Why the value is in your email list

If you have spent any length of time researching different digital marketing techniques, you will have no doubt come across a phrase that has been coined by marketers and business owners alike. Namely, the value is in your email list. What most people mean by this is as a business owner, you can extract so much lifetime value from prospects, clients or stakeholders by nurturing contacts over time.

Think about almost any business that is currently operating and they have some form of list. This could be a list of leads or existing customers that the business has built up over time. The list could be relatively small or huge, this is very much down to the organisation and what type of details they are storing.

The focal point for this week's blog is to really zone in on why the value is in your email list and explore the benefits for any business of keeping up to date records. However, before you can start thinking of building a list and nurturing contacts, lets take a step back and understand the starting point.

Tangible value
These days, customers are very selective in terms of the information they share with the businesses they interact with. If a business is looking to capture email addresses and contact details of their prospects, they need to provide something that has tangible benefit to the lead in exchange for their details.

This could take the form of a ‘lead magnet’ such as a report, PDF, video or how to guide for example that is only delivered once a prospect fills in a form. We will dive more into lead magnets in a future blog.

It is important that the lead magnet actually helps the recipient and adds value to their research. It should also have a clear call to action if the lead would like to find out more information, such as how to contact the business.

This is the first step in helping to build an email list as it allows the business to capture the details of their prospects and provides a reference point for nurture campaigns that we’ll discuss next.

Nurturing via email
As with most aspects of sales and marketing, people are only willing to spend money and their time with a business once they have built a relationship or trust. Nurturing campaigns help any business to foster a relationship with a lead as they can deliver targeted and relevant information directly into their inbox.

For example, when you fill in a form online, whether it is to subscribe to a newsletter or make a purchase, the business will over time start to send you automated emails relating to your initial point of contact. This could be in the form of new products/services that are relevant to your initial enquiry or information that builds upon your existing interests.

The purpose of nurturing campaigns is to gradually onboard the recipient from a prospect into a paying client over time. The thing to remember here is the time required to nurture prospects. Different stakeholders will convert at different speeds, but as a business, your goal should be to regularly communicate with your email list and provide valuable information. This helps keep the business top of mind but also builds authority/trust in the eyes of the prospect.

The value of the email list
Building up an email list takes time and effort. Just as we’ve seen so far, it requires a business to map out a process, from giving something away in exchange for the prospects details to actually nurturing the contact over time.

However, in our opinion, the value is definitely in the email list. This is because it provides a range of benefits to a business that can really increase the lifetime value of every customer. An email list can provide valuable insights into leads, how they engage with a business and what kind of content most resonates with your audience.

An email list is also a cost-efficient way for a business to extend its marketing activities. Most businesses spend lots of money on marketing their products or services to new customers. But for most businesses, their customers will not make ‘impulse purchases’ unless they are selling relatively inexpensive products/services.

Therefore, building an email list is a very profitable way for businesses to extend their marketing spend and return on investment by actually marketing to contacts that have engaged with the business.

Other factors
Aside from the points we have discussed in this week's blog, we wanted to touch on a few other factors that make any email list valuable.

Firstly, compiling an email list can help a business to segment their audience based on a variety of factors such as location, engagement or purchase history. This helps a business to further nurture and maximise contacts by serving them information that is dependent on their previous behaviour and helps build stronger relationships.

Lead scoring is another benefit of creating value in your email list. For example, businesses can assign points to a contact based on things like open rates, link clicks or downloads. The data can provide useful information to a business in terms of which contacts are most engaged with the brand and can provide a trigger for sales professionals to then step in and personalise their outreach to a prospect.

The final factor we wanted to address is the efficiency savings a business can experience by building an email list. There are lots of email marketing providers available that help businesses of all sizes and types build powerful email automations. Any business that is looking to compete in the digital world should invest in email marketing software to nurture leads on autopilot. It does require creating a series of emails in advance and adding them to an autoresponder but this can ensure that contacts are being nurtured without any manual intervention.

Summary
As we have seen in this week's blog, there are many benefits for a business to build up their own email list. It is one of the reasons why third party content aggregators in the food ordering industry for example, never actually release the customer data to participating food/drink based business. These large ordering platforms understand the benefits of retaining customer data and the inherent value of their lists.

It is for this reason that here at iOB Business, we are passionate about helping people provide valuable solutions to local businesses and demonstrate the various options that are available to small/medium-sized businesses in any industry. A Digital Agency is a perfect way for our partners to become trusted and knowledge digital consultants for their clients.

To find out more about launching a Digital Agency with us, please contact our team today.

Until next time, take care.