What are some good ways to build my in-house email list?

Effective email marketing begins with a strong and viable in-house email list. Campaigns sent to your house list will regularly outperform any list you can rent or buy. Carefully cultivate your house list and it will reward you over the long run.

Lists can grow in many different ways, but they should all start in the same place: at every significant touch point with your current customers. They already have a familiarity -- and an affinity with your products that gives you the perfect gateway through which to build long-term email relationships.

The following five techniques are just a few potential ways to build your permission-based house list:

• Gather email opt-ins throughout your Web site: Ask for email opt-ins on every page of your Web site. The more frequent and convenient you make your opt-in, the more people will use it. This may seem an obvious point, yet many companies bury their email opt-in forms deep within their site. According to Silverpop's “2005 Retail Email Marketing Study” of 175 Internet retailers, 23 percent didn't even offer an email opt-in on their home page.
  
• Keep your email registration forms short and sweet: The more questions you require at registration, the fewer the number of consumers who will complete it. A test conducted by MarketingSherpa and Netline showed a substantial increase in registration completion -- from 50 percent to 75 percent -- when the number of questions was reduced from 20 to six.
  
• Appends: One of the biggest challenges facing marketers is finding a responsive audience. The good news is, you already have a receptive audience – your current customers. The bad news is, you may not have an email address for each customer. But a host of service firms out there will take your offline or postal customer list and append email addresses to it from their customer data records. Append services vary greatly, so if you decide to go this route, do your homework. Make your expectations clear up front, and use a reputable service. 
  
• Co-registration: Allow customers to opt-in via a partner’s Web site. Co-registration is one of the fastest-growing areas for list development in the email marketing industry. When users register for the Web site’s email list, they will see your offer and, by merely checking the box next to it, co-register for your opt-in list along with the site’s list.
  
• Viral marketing: Encourage your current subscribers to forward your messages to friends and co-workers.

Regardless of which methods you use, you can further boost email address capture by touting the benefits of signing up for your emails. Invitations to sign up to get the latest styles, sales, news, tips etc., can spur otherwise ambivalent consumers to give their email addresses. And, always be sure to include a link to your privacy policy with your opt-in to reassure wary consumers that you will treat their information carefully.

Your email house list is a powerful tool. Cultivated wisely, it can help you achieve the promise of email marketing – lower costs, speed and higher response rates.