The’Email marketing is today a mature communication channel. The Key performance indicators (KPIs) are established, and the programmes to calculate the Return on investment (ROI) are numerous. It is therefore becoming increasingly difficult to innovate.
Innovation presents risks, and brands that use this channel, one of the most profitable in direct eMarketing, do not want to play at being sorcerer's apprentices. That said, it is essential to stay open to innovation and to take advantage of new ideas to improve the efficiency of the existing process. In this case, where to innovate? And the answer is: Why not try to innovate in the most difficult sector of email marketing: the’Acquisition and design of a subscriber list.
Numerous strategies have been deployed over the years, some more effective than others, with some seeking contact opt-in while others used emails without any prior agreement. However, we should note a shift in consumers' relationships with their friends, family, peers, and brands online, and this change profoundly impacts how businesses must acquire new customers.
The social web (blogs, social networks, etc.) has introduced a level of transparency that gives consumers the opportunity to form their own perception of a brand in the market. Information is now controlled by your followers. Joseph Jaff explains in his book («Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones») that acquiring new customers should be achieved through your existing customers.
This is why marketers using the email channel should turn to their subscriber community to identify potential future customers, communicate the value of the email relationship, and even let them participate in content creation.
Let's delve deeper into these different stages to define how this acquisition method can stimulate growth and engagement.
Identify the subscribers potential
Most marketers know how to identify their consumer profiles and use them to acquire new customers. For example, brands place acquisition messages on websites that match their target profiles and identify the flow of new acquisitions coming from these sites.
Many brands allow their subscribers to easily forward information to friends on how to sign up for the same updates as them. For years, email marketing has offered tools to send messages to friends (viral marketing), albeit with a rather low acquisition rate. With the advent of social media, tools emerged that allowed messages to be shared on your favourite networks, but unfortunately with similar results. Some brands have gone further and innovated even more in acquisition.
The sales sites HauteLook, Rue La La, and Gilt Groupe have rapidly developed their subscriber base for the email channel by implementing two actions:
Setting up a programme to reward subscribers who invite their friends to sign up,
Implementation of tools allowing the new subscriber to communicate about their registration via different non-email channels (Twitter, Facebook, etc.).
Ultimately, the brand finds new followers via its current followers without needing to pay partners or publishers. The success is all the more interesting.
Communicating value of the email relationship
Trust between brands and their consumers is constantly being called into question. Today, information flows freely across social networks and blogs, and controlling it has become the primary concern for subscribers. In this context, it is essential that the email programme a consumer subscribes to is both clear and reassuring. Your subscribers will have no desire to praise your brand if they feel your content has little or no value. This problem has been exacerbated by intense commercial pressure from some brands that have increased their sending frequency (more emails, more often). As the frequency increases, it becomes difficult to offer new and personalised content to the subscriber.
It is also unlikely that your subscribers will communicate the value of the email relationship you maintain with them if the same content is available through other channels. Given the diversity of relationships that exist between brands and consumers, it is essential that each channel (email, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) offers different and appropriate content. This ensures that subscribers will not sign up for another channel offering identical but more easily accessible content.
The development of exclusive content by channels is very important in reversing the acquisition funnel and in building a base of motivated subscribers to recruit new subscribers.
Offer subscribers the possibility ofcreate content
The ultimate tip for inverting the funnel to grow your subscriber base is to invite them to contribute to content creation, thereby becoming editors alongside the brand. Many companies have invested in tools to listen to their customers and monitor what's being said about the brand and its products. However, few brands offer their subscribers the opportunity to get involved in content creation, to become regular contributors to their communications.
Email marketing should look towards the trends we are seeing in customer service organisations. The latter have implemented tools allowing their customers to communicate with each other to help one another without systematically resorting to a brand technician. In many cases, the writing of FAQ articles is outsourced to customers. The same principle should be considered by email marketing. Content created by subscribers for subscribers is highly likely to increase the level of awareness, which automatically leads to recruitment through current customers.
The’Innovation can appear in many forms. Today, new email marketing strategies are no longer linked to improving technical tools but to way of reacting to the evolution of communication. Before, you had to think about how to convert a prospect into a customer, today you have to find ways to’Encourage your clients to refer you to new prospects. «Flipping the funnel» means the funnel must be inverted.
Find the full article « Entrusting Subscriber Acquisition to the Subscriber » in English on the ClickZ blog, written by Ryan Deutsch.
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