New Research, Online Advisory Service Launched To Help Marketers Expand Email Databases

“[Through the study] we identified the most effective ways to grow permission-based email lists, and now we’re harnessing that data to power personalized recommendations for marketers around the globe,” says Morgan Stewart, Director of Research and Strategy, ExactTarget. “When marketers enter details about their program and current list growth tactics, the ExactTarget Email List Growth Advisor compares the information to industry-specific best practices and makes recommendations based on our research.”

Marketers can access the ExactTarget Email List Growth Advisor free of charge online. In addition to providing recommendations on future list growth tactics, the online advisor is designed to offer benchmarking data that allows marketers to compare their strategies to those used by others in their industry.

“The best performing list growth tactics are built on gathering subscriber data rather than hunting for it,” says Stewart. “The best way to grow your subscriber list is to collect information during customer-initiated interactions.”

Key findings of the research include:

• Onsite registration is the best performing list growth tactic, followed by capturing information through inbound call centers, at the point of sale and through social sharing;
• The worst performing list growth tactics include outbound call center attempts to collect email information, list rental, email append and offline advertising.
• BtoB marketers are more successful in driving new subscriptions with incentivized registration;
• Mobile capture, or allowing customers to subscribe to emails via mobile phones, will increase faster than any other list growth tactic in 2009—more than 500%;
• Enabling subscribers to share email content with their social networks is expected to increase more than 348% in 2009;
• One-third of all email marketers rarely or never evaluate the performance of their list growth sources.

“There’s no silver bullet, and no one tactic that will provide meaningful list growth,” says Tamara Gielen, Founder, The Email Marketers Club. “Successful list growth strategies employ multiple tactics to drive new subscriptions and compel subscribers to register because of the value of the communication itself.”

Stewart says an integral element of the study was finding out what tools marketers are using to grow their lists, and what’s working. Stewart noted metrics like how many names marketers are adding, what the quality of the names is, and the ultimate ROI outcome.

“The marketers who are evaluating what’s working, what’s not and constantly evaluating their budgets and reallocating money based on what’s working are having far more success in list growth rates,” Stewart says. “It’s an ongoing active effort. It’s not a ‘set it and forget it’ part of your email strategy.”