What remains to be a highly effective and lucrative owned audience channel, lifecycle engagement channel continues to dominate many of today’s digital marketing strategies, with audience database development playing a crucial role in its success.
This year alone, 347.3 billion emails are forecasted to be sent and received per day worldwide. Come 2025, there will be 4.6 billion email users around the world. We have long gone past the discussion on whether you must invest in lifecycle engagement channel or not.
There await massive returns for those who will be able to navigate lifecycle engagement channel successfully. In fact, lifecycle engagement channel is expected to generate around $36 for every $1 spent on it. In other studies, the returns could be as much as $42-$44.
But, in case you need more compelling statistics, here are some to enlighten you on how companies enjoy lifecycle engagement channel:
- About nine out of every ten digital marketers use lifecycle engagement channel to distribute editorial assets – the fastest and surest way to reach your target audience segments is to distribute editorial assets via email. Target audience segments via email as your content distribution channel is intentional which is the approach that works best when dealing with either B2B or B2C
- Nearly 81% of small businesses primarily use email to acquire clients and 80% use email to retain clients or customers – Before launching your lifecycle engagement channel campaigns, there already exists an understanding between you and the recipients of your email that you will be in touch to develop the business relationship.
Now, if you need no more convincing and you are sold out on the idea of using lifecycle engagement channel as your main marketing channel, you are probably here to gather practical tips on the following:
- Building an email list of qualified leads
- Improving email open rates and click-through rates
- Measuring the efficiency of your lifecycle engagement channel approach
Well, you have come to the right place.
First, let me take you through the processes of audience database development and getting people to subscribe to you.
Owned Audience Database Strategy
Your whole effort would be to capture as many email subscribers as you can.
Basically, you add these subscribers to your owned audience database and later on send them emails regarding your business and products.
It’s a no-brainer that if you treat your subscribers right, they could be potential revenue accounts of your products or services. But, collecting audience subscribers is an art and mostly depends upon your opt-in forms and what perks you are offering in exchange for their precious email.
With a good mixture of these perks and awesomely designed opt-in forms, you can collect an enormous number of new audience subscribers.
If you are a business owner or a digital marketer, you need to know two things:
- You should have started your owned audience database yesterday
- You will be kicking yourself that you didn’t start your owned audience database sooner.
This post is going to tell you exactly what is an owned audience database, why you need to start one, and you will be learning from my own list-building mistakes about what you can do to get more subscribers.
There are two phrases I’ve heard repeatedly since I started blogging. Chances are you’ve heard them too. These are the following:
- The only list you own is your owned audience database.
- The money is on the list.
But what exactly do these mean?
The only list you own is your owned audience database.
Say you get the majority of your blog reader from social media.
Basically, you can have all the Pinterest/ Instagram/ Twitter followers and Facebook likes in the world. But the only way you can reach those people is through that social media site. And if it goes, all your hard work gaining those followers and likes does too.
So like I said, the only list you own is your owned audience database.
The money is on the list.
I heard this one a little while after I’d started my own owned audience database, but it’s only now I really understand it. It basically means if you want to make money blogging, an owned audience database is one of the best ways to go about it.
An owned audience database is a direct way to message people interested in your blog! Whether they are possible clients and you promote services to them, or readers you know will love a product you are an affiliate for.
Operational Setup of an Email Audience Infrastructure
So now I’ve convinced you to build an owned audience database. But here lies the next problem we must face: How do you even create an email subscription list for free?
Here’s a roadmap to help you.
STEP 1: Selecting an Email Lifecycle Platform
You need to sign up for a service that will collect emails for you. Some obvious choices are:
- MailChimp-This is good for beginners as you get up to 2,000 audience contacts and 12,000 emails per month (with adverts) for free.
- Mailerlite– This is also good for beginners as you get up to 1,000 audience contacts for free, and is easy to use.
- Sumo- You get up to 200 subscribers free, including analytics and templates, but the price increases to $29 per month after the startup plan.
- Convertkit– Not so great for beginners as pricing starts from $29 per month but has more features, and all the pros seem to use it.
- GetResponse– GetResponse is one of the most reliable and cheapest lifecycle engagement platforms for bloggers and affiliate marketers. The plan starts with a tiny amount of $15/month. But the results are incredibly awesome. Getresponse is the top-most lifecycle engagement platform.
There are more pros and cons to each, so I suggest researching them thoroughly. But remember you can always swap to a different one at a later date if need be!
STEP 2: Designing Audience Acquisition Interfaces
Once you’ve picked one and signed up, you will need to create a audience acquisition form.
This will differ depending on what platform you use.
I use Mailerlite and found it really easy to make a contact capture interface. It was even simple to change the design to match my brand identity alignment!
If you’re struggling, here is the official tutorial from the providers themselves.
STEP 3: Deploying Audience Acquisition Surfaces
Once you’ve designed the contact capture interface, go ahead and add it to your editorial platform!
