Whether you work in a brick and mortar building, or your business operates solely on the World Wide Web sitting on the servers of a hosting company, customers are your life’s blood. There’s no getting around it. Everyone has customers when in business. You’re either offering a service, in which case your customers are coming to you to fulfill a need, or you’re offering a product, in which case…oh, that’s right, your customers are coming to you to fulfill a need; Funny how that works. The big question is how to keep them coming back, isn’t it? It is a rare business model that operates solely on new customers, and although new customers play a large part in business’ success, return customers are the backbone of the business skeleton.
That’s where mailing lists come in. In a recent study it was determined that 80% of adults in civilized society use the Internet. Eighty percent! That’s huge when you take into consideration the population. With this phenomenon one of the most used methods of communication is email. When radio was invented advertisers jumped on board at the thought of hitting a broader market, and again with television. You’ve seen it: advertisers are even marketing their products at the beginning of movies, and we all know how fickle the Big Screen can be, and the lifespan of a movie in theaters. So, why aren’t you using email to market to your customers?
Well, it could be that for a while there spam was getting out of control. Like me, you’ve probably received thousands of emails for products you’ve never expressed an interest in. Messages that clutter your inbox without impunity: stupid wastes of time. Why wouldn’t your customers view your advertising attempts in the same light?
Because your customers are going to request that you advertise to them. They are going to ask you to provide them with calls to action, with gentle prodding, and with reminders that you exist. Yup. Your customers are going to ask you to send them these emails. Why, you ask? Because you’re going to provide them with more than just an advertisement, and in seeing the value of your offering, they’re going to sign up using the double opt-in method.
What is a double opt-in method exactly? I’m glad you asked. In order to put the kibosh on spamming, it became a law that you, the business, must provide customers with the right to agree to receive your marketing twice. You’ll have a place on your site for them to sign up for your newsletter, or mailing list, and then once they do, an email is sent to them that they have to read and follow the link provided saying they actually requested to sign up. That authenticates their sign up, and after that, well, it’s marketing time.
Here’s the trick. Are you going to send them a static ad, or an HTML email, in the hopes that they’ll see it and say to themselves, “Self. I might need that product/service so I should go to this bloke’s site and see if I need to purchase it right now.” If you are, stop reading right now, go find a really thick book, plank, or door, and hit yourself in the head with it a few times. Then come back and continue reading. If you aren’t—if you’ve another plan of action that involves providing your customer with a reason to trust you as the authority in your industry, a reason to remember you, and a reason to return to you for business…well, give yourself a pat on the back and a hearty, “Good job, Self!”
You have to become the authority, and you do so by creating articles filled with useful information pertaining to what you’re offering, links to supporting facts, and, of course, a link back to your site. Create many of these, and continue to create them. If you can’t write, hire someone to get familiar with what you do and to write the articles for you. When you have your email created, don’t provide the customer with all of the information. Provide them with a snippet—enough to pique their interest—and then provide a link back to your site where you have the whole article posted in a blog, or articles section of your site.
Can you inform the customer of sales or specials you have running at the time? Sure! But make that a secondary approach to your mailing. Your customer needs to not only view you as the authority, but as a helpful, sharing company that is there for their benefit. Everyone realizes that you are in it for the profit: That’s what businesses do. But in proving to the customer that you’re willing to impart upon them a bit of wisdom others would have possible charged for, you’ve just set yourself apart from the competition.
Most mailing list software comes complete with a feature where you can set up articles that are sent out at regular intervals upon someone signing up for your mailing list. All you have to do is keep the information coming, and every new sign up will receive the same email information as a customer that has been with you for years, just at different times. What’s more is that they’ll receive it automatically without you having to push “Send.” Now how beautiful is that? I’ll tell you: beautiful.
Thanks for the chat. Interested in learning which hosting companies provide good mailing list software as part of their package deal?