The Pontiflex Blog

Focus on Quality When it Comes to List Growth

July 26, 2010 at 10:48 am Jordan Cohen Leave a comment

Kara Trivunovic from Strongmail penned a new article for Mediapost last week, provocatively titled “Does Size Really Matter?”  (Her answer — yes, it does).

Kara rightfully cautions that in the quest for list growth, marketers shouldn’t forgo quality in the name of quantity: “If you are just adding people for the sake of hitting a number, the rest of your metrics will suffer, I promise.”

Her advice is solid:

• Set goals for growth. Kara says marketers should come up with realistic objectives that “align with the addition of quality subscribers who want to engage with your content and your brand and will have a positive impact on your other performance metrics.”  The goal should be to add new subscribers to your list who are as likely or even more likely to open, click and respond to your emails than your previous and current subscribers.
• Identify where your customers are most likely to sign up. Kara suggests auditing how one’s subscribers prefer to sign up, including whether offline channels are optimized for “natural email acquisition” and whether a company’s social presence is helping to attract new customers.
• Deliver value. List attrition can be a prime indication that your content is becoming irrelevant and needs a refresh. More than any other tactic, building and maintaining an email program that delivers value will help keep subscribers from opting out and encourage new ones to opt-in because of positive word-of-mouth.

Quality matters as much as quantity — the two are not, and should never be, mutually exclusive.

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