Your email list is your most valuable marketing asset.

There are a few reasons behind it.

You’re not relying on a third party platform. Your business has been given permission by each individual to send them communications. Most importantly, it’s an opportunity to nurture and grow a relationship with your customers and subscribers.

You’re going to hear us say that a lot in 2019 and beyond.

It is Benchmark Email’s mission in 2019 to further your understanding of how to make the most of your email list. To learn to love your list and the people on it. After all, it’s all about those relationships.

What makes a great relationship?

• Trust and Respect. As a business, you understand that it’s a privilege to be allowed into a subscriber’s inbox. Don’t take advantage of it and your subscribers won’t be marking you as spam any time soon.
• Honesty and Forgiveness. Sometimes you’ll make mistakes. That’s OK as long as you’re transparent about it. Share yourselves with your customers and they’ll buy into your brand story, warts and all.
• Thoughtfulness and Appreciation. You need to be doing customer-centric email marketing at all times. Understanding what problems you solve for your customers and what value you’re delivering to your subscribers’ inbox.
• Commitment and Appreciation. You need to send consistently and stick to what you promised on your signup forms. It’s also imperative to demonstrate how much you appreciate your subscribers for opting-in to receive your emails. Send them targeted, relevant content that will help them get the most out of your emails.

When it comes to making the most of your most valuable marketing asset, your email list, we’ve identified four topics we’ll be focusing on:

1. Growing a List

When it comes to growing your email list, it’s important to focus on covering all the potential touchpoints you have with customers and leads.

You also want to make sure you’re attracting individuals who want to hear from your brand to your email list.

Growing your list is also about timing. It’s about knowing where to put a signup form on a page and which pages to put them on and even what offline opportunities could lead to list growth.

Here are many of the touchpoints you should be considering for list growth:

• Your homepage
• Your blog
• The other highly trafficked pages on your website
• Social Media
• Over the phone
• In-store
• At events
• Print ads

It’s also about knowing what to promise your subscribers. Give them an incentive to signup.

2. Managing a List

Learning how to properly sort and segment your list to make sure you’re sending targeted, relevant campaigns will be a difference maker for your business.

Not ever subscriber is the same. They have different needs and interests.

Being able to meet them on their level and provide the specific information that each subscriber desires will help your business thrive.

Here are some of the ways in which you can segment your email lists to provide more relevant content:

• Gender
• Location
• Industry
• Job role
• Purchase history
• Website activity
• Email engagememt

3. Securing a List

In 2019 and beyond, data security is going to be important. We’ll help you make sure your list is safe.

That means that you can require anyone who attempts to export a list from your account to enter a PIN.

It also means that your data is stored in our top-of-the line secure servers and that we abide by all data protection regulations such as GDPR.

4. Monetizing a List

While we believe you should be doing customer-centric marketing versus constant selling, we understand that everyone’s goal at the end of the day is to make money. We’ll show you how.

Using tools such as automation, you can help deliver more personal, relevant content to each subscriber.

Benchmark Email also makes it easy for you to test your emails with A/B testing and by reviewing your reports. See what is and isn’t working in your email campaigns. This lets you focus on continuous improvement for your email campaigns.

Wrapping Up

To learn more about how you can grow, manage, secure and monetize your list, check out our book, Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer. It’s full of tips and examples for how you can achieve those four goals for your business.

Do you have tips on any of these aspects of your email list? Share them in the comments below!