Stop Paying for Crappy Email Lists: Use Inbound Marketing Instead from Business 2 Community by Chris Horton

Stop Paying for Crappy Email Lists: Use Inbound Marketing Instead:
Does your email marketing need a facelift?  Are you tired of spending marketing dollars on “cold” direct marketing lists, only to find that a large portion of these leads have outdated info? Do you want to build a database of “warm” email addresses by using quality content and free resources?
Here are 11 ways you can use inbound marketing practices to create more accurate b2b email lists free of charge.

1. Content Creation – It all starts with content. Really strong email content will drive reader subscriptions and encourage email forwarding to friends and colleagues that aren’t already on your email lists.¹ Create unique content like a free ebook or whitepapers, and require visitors to provide their email address in order to download them.
2. Webinar – Online webinars are a great way to promote your content. Make sure to collect email addresses at registration.
3. Free Resources – Offer a free online tool or resource than visitors can register for by using their e-mail address.
4. Campaign Segmentation – Create separate email lists that target each of your marketing personas. You want to offer specific content that speaks to different segments of your audience. Doing this will improve the quality of your email subscriptions.
5. CTAs /Landing Page Offers – Make it easy to subscribe to your email lists by inserting call-to-action icons in prominent areas of your website (homepage, blog page, contact us/about us page) that link to landing pages offering free email subscriptions.
6. Social Share Buttons - Encourage your current email subscribers to share and forward your emails by including social sharing buttons so their social networks can sign up for your lists. Provide a “subscribe” link at the bottom of your emails so those receiving the forwarded emails can easily opt-in.¹
7. Facebook - Use your Facebook business page to promote content offers that require users to submit an email address.  Promote these offers in your timeline, and encourage your leads to share and like your offers by adding a social sharing button on your landing pages.
8. LinkedIn - Target content offers redeemable with an email address on your LinkedIn Company Page. You can also use these content offers when responding to questions posed in LinkedIn Answers.
9. Twitter - Create a Twitter campaign to promote an offer like an ebook or a free resource to your followers that requires an email address to redeem.
10. Google Plus - Promote offers and email signup through your Google+ business page by making use of your Google+ updates and your Google+ about section.¹
11. You Tube - Add calls-to-action and URLs at the end of the videos you upload on You Tube to encourage people to subscribe to your lists. You can also provide links to subscribe to your e-mail lists on all video descriptions.

Using inbound marketing practices to re-vitalize your email lists offers a double benefit: not only will you have more accurate marketing data, but because everyone has freely opted-in, your lists will contain nothing but “warm” leads.
How do you want your leads – warm and accurate, or cold and bunk? The choice is yours.
Have you had any success using these tools to create “warmer” email lists? Let me know.
¹ Hubspot, “ 25 Clever Ways to Grow Your Email Marketing Lists”