CONSUMER LIST MANAGEMENT Overcoming Challenges To Growing & Maintaining Your List CONSUMER LIST MANAGEMENT

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1 CONSUMER LIST MANAGEMENT Overcoming Challenges To Growing & Maintaining Your List 1

2 Consumer List Management Ascend2 Research Conducted in Partnership with BlueHornet. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. You may adapt, copy, distribute and transmit this work. However, you must attribute the work as produced by Ascend2 and its Research Partners but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work. 2

3 Table of Contents Growing & Maintaining Consumer Lists 4 The Importance of Consumer List Growth 5 Most Important Marketing Objectives 6 Most Challenging Obstacles to Success 7 How is List Size Changing? 8 Most Effective List Growth Tactics Used 9 Most Difficult List Growth Tactics to Execute 10 Tactical Effectiveness Versus Executional Difficulty 11 Form Fields Used for List Growth 12 Resources Used to Execute Tactics 13 Survey Methodology and Demographics 14 About the Research Partners 15 3

4 Growing & Maintaining Consumer Lists For 68% of business-to-consumer companies surveyed, growing and maintaining consumer lists is very important to the overall success of marketing programs. But how will consumer marketers overcome new challenges to list growth in the year ahead? To find out, Ascend2 and BlueHornet fielded the List Growth Survey and completed interviews with 251 marketing, sales and business professionals from around the world. The data in this edition of the study, Consumer List Management, represents the opinions of the 106 B2C companies participating in the survey. We thank these busy professionals for sharing their insights. This research has been produced for your use. Put it to work in your own marketing strategy planning and presentation materials. Clip the charts and write about them in your blog or post them on social media. Please share this research credited as published. Best Regards, Kim Tucker Marketing Director BlueHornet 4

5 The Importance of Consumer List Growth More than two-thirds (68%) of B2C companies consider list growth very important to the overall success of their marketing program. list growth is not important to only 5% of consumer marketing programs. Acquiring new, quality subscribers is vital to your program, and is one of the biggest challenges for marketers. According to industry experts, your list will actually shrink 30% annually due to subscribers changing their address. Be sure to implement a list validation regimen that helps you identify invalid addresses as quickly as possible. 5

6 Most Important Marketing Objectives Increasing list size ranks second of the eight top marketing priorities for B2C companies. Improving list hygiene ranks sixth, indicating that marketers may be sacrificing quality for quantity. Choosing quality over quantity is challenging when you re trying to grow your list, but remember, invalid subscribers don t contribute to meaningful list growth. Valid, engaged subscribers will drive higher lifetime value they re worth the effort to identify and acquire. 6

7 Most Challenging Obstacles to Success Achieving list growth success requires that B2C marketers overcome a number of challenging and often overwhelming obstacles. These obstacles include a lack of list hygiene practices, content relevancy, strategy effectiveness and in-house list growth expertise. List Hygiene Tips: 1. Implement point-ofacquisition validation to avoid adding bad addresses to your data base. 2. Filter addresses through a Welcome program to weed out invalids before sending any offers. 3. Regularly segment your audience by engagement and develop a strategy to re-engage your lapsed subscribers. 4. Scrub your data using a validation service at least annually to ensure addresses are accurate. 7

8 How is List Size Changing? Despite the challenges, consumer lists are growing rapidly for 20% of companies and growing slowly for another 54%. list size is not changing or worse shrinking for the remaining 26%. The vast majority of B2C marketers - 74% - feel that their lists are growing slowly or not at all. If your list is growing slowly or shrinking, first understand why: 1. What is the ratio of new subscribers to opt outs and hard bounces? 2. Which acquisition source is most effective? Least effective? 3. Do you have a preference center or opt-down page to help prevent opt-outs? Once you identify the reasons for less-than optimal list performance, you can implement the right strategy and tactics to accelerate growth. 8

