It was a thrill for me to recently be interviewed for the Forbes Agency Council podcast on the topic of “Doing More with Your Email Lists.” As email continues to be a top marketing channel for driving revenue and ROI, it’s clear that a company’s email list holds a lot of power: it is critical for generating business growth and customer retention. In the Forbes podcast interview, I offer my top tips on how businesses can leverage email data to identify and convert the right prospects into paying customers. Here’s a snapshot of what I covered:

1. Use multiple sources: With the abundance of information available these days, you shouldn’t rely solely on once source of data for your customer acquisition campaigns. In fact, the most effective email acquisition campaigns leverage multiple sources of data – ideally by combining your own internal data with external data provided by a reputable third party. While your own data provides you wonderful insights into your own customers, such as their demographics, preferences and desires, leveraging third-party data allows you to apply these customer profiles to a wider audience to convert these prospects into paying customers.

2. Develop the right audience: While identifying a target market sounds fundamental, companies seeking to grow their businesses surprisingly often overlook it. I feel strongly that marketers should take a strategic approach to identifying, understanding and developing an audience as a business asset. Doing this allows you to enrich, scale and optimize your audience over time, enabling you to segment specific prospect groups or add personalization based on their characteristics, actions, interests or stage of their buying lifecycle.

3. Create a seamless experience: Customers today have come to expect a consistent, personalized experience when interacting with brands. For marketers, that means integrating various technologies to create a unified brand view. This might include, for example, sending a follow-up email to a customer after a purchase asking for their feedback or review, or perhaps recommending a related product or service that builds on the value of the originally purchased item. Automating this process minimizes human error and enables a consistent user experience across multiple platforms – the kind of experience that customers expect today.

Knowing how to best leverage email data can empower you to connect with targeted buyers and win more customers. But it takes time along with an investment and commitment to do it right. My advice: focus on quality, trust the process and leverage experienced third-party partners to be successful.

You can listen to the podcast here. You’ll also get to listen to an interview with Antoine Bonacalzi, who provides additional insight into using email data with today’s best practice marketing platforms.

Outward Media’s proven data cleansing services and targeted, accurate email data can enable you to achieve better email marketing ROI and, ultimately, convert more prospects into customers. Take a look at our case studies to find out more.