It is a proven fact that the longer subscribers are on your list the less their activity is. Recent reports notice, that the highest open rates (58%) could be obtained during the first month from subscription. In two months the open rate falls 13%. After half a year the open rates are 37%. In two years the open rate is about 33%. These numbers are all averages, but still they show the real tendencies you should always take in consideration.

The factors that may cause the open rates decline are multiple:

• Source. A part of your subscribers were motivated by special offers or bonuses to sign in. they will definitely lose their interest in your email messages after the special purpose is over.
• Expectations. The content of email message should always be relevant to the needs and desires of your subscribers.
• Frequency. People are more likely to leave your list if the emailing is too annoying or too rare. Low frequency allows subscribers to forget about their subscription as fast as too frequent emails irritate them.
• Poor start. Your first email message should be emailed as soon as possible.
• Irrelevant content. In the relationship with the subscriber you are the part that presupposes to email needed information to the subscriber, who can become a future customer. The subscriber counts just on information he or she is in need and no other one. They will never be for a long period of time with you if the content of email message won’t satisfy and correspond to their needs.
• Interest change. It often happens that the preferences of your subscribers can suddenly change.
• Competitive newsletter. The advertising or promotional message you send has to compete with several dozens of similar emails.
• Unsubscribe process. If the process of unsubscribing is too long and difficult the subscriber will more likely chose to be inactive instead of spending the time on signing out.

To prevent your list from subscribers’ inactivity you should take special measures that should become the key rules of your every email marketing campaign. For example you don’t have to wait long time to engage your new-comers, but should try to do it right away. Send them messages as soon as possible. You may also include “best-of” list, which will represent the most popular and useful articles. To organize more personalized emailing, send a quick survey targeted on determination of expectations and preferences of newbies and your other subscribers. Don’t hesitate to ask you subscribers about their attitude towards the design and usability of your email messages to make them more relevant and useful. Always consider segmentation and personalization. Finally, if user still decides to opt out make the process as easy as possible, otherwise long unsubscribe option will cause list’s activity decline.

Of course it doesn’t mean you have to drop anyone who doesn’t respond or click. On the contrary, you have to try to re-opt-in such subscribers. But before applying any efforts to improve the situation try to determine why it happens to you list. There are 3 main causes:

1. A lot of addresses, which are in your list, were not based on permission.
2. The list is out-of-date and contains a lot bad email addresses.
3. A part of subscribers did forget they’ve ordered your emailing.

To manage the situation and resolve the problem of high inactivity rate try to run a re-opt-in campaign. Send email letters that will remind subscribers they are on your list. Consider including unsubscribe link in such email, but don’t also forget to attract the attention of your subscribers to changes or interesting information. Let them update their data if needed, etc.

Finally, if you don’t have any replies or you get emails bounces, you can delete such emails from you list, because sending email messages to such emails is only waste of money and time.

It is very important how you start to build your email marketing list. The beginning determines rather you will attain the needed and so much desired results or not. Try to pay your attention on how you get the addresses for your contact list, how you greet your new-comers, and how you run the relationship after the subscription.

There are a lot of different ways to collect new email addresses for your list. The most important detail is permission. You should know that the fundamental rule of building of each email marketing list is to get permission first. There are rules which restrict the activity of unconscientious email marketers, so to obtain the explicit permission to add the email address to your list is a vital option that never should be ignored. Following this simple rule will guarantee you from violating someone’s rights, the same as the US CAN-SPAM Act or any similar law.

You always have to maintain the interest in your email messages. The best way to start grow this interest is to chose right welcome. Some of email marketers may consider the first welcome their first email sent, but it is not quite right. The welcome starts already on the sign-in page, and namely opt-in page became the decisive factor. What is really important to remember, that you have to design it for your visitors (and maybe future subscribes), but not for you who already knows everything about it. Try to view it with the potential subscriber’s eyes.

Never reduce the attention to the subscriber after the sign-in procedure is finished. The actions you undertake have a great impact on how long the subscriber would like to present on your list. Consider extra motivating sources such as bonuses and so on to keep in touch with you subscribers. Otherwise the number of your active subscribers will lessen with every minute. What will be the result? – Of course a big, but “dirty” email marketing list, where the quantity plays bigger role then quality. Thus, such email marketing list is not useful.

We would like to purpose you some strategies to clear you list out of inactive email addresses.

1. The first step is to determine which are nonresponders and segment the list on two big categories, one of which should contain the emails with no actions that could be associated with them.

2. The second step is to create a list of nonresponders, so that later we would be able to send them a “re-opt-in” email.

3. Then send an email with the following elements included:

• Text format (to determine whether HTML caused email blocking)
• Subject line: Special Notice Regarding Your Subscription
• Personalized greeting and subscriber details
• Date when the subscriber joined the list
• Re-opt-in link
• Link to recent issues or current offer
• An unsubscribe link

4. Consider monitoring the replies on your re-opt-in messages

5. In most cases there won’t be any replies at all, but before you delete an email address from your list you should be sure it is inactive address. Only after you are absolutely confident, you may delete all the dead emails from the original list.

