One of my regular clients was launching a new service in a field that was entirely different to his current offering …

Being a business consultant he wanted to do things right and have market research to support his business case. Problem is, how do you know what your customers want without having customers to ask? He had no list of contacts and hadn’t get launched a website but he needed results quickly so that he could get his business running.

When starting out remember that there is always someone out there that has the contacts you need. In this case, we went to the biggest players in the industry and we not only got valuable customer insights and market research but also built a rocking email list full of valuable leads.

How We Did It

We researched complimentary businesses in the industry and contacted those with substantial email lists containing the audience we wanted to be in front of. Often the owner of a large email list will be willing to give your business a plug if there is something of value in it for them – be it payment or a joint venture (when you have a list of your own).

We linked our email banner ad to a survey and included a prize for complete submissions by individuals that met our criteria and we also got every submission signed up to email updates.

My recommendation is to link your prize closely to your offering so that you have entries from individuals that are truly interested in what you have to offer and not just submitting an entry for the prize. This will give you valuable market insights.

Give Me The Numbers

My client paid $500 for a banner ad in an email blast to a list of 26,000 subscribers. He received over 100 qualified responses to his survey and he now had 100 interested people on his email list for launch day!

My client used the valuable insights from the campaign to tweak his planning and also had 100 new contacts that he could lure in with a special offer on launch day.

Top Takeaways

The success of your email campaign lies in getting the details right –  from your headline to your landing page and prize … success is in the detail.

Also, not every email list is worth paying to get in front of. The right list is one that is engaged and well maintained. I’ve put together a checklist for you to read whenever you are considering an email list advertising option. Be sure to get it and use it often.

Happy marketing!