Any good email marketer knows that half the battle is actually getting a campaign off the ground – that is coming up with great content on a regular basis, offering incentives to encourage sign-ups and most importantly, getting plenty of people to sign up. It can feel like a major victory just to have emails going out on a regular basis to a good amount of subscribers.

The next part of the battle is to advance and try and gain even more subscribers, and this is where a great deal of email marketing campaigns fall flat on their face. Not because they don’t get more subscribers, but because they take their current subscribers for granted. It’s easy to see a large number and consider them ‘in the bag’ but remember – that number is actually representative of a large group of people, all willing to pull the unsubscribe trigger should you decide to not pay them the attention they deserve.

Keeping your subscribers happy is vital to the success of your email marketing campaign and thankfully, you won’t have to change much to keep them signed up. Remember all that great content you created for the first few emails that ended up creating a huge spike in your subscription numbers? Keep it going. Don’t rest on your laurels and settle for second best; produce fresh, interesting content on a regular basis and you should keep your subscribers engaged. Focus on actual content rather than going for the hard sell for the best results.

Like any good relationship, making your other half feel special is really important and you need to be treating your subscribers. You may have encouraged them to sign up with the offer of a free ebook or some exclusive content, so you’ve given them the taste of exclusivity and now they want more. Produce articles, graphics and content exclusively for email subscribers, the kind of thing that will keep current subscribers opening their emails while also encouraging new subscribers at the same time.

There is such a thing as too much content, and sending out emails too frequently is the fastest way to an unsubscribe or, even worse, the spam folder. Set a timeframe for when emails will go out and stick to it – this could once a week, once a month or even quarterly emails. That way, you aren’t sending out too much and subscribers know when to expect your email and look forward to all the great content you’ll be delivering them.

You also need to be a ‘giver’; that is hold plenty of competitions and giveaways. It’s a simple technique but an effective one. People love winning stuff, and you have lots of stuff to offer. The chance of a regular prize, even if they never win, will be enough to keep some people subscribing for years.

If you’ve got a particularly large base of subscribers, try and segment the list so you can target specific groups of subscribers with different content. You can do this by holding a survey to determine their interests and details, although you may already have this info depending on how much you asked for during the sign-up process. By targeting specific target to specific customers, you show a degree of awareness and personal concern which will work towards solidifying that special relationship between you and subscriber.

Ben Greenwood is writing on behalf of Extravision, specialists in email marketing software

Ben Greenwood is writing on behalf of Extravision (http://www.extravision.com), specialists in email marketing software

Author Bio: Ben Greenwood is writing on behalf of Extravision, specialists in email marketing software

Category: Marketing
Keywords: email marketing, email marketing campaigns