It's understood that, in nearly any business, repeat customers are much easier and more cost effective to generate than new customers. So unless your business somehow doesn't benefit from returning customers, there's a good chance you ought to be building a mailing list.
Maybe you stay in touch twice a week (as many ecommerce businesses do) and maybe it's just once a month (like a service professional might). But staying in the minds of people who have already paid you money just makes sense. Especially because they know so many more people that aren't on your list, and when you send out information or offers by email, they can easily share with friends and family who they know are looking for what you're offering!
Maybe you stay in touch twice a week (as many ecommerce businesses do) and maybe it's just once a month (like a service professional might). But staying in the minds of people who have already paid you money just makes sense. Especially because they know so many more people that aren't on your list, and when you send out information or offers by email, they can easily share with friends and family who they know are looking for what you're offering!
Can't You Just Use Facebook to Stay in Touch?
If you're on social media like Facebook, especially if you have a lot of followers, it might be tempting to just use this as your means of staying in touch. But there are important reasons to still build that list:
This doesn't mean it's a bad idea to use social networks, and there are always exceptions to the rule. But I would personally never rely on just social media to stay in touch with my clients or customers.
- Only a small number of your social followers will see your posts unless they specifically visit your page. Unless you pay to promote your posts, your reach is limited to an estimated 5% or less of your followers. That should be reason enough to build a list.
- You don't control that list of social followers. The social network decides who sees what and this can change at any time. They could also go out of business. With a mailing list, YOU own that list. Even if the provider goes out of business, you can download the list at any time and take it somewhere else.
- When someone opens your email, they are focused on YOUR message only. On social media, your message is surrounded by many , many others.
This doesn't mean it's a bad idea to use social networks, and there are always exceptions to the rule. But I would personally never rely on just social media to stay in touch with my clients or customers.
How To Do Email Marketing
While there are countless articles you can read on how to do email marketing, best practices, tips and tricks, detailed nuances, etc., here are some keys to what you should know:
- You need email list software. This is what you use to let people opt into your lists, to send them emails, to automatically unsubscribe them if they wish, and to automate some other functions like sending an email each time you blog (if you wish), moving subscribers between lists, etc. I've made some software suggestions below along with what types of businesses might best be served by each.
- Know the terms of service / acceptable use policy. You know how we all skip past most of the "fine print" when we agree to terms of use for websites and software? Well, you don't want to do that with your email list software. First, the mainstream services will never let you email things that most people would find offensive, including adult material, probably hate messages, and anything that's outright illegal. (I'm sure there are services for such things, but I haven't looked into them.)
But they may also prohibit emails about things like pharmaceuticals, credit repair, network marketing, and even affiliate marketing (which is just getting paid to promote products and services for other people; even Amazon has an affiliate marketing program.) So before you commit to building a list with someone, make sure you know if it's ok based on your business!
- Choose between single opt-in and double opt-in. Before you start building your list, decide if you want to build it based on a single opt-in or a double opt-in. The single opt-in lets someone enter their email address in a form and they're immediately on your list. The problem with this is that other people and even robots can enter email addresses and then you have a list of people who do NOT want to get emails from you. This puts you at risk for breaking SPAM laws when you email them, which could be a financial risk and could lead to you losing your list altogether.
A double opt-in list follows up with an email asking someone if they meant to subscribe. If so, they just click a link from their email and THEN they are actually subscribed. Until they do this, they will not receive emails from you, even if they did mean to subscribe. This process loses you a surprising number of subscribers, but also provides you with a very clean list.
Personally I would always use a double opt-in list when building a list from a website. But if you have your email list connected to an ecommerce store, customers should automatically be added. So only that portion of your list should be single opt-in. (They don't have to confirm about receiving future emails from you.) Ideally you have given them a chance to opt out of this list when they're making their purchase, but you can default to adding them to your list since you now have a business relationship with them.
Another time to choose single opt-in: when you're manually adding people to a list. This might make sense for someone offering professional services (a lawyer, dentist, plumber, etc.) In this case, you know you have a business relationship and you're not technically spamming when you email them. And this way robots and other people aren't adding those names. Even then, the politest option may be to add them to a double opt-in list so they still have a choice about hearing from you.
Finally, if you already have a list and you're moving to a new provider, make sure the new service lets you import your old list without all those people having to confirm their opt-in status again. Otherwise you will lose a ton of people who should already be connections. (Though in some cases this can be a way to weed out those who no longer want to be on your list.) - Build your list. Once you have the right software in place, it's time to build a list. Often this is done by placing lead capture forms onto a website -- sometimes alongside your normal content; sometimes in a popup (which some people find obnoxious though); sometimes on dedicated landing pages or lead pages. (These pages are focused on content giving people reasons to join your list and not distracting them with other content. This is useful when you're using ads to promote your mailing list. Each lead page can focus on a specific audience or offer.)
Most software gives you a simple snippet of code to paste onto your website for these forms. (I frankly find that Mailchimp -- one of the best know options out there -- makes it difficult to add a nice looking form to your site.) Some software -- but not most -- also give you lead capture pages (and will host these for you).
You can rely on people wanting to sign up just for future news about your business, but most companies choose to entice signups with an offer. Maybe it's a free ebook; maybe a chance to win something; maybe a free consultation; maybe a discount off your next purchase. You have to find what works best for your business.
As I mentioned, you can also manually add people to a list (just make sure they want to be on it!), or automatically add those who have made purchases through your store (if your list is integrated with your store). - Get white listed.
- Send what people are expecting. (Content and frequency.)
- Giving value first. (And not pitching too often; continue sending value.)
- Using automation. (Autoresponders. Automatic blog emails. Moving between lists.)
- Segmentation. This is a more advanced topic, and some software makes this easier to do.
- Tracking results.