Building a mailing list is a challenge for any agency. But you’ve got to start somewhere, and with a little effort the payoff in terms of new business and customer retention can be significant. Consider the following tips:
- Get in the habit of asking for an email address – If you’re like most agencies, collecting email addresses is an afterthought. Train your CSRs to update a customer or prospect’s profile with each contact. You could even go as far as offering a prize to the employee who collects the most email addresses over a period of time. And remember to ask for permission to email with relevant updates and agency news. Just because you have a contact’s email doesn’t mean you have permission to market to them. Never assume anything.
- Add a sign-up form to your agency website – Make sure it’s easy to find. Sign-up forms on many agency sites are often buried at the bottom of the page or in some other inconspicuous spot.When someone visits your site and leaves without signing up you have struck out on a valuable prospect.
- Offer an incentive to subscribe – Offer something of relevance to your prospect to encourage them to sign up. For example, if you are a benefits broker, perhaps an article on “Ten Ways to Save Money on Your Group Health Insurance.”
- Leverage the forward to a friend feature – All newsletters should have a forward feature which allows current subscribers to easily forward an article of interest to their friends and colleagues. Along with this message is an offer to each recipient to subscribe to the newsletter themselves. Run a referral contest to encourage subscribers to forward your newsletters to their friends.
- Archive past newsletters – In many cases, people will want to see past copies of your newsletter before signing up. Post copies of your past newsletters prominently on your website so that visitors can see what they’re signing up for. As a secondary benefit, this will keep your site fresh, and provide more content for search engines to index.We offer an automatic archive tool for all of our newsletter clients which makes archiving a one-click process.
Once your list starts to grow, focus on sharing your expert knowledge. Timely and relevant emails will keep your subscribers interested and eagerly awaiting your next mailing.