5 Key Ways to Build a Lasting Relationship with Your List

• Last updated September 3, 2019
• lead conversion

Growing your email list is not just about attracting new subscribers. It’s also about keeping the ones you've already got.

Marketers are often keen to let you know the number of new subscribers they attract on a regular basis, or the number on their list as a whole.

What you rarely hear about is how much this is offset by those they're losing on a regular basis, such as people who might be subscribed but who they're no longer able to communicate effectively with.

If you attract 100 new leads on a daily basis, sure, it sounds nice. But what if you lose 110 on a daily basis too? It paints an entirely different picture.

You actually lose 25-30% of your list every year through natural “list churn”. This includes factors such as:

• Leads unsubscribing.
• Bouncing email addresses.
• Spam complaints.

These are just the obvious ones.

Then there are the people who simply don't see your emails, even if they're officially "subscribed". Your messages might be going into a spam folder, or to an email address they rarely use. They may as well not be subscribed.

To achieve real, meaningful growth in the numbers on your list, the percentage of new email addresses you add needs to be higher than your list churn rate.

To achieve this, you need to:

• Increase the number of leads you’re attracting.
• Reduce "list churn", i.e. the number of leads you’re losing.

While most list building advice focuses on the former - it sounds far more exciting - the latter is just as important, even if it sounds a little more tedious.

So how do you reduce list churn?

One big factor involves building a good relationship with your list. You want people on your list who:

• Value the information you send.
• Want to have a lasting relationship with you.
• Update their email address with you if they change to another.
• Open your emails and click on links you provide in them.
• Stop your messages disappearing into spam or the daily deluge of "unimportant" email.
• Won't accuse you of spam because you're providing value and they know it's anything but.

So how do you achieve this? Here are 5 key ways.

Unless you’re emailing regularly, your list will quickly grow stale. They’ll lose interest and forget why they subscribed in the first place.

Your response rates will plummet and your unsubscribes and spam complaints will increase.

One way to ensure regular communication is to have a sequence of emails lined up through your ESP (email service provider, often referred to as your autoresponder) that go out to them automatically as soon as they subscribe.

If you have enough emails lined up, you can keep subscribers engaged for months, regardless of whether you send out timely broadcast emails too.

But ideally you do want a mix. To build a real relationship with your list, timely, up-to-date information is required too.

One way to achieve this is to have it fit within a broader content marketing strategy.

Email subscribers regularly, maybe on a weekly basis, and let them know about new blog content, as well as content you may published on other content platforms or otherwise participated in (such as podcasts).

Once you've got that in place, add another layer of regular emails such as:

• Updates such as news related to your business.
• Offer emails such as those referring to new products and services you have available, or are making available through joint venture partners.
• Information related to news events that relate to your audience.
• Helpful messages that simply add inspiration to their day and keep you front of mind.

Real relationships arise out of genuine interaction, not a one-way broadcast.

With services such as live streaming video, people on your email list are increasingly used to having closer online relationships and more two-way interaction.

So consider ways in which you can engage with those on your list more effectively.

For example:

• Ask them to reply personally to your messages, and respond to them when they do. This can get impractical at scale, so at least let them know you read them and personally reply when you're able. Have someone on your team fill in for you otherwise, so at least they get a response.
• Ask them a question. For example, there may be a new service or product you're thinking of providing, or a new direction you're thinking of taking in your business. Ask for their feedback.
• If you have a new product or service, rather than just directing them to an impersonal link, ask them to reply directly if interested so you can forward the relevant information.

Be approachable, accessible, and aim for a more a one-to-one rather than one-to-many relationship.

The good news is that as the level of engagement with your list increases, this improves your email deliverability.

That means the real number of people you actually reach with your email messages increase, even if your list numbers remain the same.

Email services like Gmail use factors such as whether people are clicking on or replying to emails to decide how to treat emails from your domain in future.

These are engagement signals that help indicate the authority of your emails. Ultimately, the more people you have opening, clicking on and replying to emails, the more likely your emails are to make it to people's inboxes rather than end up in spam folders or otherwise undelivered.

Think about face to face relationships. If you only talk to someone within a single setting, such as in the office or at the school gates, you'll have a certain level of relationship.

If you then start meeting or talking via an additional channel, perhaps via email, the telephone or through social media, your relationship with them deepens.

It deepens again if you meet them in an additional setting. Perhaps you play sport, have a night out, or they come to your house.

The same applies to people on your list. The more channels of communication you have with someone, in addition to email, the deeper the relationship.

If someone's also seeing and potentially engaging with your content on social media, they're more likely to open and engage with your emails too, improving deliverability as a whole. They're also less likely to unsubscribe, or report messages as spam.

Provide real value in your emails, and maintain your relevance. Think about why they signed up to your list in the first place, and keep providing the type of value they asked to receive in the first place.

Consider the following:

• How are your emails adding value to your subscribers?
• Are you helping or inspiring them to achieve something?
• Are you letting them know about products, services and resources that will help them?
• Are you segmenting your list effectively so your emails go to those most likely to be interested in specific topics, rather than broadcasting messages to everyone regardless?

Build opportunities for personal contact where they can see you and hear your voice. This helps them:

• Build a more rounded relationship with you.
• Get to know you on a personal level.
• Have a far richer experience than emails alone would allow for.

Ways to do this include the following, whether run directly by yourself or where you appear as a guest:

• Live video streaming
• Teleseminars
• Webinars
• Podcasts
• Live, offline events

To Conclude

When you build a lasting relationship with your email list, you build engagement, and retain subscriber numbers for longer than you otherwise would.

By helping to avoid or delay the effects of "list churn", it's a vital part of list growth.

The higher levels of engagement also help with email deliverability, ensuring your emails reach those who have requested to receive them.

So put the 5 key ways above into action, build a lasting relationship with your list, and enjoy all the advantages of an engaged email audience.

steve shaw

Steve Shaw is the CEO of optinopoli™, next-generation lead capture and sales conversion technology—click here for more info.