Collecting email addresses for campaigns

[Online18Casino]

I am curious, how many of you actively try to collect the email addresses from your website visitors to use for email campaigns?

I get asked from time to time from different aff managers if I do email campaigns, but I never really felt it was worth my time.. Maybe I am wrong?

From those of you who do or have setup email campaigns, have you seen strong results or would you say your time is better spent on, on-site SEO/Content?

 

[paulajardine]

I am curious, how many of you actively try to collect the email addresses from your website visitors to use for email campaigns?

I get asked from time to time from different aff managers if I do email campaigns, but I never really felt it was worth my time.. Maybe I am wrong?

From those of you who do or have setup email campaigns, have you seen strong results or would you say your time is better spent on, on-site SEO/Content?

Good question. I am basically on the same page as you and have wondered that myself. I am curious to see whether anyone has had any success with it, or if it has just been time wasted.

 

[Oracle]

It is basically the most important tool to monetize your site.

 

[Vladi]

I have found mailing my registered visitors to be a complete waste of time. The number of clicks generated compared to the time spent working on the mailer was always tiny. That said we sent customised mailers that were relevant to our site so they took a bit of work to put together, not the template ones that the affiliate managers want you to spam to your visitors.

 

[Online18Casino]

Thanks Vladi,

What your describing sounds about what I would expect. Anyone else care to share with us their success or failures regarding email campaigns?

 

[NDG]

We tried it once, but eventually decided that our time would be better spent with other methods.

 

[Oracle]

what other methods do you find work better?

what did you find was the main problem for your mailing list?

 

[Vladi]

For us it was the abysmal click rate that meant that we probably more time and money creating the mailer than we earned from sending it. Unless you are buying a dodgy list off some other unscrupulous webmaster, then you probably don't have a huge database of players to send to. Lets be optimistic and say you have 10,000 addresses as an example.

If you have a typical site or forum that does not erase non double opt in validated accounts after a month or so then I am willing to bet that at least 75% of those addresses are either spammers, SEO company employees, bot accounts and other assorted cruft that either has no human on the end of it or no interest in anything you might mail out. If you're forcing people to register to get something on your site then that number will likely be higher as people use disposable accounts to get past your roadblock. So you pay to send to 10,000 but in reality you're only sending to 2500 or lower and you'll get a large number of bounces from dead addresses. Then because you're sending gambling related content loads of the emails will never hit inboxes due to spam filters. You can try the mis-spellings and euphemisms that the spammers do all the time but the reality is by doing that you're drastically lowering the credibility of your message.

Then you find that some of the statistics provided by 3rd party mail companies are next to useless because the vast majority of email clients block the load of images by default so you have no way of knowing what percentage of people actually open and read the email. You do know, however, how many people click on something in the email. In my experience this number was so low that due to the time and money invested in the email it was negative ROI. YMMV.

 

[Online18Casino]

Good point Vladi, as I hardly ever click on email links... Those are a lot of hurdles to overcome just to get an email in front of a user, and even then if the user is interested, a smart user wont click on the link but Google the domain and enter that way.

I have always thought that my time was better spent onsite, as a user seeking out information is 90x more interested then a user who is sent the information. With all the points you raised, it makes email marketing sound next to a waste of time.. Unless like you said you buy a shady list and even then who knows what your getting.

 

[pinkytoe]

It depends so much on your traffic and how well you sell your email product. Most affiliate send out the spam or weak offer instead of offering real value to their visitors.
I have one email form on a specialist gambling topic and I collect 6 verified email addresses per day.
I have never sent many emails but I know I have a database of players interested in my niche should I want to reach them again.

However, even the best email lists have pretty low conversions and click through I would imagine - but they serve as an option to recycle traffic.

 

[Guard Dog]

I tried that as well. I had about 7500 emails from the homepage subscription section of CasinoBonusFarm.com. Was a complete waste of time. Dead on that it is: bots, seo people, etc... those are like 99% of the emails. The rest bounce

 

[Oracle]

To be fair it also depends on your content. If most of your emails are just check out casino xyz for a $200 sign up bonus then people will very quickly stop opening your emails.

If your content allows them to make money they will open it.

As far as bots signing up to your email list is there some way you can decrease this like a captcha answer?

 

[Vladi]

Double opt-in plus captcha can help against bots but these days the bot owners pay people to sit and answer the captchas in real time and click on the confirm email links. The best way to stop bots is to do something totally custom on your site that separates the bots from humans and don't share it with anyone. But none of that will stop the human spammers (sorry "SEO professionals") who are paid to do it.

 

[LandofOz]

I tried email marketing last year and had zero success with it. I find social media marketing more effective than email marketing.

 

[Oracle]

If the website just lists casino bonus offers the problem is more the content than email marketing as a whole in my opinion.

The opening poster should be more specific about his websites content to get better answers.

 

[NDG]

If the website just lists casino bonus offers the problem is more the content than email marketing as a whole in my opinion.

The opening poster should be more specific about his websites content to get better answers.

Agreed. It really depends on what your web site has to offer, and what you are pushing to the subscribers of your mailing list.
With e-mail, you really need to develop a relationship with your subscribers and offer free information to gain trust, before
you push them off to an affiliate link. This will obviously take time to do.. and then when you do it.. you really don't know
how many of your e-mail addresses are players that are really interested in your offer, and how many won't even reach anybody.

For someone with experience dealing with huge, targeted mailing lists.. then it may be an excellent marketing method,
but from what I've seen over the years and from my own experience, it's just another hassle and a waste of valuable time.