So you think you want to start an email marketing campaign to grow your business? It is a great idea. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses use email marketing every day because the costs are low and the rewards can be tremendous.
Why send out email newsletters? In one of my previous posts, I talked about the benefits for implementing an email marketing campaign:
· To stay “top of mind” with your customers (loyalty, repeat business)
· To inform your customers of important news (new products, sales, events, etc.)
· To encourage your customers to spread the word about your business
But you cannot start your campaign without at least some email addresses to send your newsletters to.
How to build your email mailing list. Some of the best sources for email addresses include:
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At the physical point of purchase (either with a fishbowl or a registration book with a place for email addresses)
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During the online purchase process (typically you ask for the customer’s email address for sending receipts and other purchase or shipping information)
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At networking events (collecting business cards)
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On your website (add a “Sign up for our free newsletter” link)
Be sure people have “opted in” for your email newsletter. Nobody likes spam, including you. So being too aggressive with your email mailing list can turn some people off to your business and devalue the power of your email marketing. Thus, it is important to be sure that everyone on your list has “opted in” for your newsletters. At a minimum, you must respect any request from people who ask to “opt out.”
There are several ways people can “opt in” for your email newsletters. You can place links or forms on your website asking people to submit their name, or you can place fishbowls or other means of collecting business cards or email addresses at your register or physical point of sale. In either case, the “opted in” status is quite easy to document.
During the online purchasing process, you can place a box on the online order form for the customer to indicate their desire to receive emails from you. We have all seen these – sometimes the online store will even default this box to be checked for the customer, forcing the customer to deselect the checkbox if they do not want to receive your emails. Either way is completely acceptable, but you should carefully consider whether or not to default this checkbox. (Remember, you can want to create “Positive Memories” with these customers. But even more so, you do not want to create any “Negative Memories.”)
Finally, there are those business cards you collect at the various networking events or in the every day course of business. I like to remind people to think about why they have someone’s card before they simply add this email address to their mailing list. Preferably, when you took this person’s card, there was a conversation about your business and some indication from the person handing you their card that they would be interested in your business.
Just ask! Personally, when I am handed someone’s business card, I have found it very effective to simply ask them – “May I add your email address to our mailing list?” Overwhelmingly, the response is very favorable. Usually, people are shocked and tell me that no one has asked them that question before. They are so pleased that I asked, because I showed them some respect, they are happy to say “yes”. Plus, I’ve noticed that these people tend not to opt out of the email newsletter later on. (Note: This is consistent with some of my other postings in that I created a positive memory with this person. Creating positive memories is key to growing your business and promoting word of mouth!)
Confirmed opt-in. Another practice to consider is called “Confirmed opt-in (COI)” sometimes also referred to as confirmed subscription or closed-loop opt-in. The logic behind this practice is that no email newsletters are sent to anyone until that person has taken an action to indicate their desire to receive future email mailings from you. In the situation I described above, where someone has handed you a business card, you would not add them to your mailing list automatically, even if they said yes after you asked for their permission. Instead, you would send them a special email with a link in it or simply ask them to reply to the special email in order to indicate to you that they have “opted in” your mailing list. Many email system administrators and non-spam mailing list operators will require this in order to keep your emails off their blacklists.
With confirmed opt-in practices, you may end up with a smaller mailing list. However, the mailing list you will have will contain a much more engaged audience – including people who are more likely to forward your emails to their friends. (Can you say “word of mouth”??)
What to do with all those business cards and email addresses?? Well, if you are looking for the fastest and easiest way to get those email addresses into your mailing list (whether it be Outlook or an email marketing service), that will be the topic of an upcoming post. Stay tuned…
