Gaining new subscribers to your B2B or B2C content is an exciting experience. You get to grow your list and expand your reach. Whether you obtained new subscribers from an event or promotion, you want to make sure they become long-term contacts.
New subscribers can be tricky. They show interest in your organization, but if you don’t impress them right away, they could turn on you quickly. How do you keep them engaged so they don’t drop your company off their radar?
Validate
If you obtained email addresses the manual way—from a signup sheet—and entered them into your database later, you need to make sure you put them in correctly. Otherwise, you lose the opportunity to connect with potential customers who already opted in. Correct typos, syntax errors and other issues that might prevent messages from reaching their marks. Taking the time to do this frequently prevents your database from becoming a mess. It is far easier to clean up data as you go than wait until the situation is out of control. Start off on the right foot.
Welcome Email
The first messages you send are crucial to creating meaningful The first messages you send are crucial to creating meaningful relationships. It’s good practice to send a welcome email within 24 hours of the initial sign up. Automation can help you here. While the average email open rate is 21%, welcome emails average a whopping 82% open rate.
In the welcome email, introduce yourself and include a link to your subscriber preference center if you have one (and you should). Let subscribers set the boundaries of the relationship so the frequency or variety of messages doesn’t turn them off. You may even want to consider creating a series rather than just a one-off welcome message.
Reward Them
It might be in the first welcome email or the second or third, but somewhere along the line, you should consider giving new subscribers a little something to thank them. B2C businesses might offer a coupon or special promotional code to use at checkout. B2B could share some great content or VIP access to an upcoming event. Providing an incentive demonstrates to new subscribers that signing up for email messages was worthwhile.
Segment Immediately
You need to prepare for the relationship after the welcome series and ensure you send only the most relevant content. Consider initial segments for new subscribers. These could include, age, gender, location, previous purchase history, and more. You can send the same welcome messages to all new subscribers, but after that, you need to break them down into smaller groups. Otherwise, they will feel bombarded with messages they aren’t interested in.
It is often difficult to get new email addresses at all. After you have customer information, tread very carefully. Do all the right things, and you have a valuable customer relationship on your hands. It all starts in the inbox.
