Keeping in touch with your current customers and prospects is one of the best ways to grow your business, and email is how they want to hear from you.
Your Customers and Prospects are in Their Inbox Every Day
Did you know that email is the preferred method of commercial communication of 74% of all online adults and is preferred over direct mail by a margin of nearly five to one? 66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an email marketing message. This is more than direct mail, telephone, text messaging or social media.
Source: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-stats-list
You want to make capturing emails for your list an integral part of your day-to-day operations. Are you doing everything you can to grow your email list? Start by implementing some of these tips today.
Top 10 Ways to Grow Your Email List
- Ask every customer if they want to receive your email communications. Make sure your staff knows that getting email addresses is a standard part of all transactions.
- Have tent cards, wall or counter displays in your place of business.
- Hold a weekly or monthly drawing for a discount or prize in exchange for joining your email list. Announce the winners in your email newsletter and on social media.
- Include an email sign-up on all pages of your website.
- Ask your social media connections to sign up for your list by providing a link to your sign-up form. Offer an incentives such as a white paper, special video, discount, or other offer for signing up.
- Bring a sign-up sheet to every public event where you exhibit or participate.
- Hold an Update your Info campaign. If you have a lot of existing customers where you have been communicating via regular mail, contact them and ask them to provide an email for future communications. If you have a large list, do this over time (say 10 customers a day), or outsource this task.
- Ask current customers to share your newsletter with others. If they sign up give the referrer a special offer.
- Add a call-to-action and link at the end of videos you post.
- Collect emails as part of any event registration you have. Work with other businesses and organizations to promote your event and sign ups.
Sign-Up Tools
If you use Constant Contact, there are easy tools to get people signed up automatically so you don’t have to manually add these names to your email marketing list.
- Text-To-Sign-Up. Someone can join your list via text message. To see how easy it is, and to get our tips delivered monthly to your inbox try it by texting DELOS to 22828.
(Message and Data Rates may apply. text HELP for help, text STOP to end. Privacy: http://www.constantcontact.com/privacy_guarantee.jsp) - QR Code Sign Up. When scanned by a smartphone, your contacts are taken to a mobile-friendly sign-up form (try it using the QR code below!)
- Website Sign Up. Include a sign-up form right on your web site.
- Add the Constant Contact Facebook app to your Facebook page to enable sign-ups from Facebook.
- Download the iCapture for Constant Contact app for iOS or Android to add new contacts on the go.
Make the Most of Your List
As you grow your list, there are a few things to keep in mind. You should only build a permission-based email list–no one wants any more unwanted spam in their inbox. Customers who sign up with permission want to hear from you, but make sure that what you send is valuable, interesting or useful to them.
Too many emails that don’t provide value will cause contacts to unsubscribe. The number of emails you send will vary based on your type of business, but one of the most effective things you can do is be consistent in your frequency–for example, weekend specials every Thursday afternoon or a monthly newsletter every month.
Use your email newsletters to build a rapport with your customers. Think about the kinds of things you share in person that are valuable to your audience and share those things via email as well.
When you build an ongoing dialogue with your contacts, you increase the trust and comfort level they have with you. They look forward to hearing from you. You’ll stay top of mind with them.
