Using a lead magnet to grow your email database

Using a lead magnet to grow your email database

Using a lead magnet to grow your email database

A lead magnet is an incentive like a free piece of content or a discount, that marketers offer to potential customers in exchange for their information such as email address or or phone number. If you are serious about growing a decent sized email database, you’ll need a lead magnet in your marketing collateral if you want to generate leads online. Usually a lead magnet offers a downloadable piece content, such as video, report, eBook and others. But it can also be an offer like a try before you by or percentage discount.

Getting an email address is a step towards building a relationship with your new lead. Because an email address is a personal piece of information, if you want their email address, you should offer something for it in return. By simply asking your subscribers to submit or give their email address and join your list may not have a great impact at all. But if you offer something to them in exchange of their email, the results will be better.

A lead magnet is a critical part of website optimisation because it enables websites to capture leads. It is also the first step in building a successful email campaign. By using a solid and engaging lead magnet, your business can build a huge email list and cultivate an audience of potential subscribers and return visitors that you can promote your content to. Never underestimate the power of a large email database.

What makes a Quality Lead Magnet?

  1. Your lead magnet should offer something nothing else offers. What makes you different to your competitors, and how can you reflect that in an offer?
  2. Offer a Bundled Package. Many of your competitors are offering different free resources. Try to tempt your visitors with a package of resources rather than a single one. If one free resource can have significant value, just imagine how much more if you offer many?
  3. A great lead magnet should offer solution. You should be able to come up with solutions to your audience problems. Your subscribers have specific problems and they immediately want solutions, if you can’t provide it to them then you are unlikely to have anyone take up your offer.
  4. Lead magnets should add as much value as possible. Avoid giving or setting unrealistic expectations. You can also explain why your lead magnet is valuable to them. Explain to them what you’re offering to them in exchange of their email address.
  5. Your lead magnet should have a specific target. You should be able to know who you’re target is and who it’s designed for.

In today’s world, building a solid email list is critical for your online success. One of the best ways to get more email subscriber is through lead magnet. Believe it or not, having a well thought out lead magnet will help your business to grow.

If you want help getting more out of your social media marketing, please download our free step by step guide today!
Marketing your Real Estate Business

Marketing your Real Estate Business

Marketing your Real Estate Business

Today I interviewed Rosalie Gordon from Planet Properties on a Facebook Live to talk about how they market their business on social media. We also talked about using email, and how important it is to protect data you collect from your clients and others who sign up to receive marketing communications from you.

You can have a look here:

Make sure you don’t miss out on more Facebook Lives by joining our Facebook community!

When is email spam not spam?

When is email spam not spam?

When is email spam not spam?

I’ve been on a mission lately – to take on spam. With GDPR around the corner, and controversy surrounding Facebook and use of personal data, you’d think that business owners and marketers would be aware of how they collect and use data from others in their network. But unfortunately (either through not knowing, or not caring) there is still behaviour going on that frustrates us!

Any mass email marketing lists that I have not opted in to (or where I have an existing relationship with the person sending said email), I’m unsubscribing, selecting the ‘I did not sign up for this’ option and sending a personal email explaining why I took the action I did. This does take time out my day, but I do believe that with education, we can change bad marketing habits.

I won’t be doing this anymore. Instead, I’ll be reporting these emails as spam.

Last week, I got an email which started with “Hi Paula, We’ve been connected on LinkedIn for a while now…’ After checking to see if it was a LinkedIn private massage (it was not) and if it was from their personal email to mine (again it’s a no), and seeing it was from an email marketing platform, in my view this was clearly spam.

Let’s have a look at what consent is under Australian Law.

Express and implied consent

Express consent is where someone has clearly opted in to receiving ‘commercial electronic communications’ from you. They’ve signed up to get your email newsletter or downloaded a lead magnet. They may have agreed to this over the phone or have handed you a business card and said they want to be added to your list. It’s explicitly clear that this person wants to hear from you.

Implied (or inferred consent) is where you have an existing commercial relationship with them (for example, they are a client or a supplier) and you would reasonably think that they want to hear from you. I know I like hearing from my suppliers about what they’re up to.

Have a look here for more on express and implied consent. There is also an excellent FAQ on gaining legitimate consent.

How can spam impact your email marketing?

The question you should always ask before adding someone to your list is ‘how have I obtained consent to market to this person?’ If you can’t answer it, then rethink adding them.

What you risk if you start having huge amount of people unsubscribe and report you for spam, is that your email won’t end up in people’s inboxes. They’ll end up in spam. And the more this happens, the more you will have what we call an ‘email deliverability’ problem. Your reputation with ISPs (Internet Service Providers) is likely to tank and you’ll have a hard time getting anyone to see, let alone open, your emails.

Now back to my example

So the email I received had this in the footer “This is not an attempt to start to send you unsolicited emails”. Actually, it is. It came from Infusionsoft, not your inbox.

From AMCA’s FAQs “The Spam Act prohibits messages that aim to ‘test the water’, or gauge the recipient’s interest in receiving future commercial messages. These kinds of messages are in themselves commercial, as they seek to establish a commercial relationship. You need to gain consent through other means.”

I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty clear to me. Connecting with someone on LinkedIn, in and of itself, does not mean that you have gained consent to market to them through email.

Will you join me in creating better marketing habits? Let’s have a marketing culture where we respect personal information and build communities (and email databases) of those who genuinely want to hear from us, not just to boost numbers.

How Often Should You Email Your Database?

How Often Should You Email Your Database?

How Often Should You Email Your Database?

One of the strongest ways for companies to engage and to communicate with their customers is through email marketing. By using email, they can keep in touch with their clients and inform them about their services and new products. The use of email marketing can amplify a businesses’ marketing strategy through nurturing existing contacts.

So how often do you need to send out your emails to your clients?

Based on Australian research, one possible reason why customers unsubscribe is because you send too many emails with not enough valuable content. Some people consider these emails as spam. Companies should be careful in sending emails to avoid their accounts from being reported. In Australia, there are strict rules that need to be followed to comply with the Australian spam laws. The following are the three simple steps that will help you do responsible email marketing and abide with Australia’s legislation.

  1. Make sure that you ask for the person’s consent before you send this type of marketing. This is mostly done through Opt-in mailing lists.
  2. In any email marketing, you should always remember to identify the organisation which is responsible for the sent emails.
  3. The customers must have an option to unsubscribe with the emails sent to them.

Although there is really no hard and fast rule on how many times you should email your database because it depends on what you are trying to accomplish, you should always err on the side of caution. Regarding on how often you should send emails, there are some guidelines that you can follow in order to make sure that you’re still on track when it comes to updating your database.

  • Send email a minimum of once per month. If you blog once a month, or have monthly offers for your customers, this is the perfect frequency for you. Make sure you commit to once a month, and no less, as you still want to remain front of mind for your database
  • Send email a maximum of once per week. We recommend sending emails a maximum of once per week, unless you have breaking news or something urgent or compelling to say. When you send out emails in a daily manner, your customers will simply unsubscribe you or even report the emails as spam.

Clearly, there is really no perfect answer on how often you need to email your database. But one thing is for sure, whether how many times you send out, daily, weekly, or monthly, you have to remember that the content is the key to make your email marketing strategy effective. Always make it a point that your email provides quality, valuable content.

 

If you want help getting more out of your social media marketing, please download our free step by step guide today!