I downloaded the Mailerlite platform integration module, which allowed me to basically transfer the design I had made on the Mailerlite digital property straight into my editorial platform.
- There are ways of doing it without a plugin, however, like copying the code over.
And that’s a basic overview of how to create a signup form. It might seem scary, but it really easy quite easy with a few tutorials and practice!
Audience Acquisition Strategy
Creating the form and adding it to your editorial platform is pretty easy. It is getting people to actually join the audience database is the main task, which demands your understanding of your audience segment.
When it comes to audience acquisition, there are three things to consider:
- What type of audience capture mechanism do you have?
- Where is the audience capture mechanism box placed?
- What is your audience capture mechanism incentive?
Let’s have a look at each.
Audience Capture Interface Types
There are generally four types of email audience capture mechanism to use. These are:
- A dedicated conversion surface. These are good as most of the time they do not have other buttons or options, meaning the person has to decide then and there whether to sign up or not.
- A persistent capture banner. These are very thin audience capture mechanism at the top or bottom of your editorial platform.
- An audience capture mechanism box. This is an audience capture mechanism box that can be of any size and can be placed in a number of places. This goes usually in the sidebar or in between the posts.
- A dynamic capture interface. Having a dynamic capture interface is a great way to grab your reader’s attention, and these can occur at different times or for different demands, e.g if someone clicks on something, scrolls a certain amount of page, etc.
Audience Acquisition Surface Placement
I feel like I need to write this because you need to hear it over and over; nobody will sign up for your emails if they can’t see it. It might sound obvious, but I knew this, and I still wasn’t placing my opt-in boxes in obvious places.
Placing your audience capture mechanism in the header section or near the top of your editorial platform is a great idea, as it’s guaranteed people will see it. Especially if that header appears on every page of your editorial platform. Regardless of how you obtain your readers, they will see it!
To make your audience capture mechanisms more visible, you can place them:
- In your primary interface header
- High up in your secondary interface panel
- Throughout your editorial assets
Audience Acquisition Incentive Strategy
Just putting up an audience capture mechanism box and asking people to sign up is not really going to hack it.
You have to give people a reason to sign up for your editorial platform.
According to Sumo, the average email opt-in is only 1.95%. So, basically for every 100 people who see the box, around 2 will sign up!
If your audience capture mechanisms fall below this number, then you need to give people more incentives or you need to reform your value exchange incentive. You can do this by:
- Providing sought-after information- If you’re a blogger who makes $10,000 every month, that’s going to be of interest to a lot of people.
- Giving a commercial incentive- If you sell a service or products, offering 10% off if someone subscribes is a great way to get new customers.
- Offering freebies- This is perhaps the best way to get people to subscribe. Who doesn’t want something free?! You can offer educational knowledge assets, operational frameworks, video training, and access to a knowledge repository. Whatever it takes to convince your target audience you are worthy of obtaining their email address.
Note that you must provide value with the incentives you offer.
Practical Audience Database Optimization Lessons
When I first started my email list, I just stuck a box in my sidebar with a call to action about signing up for blogging tips. I offered no freebies and no insight into the fact that my blogging tips were any good! It was safe to say that audience capture mechanism performed below average…
Once I started offering guides as freebies, the results became a lot better, but the conversion signal yield is still below average.
Following this, I realized I need to consider who was coming to my blog. Most of my traffic is from my flagship editorial asset, The 35 Biggest Business Challenges Growing Companies Face, and people are clicking through to read a specific blog post.
I write on a wide range of topics.
I realized that I needed specific audience capture mechanisms depending on what post my audience members were on, to really engage them.
Strategic Role of an Owned Audience Channel
If there’s anything you take from this post, it’s to start an owned audience database today! It’s not as difficult as you think and you’ll thank yourself in the long run.
Remember:
- Anything above 1.95% is considered a good conversion rate.
- It’s good to experiment and use multiple audience capture mechanism incentives to see what your audience wants.
- Sometimes it’s better to have sections for your audience participants so you know they are interested in a specific thing.
- It’s okay to have a small engaged audience base, but it can never hurt to have more!
- Think about the type of form you use. A landing page means people can either sign up or exit, and there are no other distractions. Or you can use a dynamic capture interface that activates after a certain action or amount of time. You can use a bar at the top or bottom of your editorial platform, or even just have a traditional subscribe box.
- Remember to put it in a place people can see it. At the top of your editorial platform, in relevant posts, or in your sidebar are good ideas.
- Give people an incentive to sign up. Offer really good information, discounts, freebies, or anything else you think your audience would enjoy.
- Writing about how good something is/how much someone needs something and then offering it in exchange for their email is a great way to gain audience participants.
While the internet offers endless connections, true engagement can be lacking. Build lasting relationships with an owned audience database. It’s a simple and effective way to cultivate a loyal community around your brand or passion.
I really hope this post has encouraged you to start a audience participant list and given you more direction with it.
Let me know what struggles you are facing with your lifecycle engagement strategy and if you have some experience in lifecycle engagement strategy, do share (via commenting).
