling, in which you serve a prospect subsequent forms that ask for more information, so you build a more complete picture of the prospect over time.
4. Create offers that will incent people to give you their email
   People won’t give you their email address without a reason; you need to offer them something in return. The most common offer is access to your newsletter. Other common offer types include white papers and online events. If you’re selling a product, you can offer follow-up support or warranty information.
5. Measure and optimize the sign-up process
   Building an email list is a never-ending process that can always be improved. Make sure you track conversion rates for the sign-up forms you use. Test different offers, copy, and form designs to see if you can improve the number of email addresses you’re able to collect in a given week or month.

Email marketing is key to success in all marketing programs, but particularly for B2B and industrial marketing. Keeping in touch with your prospects and customers helps educate buyers on your products and services, as well as how you offer possible solutions to their problems, in turn, boosting sales.

Photo credit: Thomas Hawk