Small Businesses- Build your E-mail List in 5 Easy steps

You may be thinking, “okay, I’ve worked my a$$ off, my shop is open, I’ve got a few customers, so how do I grow my business?”  Let, me tell you, it’s no secret, the key is in the e-mail list!

All of the hard work that you put into getting your business launched will be lost if you don’t hold on to those initial customers.  You should be pouring all of your time and effort in those first few months of opening your doors to building that e-mail list.  You may be thinking, “but I’ve built a facebook page and I have followers there, so why do I need a list on top of that?”

Newsflash, you don’t own facebook!  Your facebook followers are only as good as the application and you don’t have any control over that!  You do, however, own your list!  All of those e-mails you’ve worked hard to collect are yours forever, as long as you keep it current.

So, where do you begin?  Here are some tried and true e-mail list building tips:

Top 5 E-mail List Building Tips

Follow these 5 tips to building your list and your new business will be on it’s way to bigger and better things:

1. Never sell your product to a customer without asking for them to be added to your list.

2.  Build-in incentives for customers to join your list.  Ask them to become MVP customers and let them know that they will receive coupon codes, specials and more.

3. Give your online visitors a chance to be added to your list without becoming customers first.  To do this, have your web developer add a sign-up form to your website.  It is important that you give those a chance to be on your list and nurture them until they become a customer one day.

4.  Start blogging!  I know it may sound like a lot of work, but blogging attracts visitors to your website and each visitor is a potential new customer.  Make sure you have a sign up form for your list at the end of each blog post or in the sidebar of your blog.  Something fun to do is to attach landing page links to the bottom of each blog post and have visitors sign-up for your list through a special offer.

5. Nurture, nurture, nurture.  Once you have that list, start making use of it.  Touch base with the members of your list regularly.  Set-up auto responders to connect with the folks on your list at regular intervals.  A fun one is the birthday auto responder, you can send your customers an automatic coupon code annually on their birthday (just remember to collect birth dates of your customers).  Keep your email list in the loop about the ongoings of your business, you may have some potential brand ambassadors on your hand so keep feeding them information!

Don’t have a store front?  All the more reason to build your e-mail list and keep customers thinking about your business even though they aren’t passing by it every day.  Tips 3-5 should be able to help your business out.

Even if you are planning on a store-front at some point in the future you can start building your list even before you open your doors.  Create a buzz. Get found.

These are the basics, you can go crazy with e-mail marketing, but just remember its about putting your business in the front of your customers minds.  They may be browsers for years, but without the list you may miss that opportunity for a new customer.

Plan to send out e-mails on regular intervals ranging from weekly to bi-weekly!