An email campaign is the most basic and fundamental part of any marketing or sales program. It is a very effective way to communicate with customers, existing clients, and potential new customers. An email campaign, often simply called an ‘email campaign’ or ‘email blast,’ usually contains three basic parts:
- A welcome email
- One or more follow-up emails
- Opt-in or out to move forward with email marketing
Whether you are a marketing manager or a freelance marketer, you will inevitably come across a situation where you need to extend an email campaign to include more lists of people or contacts. For example, you may have started with a mailing list of 500 people and you decide to add another 500 people to the list. Or, you may have created a lead list and you decide that you want to get in touch with those leads via email soon after they join your list (if that is the type of email campaign you are running). Or, perhaps you want to send a quick thank you for registering with your site and provide them with some freebies or discounts.
The question is: how do you do that?
Can I Add Contacts to an Email Campaign That Is Already in Progress?
You might be asking yourself this question because you are wondering what to do if you are currently in the middle of an email campaign and you discover that you need to add another list of contacts to the campaign.
You have probably seen this type of thing before. You launch an email campaign and you add a list of contacts that you found on Facebook or LinkedIn. You send the email campaign out and it works great — for a little while. Then, for some reason, the campaign starts falling short. You discover that you are getting low open rates and poor engagement. To make matters worse, you discover that the people on your list aren’t actually interested in your product or service. In fact, they may be completely unaware that you exist. In this scenario, you have a few options.
Stop the Campaign
The first thing you should do in this scenario is stop the campaign. You will not benefit from continuing to send out the same email to people who have already expressed an unwillingness to hear from you. Even if you think that they may be interested in your product or service, you can never truly know for sure. Therefore, it is best to stop everything and start over again. Be confident that you will find a better approach to reach the same audience. Sometimes, this means entirely changing the target audience and the offer. In other words, if you are sending out this particular email campaign because you want to generate sales from Brazil, but you find that few people from Brazil are opening your emails, it may be time to reevaluate your approach. It could mean that the email address that you are using for delivery is wrong and you should consider using a different email address (preferably one that is associated with a verified email account).
Create a Batch of New Contacts
Assuming that you have already verified that the email addresses on your existing contacts list are correct and can be used, you can create a batch of new contacts and send them all at once. The beauty of this approach is that you can use a tool to automate the email campaign. For example, you can set it to go out every week or every other week depending on how frequently you want to send out new emails. Then, when you verify the new contacts’ email addresses, they will immediately be included in the campaign. This approach can help you avoid the issue of missing addresses and sloppy BCC field (blind carbon copy).
Creating a batch of new contacts and sending them all at once is a quick and easy way to get more people on your email list. However, it assumes that you already have a list of potential contacts that you want to add to the campaign. If you do not, then this approach may not be for you. You have to ask yourself: do I have a good reason to believe that these people will be interested in my product or service?
Add the New Contacts Slowly
Another approach that you can take is to add the new contacts manually. One email at a time, one address at a time. This is a tedious process but, in the long run, it can be more effective. It is a lot less likely to result in you sending emails to people who do not want to hear from you. Plus, you can always remove contacts from the list if you discover that they are not interested in what you have to say. For instance, if you discover that the email address for a particular contact on your list does not match what you see on Google or social media, it may be time to remove them. You do not want to continue to send out emails to people who are not going to be interested in what you have to say anyway. So, be choosy with whom you add to your email list and verify their email addresses accurately. In addition to this, make sure that you send out emails regularly. Even if you send out a weekly email, it will still be beneficial to your campaign if you send it out every other week. Why? People forget about emails that they receive weekly. So, if you want to get your message across, send it out frequently. Every two weeks, four times a month, or once a month — whatever you can afford.
Use a Different List for Delivery
A different approach entirely is to use a different email list for delivery. There are several options out there. You can use a different service or create a new one. The important thing is that you have to have a way to verify the addresses of the people on your list. Don’t use a free service that does not allow you to verify the emails of your contacts. In addition to this, make sure that the list you use is opted-in and it contains only the people who are interested in what you have to say. Having a verified list is the key to a successful email campaign. In other words, if you are not sure whether or not your contacts will want to receive your emails, it may be time to create a new list. You can use a tool like MailChimp or Aweber to create a new email list. In addition to this, you can also use a tool like GetResponse to create a list of verified email addresses for your website.
As you can see, there are several different ways that you can extend your email campaign to include more contacts. Which approach you take depends on the situation and, sometimes, it is not even clear what is the best option. However, if you keep the above in mind, you will be able to create successful email campaigns time and time again.