In any business, a marketing list is vital in maintaining and expanding its business. This is especially true when promotion of its products or services depend much on online marketing. However, building up and maintaining an accurate and updated marketing list eats up a great slice of time of regular company time which should have been spent on more urgent operations.
It is in a situation like this when it is more judicious for a company to outsource the services of a virtual assistant. In doing so, regular employees are freed to work on their actual assignments and responsibilities. With a virtual assistant dedicated solely to the build up and maintenance of the marketing list, the company is assured that communications with their clients are always current and updated.
How does a virtual assistant manage the marketing list?
First, he builds up a marketing list by making sure he has the right demographics of the clients. It is important to know who are the targets of every mail campaign. Receiving accurate metrics and stats will help show how each e-campaign performs. Maintaining accurate and regularly updated demographic email lists, helps modify, target and optimize all future campaigns. To do this, the following data are collected of every client in the marketing list:
1. Age: What are the ages of the targeted audience? Each age group has a different focus and product relevancy. Keywords to capture the audience quickly are required.
2. Gender: Are the products focused more to women or men? If a particular gender appeals more to purchase the product, the content of the campaign should be customized accordingly.
3. Geography: If marketing to a specific country or nationality is the target of the campaign, be aware of the time differences and customs of each country.
4. Marital Status: Every status needs a different approach. It is important to know the differences and personal buying preferences of each status (single, family, etc)
5. General personal preferences: Having the right email list management software helps record your prospect’s responses. Opened emails, specific links clicked, an opt-in registration on your website, let you know the outcome and results
A VA also sees to it that all the date collected are update regularly. He should make sure that email campaigns reach their targeted audience. Well-managed marketing address list will prevent the following from happening and avoid wastage:
• Invalid email addresses. Send email campaigns to invalid email addresses continually could potentially list you as a spammer.
• Changed email addresses. The list should be update on a regular basis because people move, marry, lose jobs, change email addresses. There should be an option in the subscriber lists to change priority emails.
• Duplicate email addresses. Sending out direct mail campaigns to duplicate emails is a waste of time and money.
Finally, an effective VA should be able to discern, classify, and separate the list of CLIENTS and PROSPECTS.
This is important because separate-mail contents should be sent to clients and to prospects. E-mails are sent to clients to update them of sales, special deals, changes in terms and conditions, etc. The purpose in sending to clients is to create loyalty or to attract them to increase their purchases. Clients want to be recognized.
On the other hand, e-mails to prospects is to encourage them to subscribe, motivate them to be customers, to introduce your products.
Mixing up communications with these two different groups of people may reflect badly on the image and marketing strategy of a company in the market.
A successful email marketing campaign depends much on the efficiency of the virtual assistant and maintaining an accurate email list is an important step in achieving this. Familiarity with customer preferences, accurately in demographics, and a great deliverability rate, are vital instrument in expanding a business. Without email list management are like sending out emails into internet space without the proper landing instructions.