Why Do I Need an Email List, Anyway?
By Susan Myers
Your favorite restaurant sends you an electronic postcard for a free birthday dessert. You get an email coupon from your dog groomer, offering Fluffy a free toenail clipping. The Apple Store sends you an email about the latest software to make your life easier. Across the Internet, around your neighborhood, through all industries, companies are using email lists to track, entice, and market to their customers. No matter what business you're in, a customer list is literally your bread and butter.
Research shows that it's infinitely easier – and cheaper – to sell to existing customers than to convince new prospects to buy. And when you market online via an email list, you circumvent many of the challenges of traditional direct mail – namely, cost. With email lists, you can manage and mail to thousands of contacts at the click of a button, for the fraction of the cost of “snail mail.”
Why Do I Need an Email List, Anyway?
If you've ever entered an online contest, offered your email address to an online or local store, or given the okay for a sales consultant to send you information, you've joined an email list. Email lists are simply the email addresses and names of people who signed up, by one of many different means, to receive emails such as electronic magazines (“e-zines”) or newsletters, electronic courses (e-courses), or product information in their inbox.
Collecting customer and prospect contact information and keeping in touch with them on a regular basis is the key to any online business's success. Here are some of the main reasons to start building your list now:
Presence – An email list that you use regularly gives you an easy way to keep your name in front of your customers and prospects on a continual basis. By making your name top-of-mind, you're increasing the likelihood that your customers will purchase from YOU when they're in a position to buy.
Connection - Say you're a florist. Your average customer may only purchase from you a few times a year. But you continue to stay in touch with her, providing her with quality information that relates to a topic she's interested in – holiday decorations and entertaining tips, for example. When she DOES need a flower arrangement, you'll be the one she buys it from. Why would she spend her money with some website she's never heard of when she knows you, her online friend who sends her useful information every week?
Education - Some products and industries require more education before prospects are ready to purchase. Email lists offer an easy, inexpensive way to provide the information your prospects need, moving them through the learning curve, until they're ready to buy.
Feedback – Do your customers want your next product to be bigger or smaller than what you have now? Do they hate the background music on your website? Do they wish your software was compatible with a platform you don't currently offer? Don't guess — just ask them! Email lists give you a simple way to solicit feedback from the real experts – your customers themselves.
Easy to Share - Word-of-mouth can be your best source of new business. By providing easy-to-share electronic newsletters or product information, you make it more likely that your current customers will pass the word to their friends, without incurring a minute of your time or a penny of your money.
Revenue - Some enterprising electronic newsletter publishers make money by selling ads in their publications to complementary businesses. The larger and more targeted your audience, the higher rates you can command.
Starting, growing, and maintaining an email list of targeted subscribers is one of the most profitable things you can do to build a successful business online. Not every prospect will become a subscriber, and not every subscriber will turn into a loyal customer, but you'll find you're much more successful selling to your list than you are to a group of relative strangers.
Provide subscribers with quality information on a topic that interests them, and they'll gladly allow you to tell them about your products and services, knowing you're an expert at what you do. After all, you're providing all this great information… you must know what you're talking about! There really is no reason to delay starting your email list.
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Susan is an expert in Internet Marketing and helps small businesses develop a Rock Solid eMarketing Plan that will drive customers to their business and increase their profits. I would like to invite you to claim your FREE report "Creating The Right eMarketing Mix For Your Business". DOWNLOAD HERE.
