Gather, Don’t Hunt for E-mail Addresses: Study

A new study has taken a look at the best ways to grow e-mail subscriber files, but one worrisome finding is that 33% of all e-mail marketers don’t bother to evaluate the performance of their list gathering techniques.

Capturing e-mail addresses when consumers are highly engaged was found to be the quickest and most productive way to grow the files. Those points of contact include, point of sale, while consumers are shopping online or in-store via text messaging. These methods rated as much as 60% higher over such offline tactics, including mass advertising and list rentals, according to research conducted by Ball State University , Email Marketers Club and ExactTarget

The most inefficient ways to try to capture the addresses include through outbound call centers, list rental, e-mail append and offline advertising, the research found.

“The best performing list growth tactics are built on gathering subscriber data rather than hunting for it,” Morgan Stewart, ExactTarget’s director of research and strategy, said in a release. “Whether you are a B-to-B or a B-to-C marketer, the best way to grow your subscriber list is to collect information during customer-initiated interactions.”

Other top findings include:

* The best performer for capturing e-mail addresses: Onsite registration followed by inbound call centers, point-of-sale and through social sharing.

*B-to-B marketers showed better results capturing the address with incentivized registration, while B-to-C marketers find non-incentivized subscriptions most effective.

*Mobile phones are the up-and-comer when it comes to capturing, or allowing customers to subscribe to e-mails. This method is expected to increase faster this year than any other list growth tactic—more than 500%.

* Enabling subscribers to share e-mail content with their social networks is expected to increase more than 348% in 2009.

*One-third of all e-mail marketers rarely or never evaluate the performance of their list growth sources.

“There is no silver bullet, and no one tactic that will provide meaningful list growth,” said Tamara Gielen, founder of The Email Marketers Club. “Successful list growth strategies employ multiple tactics to drive new subscriptions and compel subscribers to register because of the value of the communication itself.”

The complete 2009 List Growth Whitepaper is free and available for download online at www.exacttarget.com/listgrowth.