I consult with a lot of small business owners and managers and many of them ask me if it's necessary to maintain and use an e-mail list. My answer to this is always an emphatic YES! If you want to grow your business (whether it's on or off line) you need to keep in contact with your prospects and customers and one of the easiest and least expensive ways of doing this is to use e-mail.
Now I know a lot of people will tell you that e-mail is dead. Everyone's using Facebook they say.... no one e-mails anymore. Well I do. And I bet you do too. In fact, most people check their e-mail at least once a day, whether it's for work or personal use. Additionally, since many cell phones support e-mail now, it’s even easier to check and send a quick reply. So e-mail is definitely NOT dead! In fact it's very much alive :)
Ok, so how can e-mail help your business grow? Here are the top reasons my clients and I use e-mail, as well as the reasoning behind it:
- Email provides you a way to contact your prospects and customers - It's so simple to get an e-mail address and it just takes a couple minutes to send out a quick mailing to them. Compare that with trying to phone everyone, send a fax (do people still use fax machines?), or send out a snail mail letter.
- Its fast - people get your e-mail within SECONDS of you hitting the send button. This can be critical if you're sharing time sensitive information and it's also great if you have to send something last minute.
- You can easily control the time of delivery - Professional marketers know that there are certain days of the week and times of the day people will be most receptive to their marketing message. By using e-mail you control when your audience gets your message which can greatly increase your response rate.
- Its very cost effective - if you have a tiny list it probably won't cost you anything at all. But even with a larger list it's still very cheap. For instance, I can send up to 6,000 e-mails a month for under $20 bucks....that's not even 50 first class postage stamps!
- You can send automated messages thus putting your marketiing program on auto pilot - Yes, you need to subscribe to an e-mail service to benefit from this but it's well worth the small fee. In fact, this is such a cool feature of e-mail marketing that I've written an article just about that. It's called Amazing Autoresponsers and how they can help you grow your business and it's a must read!
- You can personalize it so that everyone get's their own, special message - One cool feature that e-mail services have is the ability to personalize your e-mail. This means I can say "Dear John" instead of just "Hello," and I can also add other personal information like their address, phone number, and plenty of custom information. One pet products site used this feature to collect the names of pets and then send and e-mail asking how the pet was doing and suggesting specific products for them. They also sent personalized birthday greetings to the pet along with a coupon for a special birthday treat. This is a bit more complex than just "Hello John," but isn't it a cool possibility!
- You can remind people you're around - Everyone is so busy these days that it's easy for them to forget about you. Keep you in the forefront of their mind by sending a monthly (or more often) newsletter, list of special deals, timely tips, or other information they'll find interesting and helpful.
- Email makes it easy for people to promote yourself & your business - if you send something people find especially entertaining or helpful they'll often send it to their friends. And since you'll always put a "subscribe" link right in the e-mail, their friends will have the opportunity to sign up too which will help grow your list.
Ok so now that you know why I use an e-mail list, how can you get started?
If you already have a list of e-mails in an e-mail program, word document, or spreadsheet then you're almost there. Simply read the next article "how to create and use an e-mail list" to get you started today!
If you have manual system – or if you have lists of e-mails on post-it notes and slips of paper – then the first step is to get them into electronic form. This can seem like a daunting task! Believe me..... I've converted thousands of names from pen & ink to computer databases and I know it's not a fun task. However, it's a necessary task if you want to use the power of e-mail to grow your business. The easiest way is to simply type them into a spreadsheet or document. If you don't have the time or patience to do it yourself, we can do it for you for a very reasonable cost. Simply contact me for the details and I'll get you all taken care of :)
