Last week (while on a training call I was hosting), I was asked why it was important to build an email list? We had a great discussion about this, so I decided to jot down some ideas and share them here.
Some people start email lists, get a few people and then give up. They get discouraged because they don’t really understand the true benefits of building a large, responsive email list.
Here are seven reasons why you need an email list:
- Automatically Follow-Up – An email list allows you to multiply your time in a way that would require a cloning machine! With autoresponders you can have a follow-up system in place that makes sales for you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
- Constantly Build Your Business – New prospects can be signing up to your email list automatically, every day, without your help or involvement. This is a way to be constantly building your business, automatically.
- Capture Visitors – You’ve put tons of work into your website. If you’re not capturing visitors, they’re coming and going, possibly never to return again. If you capture their information, you can keep in contact with them and build the relationship.
- