Building Your Member Base Through Email Marketing

By DANIEL LUISE – August 1, 2017

Email marketing is a great tool for direct marketing, allowing marketers to instantly inform existing and potential members with news and updates. At its best, email marketing retains current members and secures potential members; at its worst it lies unopened in a spam folder – out your target audience’s mind and sight.

Importance of Your Subject Lines

Start by focusing on your email subject line. It is important that you don’t use common spamming tricks, like bold text or excessive use of punctuation marks!!! More likely than not, your reader will take one look at the subject line and hit delete or flag it to the dreaded spam folder. Instead, provide a brief description of what that email is about. Be as specific as possible, using a call to action (CTA) that conveys urgency and immediate response. Think about how many emails a day you are hit with. If you wouldn’t open it based on the subject line, odds are your prospect won’t either.

Avoid Stuffing Links

When you use too many links in your email blasts, they end up looking like sales pitches. Inundating the reader with too many links will turn him/her off to the entire message, once again leaving your emails vulnerable to be trashed or spammed. Keep in mind, email is intended to save time on delivery and consumption of information. Like your CTA, make the content as direct and to the point as possible. Any leftover time can be spent considering the content your reader has just reviewed.

Another important note to make regarding links is the ability to track clicks and traffic. You may have the greatest link or links in your email, but if you have no way of knowing how many clicks, who clicked what and other insights, then what’s the point? That’s where the right marketing automation tool comes into play.

Use Email Templates

It is helpful to utilize email templates for your emails. Not only does a good template simplify the task of creating and placing content, but it also structures the email so that it’s easier for your audience to review. Familiarity is also a benefit of these templates, as your subscribers will come to expect the type of marketing content you deliver. There are many templates available, so choose the one that goes along with the type of content you’re producing (text, blurbs, images, etc.).

Templates will also save you time in creating these emails time and time again. If you are a smaller association or may not have the resources, having the right tool and plenty of templates to choose from, makes email marketing to your members and prospects a lot simpler.

Don’t Send Too Many

Unless you have specified to send daily emails, try not to send marketing emails more than once or twice a week. Depending on what you have agreed to deliver in terms of email content (whether it be weekly, monthly, or so on), stick to the expectations you have set. On occasion, you will send an extra email to announce something important or time sensitive, but this should be kept to a minimum.

You may have a prospect on the hook or members that are engaged, but if you start flooding their inbox every day they may become annoyed and leave or decide to go elsewhere.

Provide Valuable Information

You are promising your prospects and members something helpful or informative, so that’s exactly what should be given in each and every email you send. When subscribers start appreciating what you deliver, they will continue to open your emails. Thus, producing loyal members and potentially helping you to market via word-of-mouth. If your current members love your content, it becomes much easier for them to spread the word and help attract new members for your association.

In today’s world, there are plenty of different ways to reach your prospects and members. When looking to increase your member base, you may be able to through email marketing, social media, online forums or even direct mail perhaps. But, email marketing is still very important and popular, so make sure it is done right.