9 Most Effective List Growth Tactics Used Providing access to private, value-added sections of a website barely tops social media sharing as the most effective tactic used for growing consumer lists. At the bottom of the list are offline tactics such as capturing information in-store or in call center conversations. Capitalize on Website Opt-in Opportunities: 1. Include homepage, additional main page and interior page opt-ins on visible, easily-accessible real estate. 2. Test using interstitial and pop-up opt-ins. Your consumers may respond well - or may find them intrusive. 3. Validate subscribers at every point of acquisition to ensure data quality. 9

10 Most Difficult List Growth Tactics to Execute Social media sharing requires significant time and effort, but little direct expense. However, it is still ranked as the most difficult tactic to execute for consumer list growth purposes. Social media sharing is time consuming and resource intensive, but essential for B2C brands. Increase both social acquisition and sharing by running an opt-in campaign on social channels with a sweepstakes, or contest, by offering incentives to subscribers for sharing content. 10

11 Tactical Effectiveness Versus Executional Difficulty Providing access to private, added-value sections of a website is a far more effective list growth tactic to use than it is difficult to execute. Social media sharing, on the other hand, is almost equally effective and difficult for consumer marketers to execute. Get the most out of your social media sharing campaigns: 1. Make it easy for your campaign to go viral include share links with pre-populated content you provide. 2. Track social sharing data and reward your brand loyalists when they promote you socially or encourage others to engage with your brand. 3. Incent product reviews on your social sites with special offers, loyalty points and discounts. 11

12 Form Fields for List Growth Most list growth tactics require a form to capture subscriber information. The number of fields in a form may vary, but the optimization principles remain the same: Fewer fields generate more, less qualified subscribers. More fields generate fewer, more qualified subscribers. It s important to collect only those data fields you absolutely need. Tactics such as a preference center or progressive profiling can be used to acquire more data later in the consumer lifecycle. Form Tips: 1. For website opt-in, blog or newsletter subscription, it is optimal to collect only address. 2. For a my account page, more fields such as first and last name are acceptable. 3. To optimize your current forms, test the number of form fields you use to understand where opt-in behavior begins to drop off. 12

13 Resources Used to Execute Tactics While most (58%) of B2C companies use in-house resources exclusively to execute list growth tactics, 42% outsource all or part of these tactics to access the specialized skills and expertise not available in-house, and to improve marketing program performance. Our survey revealed multiple challenges to B2C list growth and management: list hygiene, content relevance, social audience conversion, managing unsubscribes and more. Need some help? BlueHornet s experts can provide you with recommendations for list growth improvements you can put into practice right away. Contact us today: (866) sales@bluehornet.com 13

14 Survey Methodology and Demographics Ascend2 benchmarks the performance of popular digital marketing strategies and practices using a standardized questionnaire, research methodology and proprietary 3-Minute Survey format. Findings are examined in a quantitative context by experienced analysts and reported objectively. This survey was conducted online from a panel of more than 50,000 US and international marketing, sales and business professionals representing a range of company sizes and roles. The segment of survey responses used for this report is as follows: Number of Employees More than 500 (Large) 16% 50 to 500 (Medium) 30% Fewer than 50 (Small) 54% Role in the Company CEO / COO / CMO / CSO etc 27% Marketing VP / Director / Manager 34% Sales VP / Director / Manager 5% Marketing or Sales Staff 25% Other 9% 14

15 About the Research Partners We Are Marketing. BlueHornet delivers powerful, intuitive technology and 360 Support to ensure your program success. We extend your marketing team s expertise with our all-inclusive -marketing solutions and services. With BlueHornet, you can quickly and efficiently implement sophisticated, data-driven lifecycle messaging programs for rapid return on investment. Learn more at Research-Based Demand Generation for Marketing Solution Providers If marketing professionals are your ideal prospects, we can help you find more of them. Marketing software, data and media companies, and digital marketing agencies partner with Ascend2 to reliably generate demand and supplement marketing content for their firms. Our Research Partner Programs are transparent spotlighting your brand and the interests of your market. Learn more at 15

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