In the 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, an overwhelming 50% of our surveyed marketers indicated their lists were on a "somewhat positive" trend, with slowly growing lists. We also wanted to know how they were maintaining this positive trend, so we asked …

Q: Which of the following tactics is your organization using to drive email list growth? Please select all that apply.

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When asked about the types of tactics their organizations used to drive email list growth, 77% of respondents indicated "website registration page" — nearly 30% more than the second-most selected option.

Interestingly, nearly half of respondents still seemingly found value in paper, pencil and organic word-of-mouth, as 47% utilized offline events as a list growth tactic — 10% more than those who selected "online events."

However, "email to a friend" — a tactic found to be "very easy" to implement in a subsequent survey question — was used by just 31% of respondents.

Points to Consider

Do you feel your list growth tactics have exhausted their usefulness for list quality and quantity? Is your organization employing the same types of tactics year-over-year? Are they continuing to perform well, or is your organization shifting to a more inbound approach?

For more information about email marketing, download the free excerpt from the 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report. And, be sure to share your own analysis of this chart in the MarketingSherpa LinkedIn Group for a chance to be published in a future blog post.

Useful links related to this research

MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2013 Wrap-up: Top 5 takeaways for email marketers

Marketing Research Chart: Automated emails sent by organizations

Mining Gold through Email Integration: 3 lessons from MarketingSherpa Email Awards 2013 winners