What Is The Best Email Acquisition Method?

Growing a large and active email list is on everyone’s radar these days. And it should be. Not only is it cost-effective, it also generates real-time data about your audience and prospects that you can’t get anywhere else. So what is the best email acquisition method? There are only three ways to build your list. 

1. Organic Growth
2. Word of Mouth (Viral)
3. Paid Acquisition 

Most marketers aim to optimize organic growth by having an email sign-up on every page of their website, using a dynamic acquisition page, and leveraging their call center and sales team. Retail stores and other offline venues can also be strong contributors to email list growth. If you are speaking at an event, pass a sign-up sheet around, and if you are exhibiting, ask for business cards—in each case, it’s advised to offer some research, other content, or a promotion in exchange for the opt-in.

Viral marketing can be hard to do, and results are often unpredictable. However, it’s a best practice to have the forward-to-a-friend function in place, and sometimes it’s easier to focus on creating one or two viral messages per quarter, rather than trying to make every message enticing to forward. Recently, a national restaurant chain delivered an viral email campaign by offering a free appetizer for every 3 business referrals that would optin for catering information. Building your list through viral connections on LinkedIn and Facebook can also be easy and cost effective.

Paid strategies include e-append (if you happen to have a strong direct mail database), email list rental, search (PPC) and co-registration. Every company, division, and email communication stream is different though, so be sure to test a number of different methods before settling on what you think may work best.

Whatever you decide, resist the temptation of “buying” an email list.  Whatever the price is, it’s too much. Lists that are available for purchase can be full of dead addresses and “honey pots” that ISPs use to identify spammers. Sending to a bought list is a surefire way to get blacklisted by ISPs which can cause all kinds of problems including legal implications. However, renting lists from reputable vendors is a viable option.

About the Author
Traci Stevenson is an Account Manager and Internet Marketing Specialist at Knowledge Marketing. She works with clients to improve their online marketing performance and works as their Knowledge Marketing advocate.