Email sub­scribers spend more per capi­ta, but only a small por­tion of a brand’s con­sumers actu­al­ly agree to receive emails. In order to encour­age addi­tion­al signups and to keep those con­sumers hap­py, brands should make it easy for con­sumers to sign up, offer incen­tives and deliv­er on their promis­es, experts say.

Lux­u­ry brands would ben­e­fit from dri­ving email sign-ups in part because email sub­scribers spend more per capi­ta than non-recip­i­ents, accord­ing to a recent Con­tact­Lab study.

At the same time, Con­tact­Lab says only a pro­por­tion of in-store clients actu­al­ly agree to receive emails. That’s because cur­rent email cam­paigns are per­haps too fre­quent or not cus­tomized enough to pique con­sumers’ inter­est, Con­tact­Lab adds.

So how can lux­u­ry brands – or brands in gen­er­al – encour­age con­sumers to sign up for their emails? And how can they main­tain inter­est and keep those con­sumers reg­is­tered?

Accord­ing to Jeanne Jen­nings, a con­sul­tant focused on email mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, the Con­tact­Lab find­ings make sense because, per the Direct Mar­ket­ing Asso­ci­a­tion, email is the top direct response chan­nel in terms of ROI, gen­er­at­ing $20 for every $1 spent.

“Peo­ple on email lists spend more because email is such a pow­er­ful chan­nel,” she said. How can brands use email to reach and keep con­sumers engaged? Here are sev­en tips for email mar­ket­ing suc­cess.

1. Create A Value Proposition

Before brands can expect to sign up con­sumers, they must have a clear val­ue propo­si­tion for their email sub­scribers.

“You have to have it clear in your head and put it next to the sign up newslet­ter but­ton,” Jen­nings said. “It’s some­thing you have to com­mu­ni­cate to people…what’s in it for the end user, how it will make their life bet­ter, what­ev­er it is…it’s focused very specif­i­cal­ly to them.”

In addi­tion, Jen­nings said the key to a suc­cess­ful val­ue propo­si­tion is in putting your­self in the audience’s shoes.

“It’s not just get­ting them to sign up, but want­i­ng to open each issue,” she said.

2. Make It Clear And Easy To Sign Up

Accord­ing to Simms Jenk­ins, CEO of email mar­ket­ing ser­vices firm Bright­Wave, the first rule of email mar­ket­ing is to make it clear and easy for con­sumers to sign up.

“I rec­om­mend our clients offer the abil­i­ty to join your email list at almost every cus­tomer touch­point,” Jenk­ins said. “We have even had clients do it on gas pumps and in the men’s room.”

In addi­tion, Jenk­ins said Bright­wave has had “one of the most famous lux­u­ry automak­ers in the world” use SMS to try to build a rela­tion­ship with con­sumers while in their cars. He also notes lux­u­ry restau­rant chains have tried to lever­age “their servers, iPads and old fash­ioned slips to get din­ers to opt in to their email pro­gram dur­ing dessert and maybe a night­cap.”

Oth­er must-haves from Jenk­ins include a sim­ple user expe­ri­ence that does­n’t ask for too many fields of data, as well as a strong wel­come email and a mobile-friend­ly sign-up expe­ri­ence.

Derek Hard­ing, founder and CEO of dig­i­tal mes­sag­ing agency Innovyx, more or less agrees.

“From a tac­ti­cal short-term per­spec­tive the answer is to ask, ask, ask. Use every point of inter­ac­tion, every oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask peo­ple to sign up,” Hard­ing said. “Clear­ly it has to avoid being obnox­ious. If I declined the pop-up on the web­site one day, don’t show it to me again every time I vis­it.”

3. Provide An Incentive

Jen­nings said it’s impor­tant to pro­vide con­sumers with an imme­di­ate incen­tive to ham­mer home the notion that they will get some­thing. That could include a per­cent­age off or access to a white paper, depend­ing on the type of busi­ness and its giv­en audi­ence. For lux­u­ry brands, that could also include a sea­son­al style guide or tips.

“The clos­er it is relat­ed to the prod­uct, the more suc­cess­ful it will be,” Jen­nings said. In turn, it will hope­ful­ly push the con­sumers who remain on the fence to actu­al­ly sign up.

For his part, Hard­ing said he gen­er­al­ly advis­es against incen­tives to encour­age signups to avoid the risk of con­sumers sign­ing up pure­ly for the incen­tive.

“Longer term, main­tain­ing list size is about a clear val­ue exchange. What do your sub­scribers receive in exchange for being on your list?” Hard­ing asks.

How­ev­er, he also echoes Jen­nings some­what, say­ing that the val­ue exchange could include dis­count deals and exclu­sive offers, as well as more sub­tle con­tent-based val­ue that could be any­thing from lifestyle to insid­er news, depend­ing on the brand and ver­ti­cal.

“What works varies from brand to brand and ver­ti­cal to ver­ti­cal. It needs to res­onate with your brand propo­si­tion and with your cus­tomers’ expe­ri­ence,” Hard­ing adds.

Jenk­ins also agreed incen­tives work well, cit­ing an Acx­iom study that found 40.2 per­cent sign up to receive emails from com­pa­nies to receive dis­counts.

4. Do What You Say You Will

Email does reten­tion bet­ter than any oth­er mar­ket­ing chan­nel and keep­ing email sub­scribers active on the list can be as sim­ple as deliv­er­ing on the promise you offered upon signup, Jenk­ins said.

“Deliv­er­ing valu­able emails to the inbox that are time­ly and per­son­al­ized can make a big dif­fer­ence,” he added.

5. If You’re Targeting Luxury Consumers, Think Exclusivity

For lux­u­ry brands, the propo­si­tion is often not about price, which makes dis­count offers less rel­e­vant, Hard­ing said. That being said, exclu­siv­i­ty is big here, which means online or email exclu­sives can be an alter­na­tive draw, he adds.

“The biggest chal­lenge I think is ensur­ing that you have a coher­ent email pro­gram that builds on your brand while bring­ing unique val­ue to your sub­scribers,” Hard­ing said.

Jenk­ins agreed that lux­u­ry brands must pro­vide exclu­siv­i­ty to their email sub­scribers, but said that doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean to all of them. In oth­er words, these brands could also zero in on their most active or best con­sumers.

“My rec­om­men­da­tion is cer­tain­ly try­ing to build an email pro­gram that car­ries the brand promise and offers an ele­ment of exclu­siv­i­ty – don’t give in to the inbox crush of send­ing just a bunch of bor­ing offers that are found on oth­er chan­nels,” Jenk­ins said. “Make it spe­cial and treat your sub­scribers like VIPs – they are, after all, because they gave you per­mis­sion to mar­ket to them.”

6. Think Video

In addi­tion, Jenk­ins said lux­u­ry email mar­keters should con­sid­er bet­ter inte­grat­ing video into email cam­paigns to “help sell the sto­ry and romance many lux­u­ry brands offer.”

That’s because “cre­ative excel­lence is essen­tial as noth­ing will turn away your poten­tial cus­tomers as a poor­ly designed email even if the From line screams lux­u­ry,” Jenk­ins adds.

7. Don’t Forget Social

Jen­nings said one of the best ways to mar­ket an email list is with social chan­nels.

“If they’re on Pin­ter­est, ask them to pin things they like, or ask them to share on Face­book,” Jen­nings said. “Any­time you have some­one rec­om­mend­ing a brand or newslet­ter to their friends, that means a lot more than you reach­ing out to them.”

Do you have any addi­tion­al email mar­ket­ing tips?