Following such simple strategies to accomplish strategies will definitely help you obtain an up-to-date and valuable email marketing list.

Sometimes it happens that an email marketer is in need of “fresh” emails to send newsletters. There is a simple way to get those addresses. Try to promote your list with a downloadable whitepaper or e-book. But don’t hurry up and give visitor the possibility to download the content before the opt-in option is performed. Allow content download only after the new subscriber confirms his/her email address and request. After the list reaches the needed volume it requires quite wise management.

Determining optimal send time

There are several simple actions you may undertake to get a better feedback of your mailing due to sending the newsletters in time. You can start work out on it from the very beginning, considering the opt-in form a start point. Let people select the time they prefer to get your email messages. One more way to optimize your email list is segmentation based on time zone, so that your subscribers from different time zones could read you messages in proper time. In most cases the opt-in form presupposes subscriber to indicate the zip-code, which could be used as determiner of the exact time zone. You also is able to manage a special survey to ask subscribers what time they are mostly willing to receive your mailings. Or it is also possible to organize a small focus group research. After the information about time zones is collected you can start to segment your list to make your emailing more comfortable for subscribers.

Shared email addresses

It often may happen the subscriber will give you a shared email address. That means he/she is not the only user of such email address. Thus another user can delete your message by mistake or considering it spam mailing. To deal with this problem try to get as much in formation on subscriber as possible, so that later you will be able to remind your subscriber about when, where and how he/she signed up. It is better to report this information immediately in a confirmation email. After the personal contact with the new subscriber is reached, include the information on subscriber in your email marketing list: you will later be able to use this data to target your email marketing campaign.

Email list fatigue

The term “list fatigue” means that in your email marketing list there are some inactive subscribers. They do not consider unsubscribing yet, but they also don’t open your email messages and are not engaged with them anymore. The list fatigue is calculated by determining the percentage of inactive subscribers. Calculating it, you have to find out what exact time period should be determined. After the needed calculations are done, try to re-activate those inactive subscribers.

Email list churn

List churn is the volume of subscribers that unsubscribe over a certain period of time (usually measured monthly or annually). To follow the monthly loss rate can be determined by monitoring your email performance reports. List churn includes hard bounces, unsubscribes and spam complaints. To minimize churn from bad addresses consider permanent list hygiene and email address changes. Give your subscribers the possibility to re-subscribe if they have changed the email address, due to requiring optional email address to be filled in while signing-in.

Unsubscribe confirmation

Finally if you subscriber decides to unsubscribe and he/she fails, never consider sending them a negative reply as “Your request to unsubscribe was unsuccessful”, thus making people angry. It is better to confirm the unsubscribe request with the phrase like “Successfully unsubscribed”. In this case you will not harm you reputation.

This was general information on building an email marketing list. Respecting these simple tips you will create your list rather fast. But you should think not only about the volume of your list, but also about its quality. Here are the guidelines to a quality email marketing list:

• Always keep your list clean from incorrect and out-to-date email addresses, thus reducing bounces and maintaining the reputation on high level.
• Use list segmentation to better satisfy your subscribers’ needs. Dividing your list on relevant segments will allow you deliver targeted messages.
• Never prefer list volume to its quality.

There are several ways to increase your email address list volume.

Online means of increasing the list

1. You should think of optimizing the web site form to attract new subscribers. Your home page is not the only place the form should appear. A simplified copy of the main form may be places on every page of your web site.
2. You can offer your customer to opt-in while requesting customer’s email address to check out process for order and shipping confirmations.
3. The most popular way to find products online is surfing through different search engines. So the PPC programs can forward a lot of potential customers and subscribers on your page, thus driving the traffic of your site.
4. Search engine optimization also should be considered, due to driving traffic and growing your list.
5. Refer-a-friend option can also add definite number of new subscribers. Even though the amount of such new subscribers is not very large it still may be enough to offset your unsubscribes each month.

Using the online ways of building your email address lists avoid limiting the subscriber’s freedom to make their own choice and try not to use prechecked boxes. Maybe in such case you will have less opt-ins but you will be sure you have collected the email addresses of those people who really want to be with you and get messages from you.

Offline means of increasing the list

Besides the online methods of collecting email addresses there are several ways to do it offline. Here are the most popular ones:

- Trade shows. This is a very convenient way to create not only your B2C email marketing list, but also B2B email marketing list. But do remember that holding you a personal card doesn’t necessary mean the person wants to opt-in. Considering such situation you should call or email to ask if that person wants to sign-in.

- Use direct mail and catalogs.

- Your call center operators and sales staff should ask customers and prospects if they’d like to get newsletters or promotional materials from you.

- Send postcards to customers encouraging them to subscribe to email.

- Promote your emailing in presentations and handouts.

Uniting your efforts and using all possible ways to collect email addresses you will definitely increase your opt-in list quite fast, at the same time preserving its quality.