Collect your user base (aka subscribers list) in the right way.

So, you're at the start of your email marketing. Well, you need to have people to receive your emails. It's no accident I used the word "people". There are not just numbers in your email service provider (ESP). Remember it! So let's get started.

I will not tell you about the GDPR, CCPA or other juristical aspects of such process. Email marketing starts when the visitor of your page becomes your user. When this happens  you collect some data about the user, right? 

The minimum you should collect it is the email address, it is a unique identifier. Other useful information is: name, location (where the user came from), language, age, gender, phone number. These are essential “helpers” in your future email marketing campaigns. They will help you in the segmentation process. So in future, you should provide different marketing campaigns for each segment of your subscribers base. So you have to figure out how to collect these pieces of information in one place. 

How to collect these users in the first place? There are two simple options. First one - use built-in functionality in the email sending services. Many of them have this. Option two - use third-party integration services. They work as simple as possible: it connects the Google Sheets and email sending service so that when the client enters your Google Table it takes all needed information and passes it into your email subscribers list.

Note! I’ll talk more about the specific services-helpers and how to use them in the next article which will be devoted completely to the toolbox of the email marketer.

We are all humans, and every human is tend to make mistakes. Especially, when we enter our personal info with the keyboard. Believe me, it happens more often, than you think. User may (and will) make a typo while entering personal information. For you, as an email marketing manager, the most important info (try to guess) is an email address. So, if the user will make a mistake in the mailbox name, consider you lost your subscriber. 

Again, there are two possible options here: user will notice the mistake after the registration and will make another account with the right data or user will not and leave the things as they are. You'll not like none of the outcomes: in the first case you’ll have to deal with the duplicate accounts and the second one will leave you without your subscriber.

To reduce the probability of mistakes in user’s emails you can track possible typos (like gmel, yhoo, etc.) when user types-in its information. There are such services which can catch the typos in real time and suggest the right spelling right on your landing page. You can also make some research on email service providers and find out which of them has the built-in service of real time typos suggestion. Spoiler: there are some, wait for the next article. Or you can go the hard way and make your front-end developer to create such typos check. It’s not so complicated but time consuming, believe me.

And final for this part - don’t forget to ask your customers about the permission to send your emails to them. Or do notification about your intentions via pop-up or in every other explicit way. Make sure your subscriber is willing to receive emails from you.

BTW, it will be a plus if the user is completely aware of what it will see in its mailbox. You can describe what types of email you intend to send (updates, notifications, promo, etc.) so the user could choose what type of content fits its needs. 

That’s all for now. The next part of this series of articles will be about the essential toolbox for the email marketing manager. See you soon!