EMAIL LIST BUILDING AND LEAD GENERATION: TIPS FOR BANKS & CREDIT UNIONS
Email marketing campaigns are a critical component of any content marketing strategy. Data show that 72 percent of adults prefer companies to communicate with them via email more than any other form of marketing. And a whopping 86 percent like to receive promotional emails at least once per month from companies they do business with.
Because email marketing is a cost-effective way to reach and stay in touch with a qualified and interested audience, properly managing your list is imperative. This is especially important for banks and credit unions that typically have lengthy sales cycles.
Proper email list management is a crucial aspect of effective content marketing. It improves email deliverability and gives you accurate insight into your campaign statistics. Here are four fast and easy ways to improve your financial institution’s email campaign results through effective email list management:
Attract Quality Addresses to Your List.
New visitors generally make up at least 60 percent of the traffic on most websites. Make sure your website is optimized to capture as many of these visitors as possible to your list. Include email registration forms on every main page of your site. And make sure those registration forms give your visitors options about the type of content they want to receive.
Segment Effectively.
Once you have qualified addresses, be sure you add them into the appropriate segmented lists. When you segment your lists, you organize these important assets according to audience interest. That makes it easier to craft engaging content that is meaningful to your audiences.
You can segment your lists by the type of content each prefers, demographics, age, product engagement, future needs and more. Effective segmentation will allow you to run parallel campaigns. For instance, in February you can send out a February birthday greeting to one list, an IRA contribution reminder to those who told you they are interested in tax tips, and a tutorial on new merchant services features to business clients.
Ask for Feedback.
Every year, email a survey to your list asking each contact to identify the content they want to receive from you, from a listing of several categories. Be sure to share why the information is important to you and how their response will help you send the most useful information to them. Add a prominent call to action button to take the survey. And finally, make sure that the survey is short, to the point, and optimized to view well on a mobile device.
Scrub Your List.
After every email campaign, identify any emails that bounced back and remove them from your list. Regularly review your email list and look for anyone who has not opened an email from you in the last six months. Get those off your list. Those who are not engaged are dead weight on your list. When it comes to an effective email campaign a qualified address list is always preferable (quality over quantity). Finally, remove any distribution or system addresses, like those that start with “support@” or “info@”
Finally, make sure your emails offer value every time. Concentrate on helping each contact – not selling to them.
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