No matter how beautifully crafted your email programme and how engaged your core customers, you’re always going to get unsubscribers. It’s a sad but inevitable fact of email marketing and you have to be strong and let them go. The most important thing is that whilst you’re waving goodbye to old friends at the back door, you’re shepparding new ones in at the front. Invigorating your email file is absolutely crucial to maintaining healthy KPI’s but how do you get them in? Bought lists are so hit and miss and, in the unforgiving world of spam traps and blacklists, potentially harmful to your sender reputation.

With this in mind, I’ve prepared a list of the top 5 ways to grow your email file organically, with the type of opener-clickers that will have you forgetting those unsubscribers in no time.

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When Adrian asked me to attend Silverpop’s EMEA Customer Conference in London I jumped at the chance.  The agenda looked promising but the real draw was the prospect of partaking in a little quality time with a pint of London Pride. Surely I’d find a little time wouldn’t I?

Anyway, the conference took place at The Brewery in the Barbican and I have to say it was a great location with bags of character. Oh and there was a pub just down the road which surely sold London Pride?!

The first session was literally “awesome” as Silverpop’s American CEO, Bill Nussey, outlined his vision for the future of email marketing.  I was expecting to be bowled over by this “vision” but I wasn’t.  In very basic terms he advised against blast emails and recommended that email marketers adopted a more targeted and segmented approach.  Not exactly groundbreaking but to be fair to Bill he did manage to bring his presentation to life with the use of Silverpop’s Email Platform which helped showcase how easy it was to adopt his “visionary” approach.

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Heurelho Gomes (The Brazilian Octopus) in the mid 00s had worked hard at building a reputation in Holland and Brazil as a fantastic shot stopping goalkeeper.  However, when Gomes signed for Spurs in 2008 for £10m the reputation he had created for himself now counted for nothing.  He had to start again.   He had to re-build that reputation by performing well for his new club.   To be honest, he’s struggled at times and he’s made some right howlers (remember Fulham away!) but he’s still working hard to build that reputation up to the same level he had whilst he was at PSV.

And your point being, I hear you ask?  Well, I have a great deal of empathy for Heurelho as I’ve recently found myself in a similar position.  I’ve recently been involved with the re-birth of a client’s IP address.  I’m not going to lie this has been quite a traumatic experience.  It’s been difficult.  It’s been complex.  It’s been emotional.  The reason for these emotions, well, when you move IP address, you start from scratch, just like Heurelho.  All the hard work you’ve put in building up your reputation in the past now counts for nothing, just like Heurelho.

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After undertaking the successful  rebrand of High and Mighty we were tasked with producing a weekly e-newsletter that would be sent to the High and Mighty database.  The newsletter needed to reflect the new look and feel for the brand, as well as promoting the range of products and services available both instore and online.

Red C created a template that incorporated the key elements of the brand which included informative style tips, quirky quotes and added value pieces such as comical Youtube clips. These, combined with a range of products that linked directly to the website created a hardworking yet visually appealing e-newsletter.

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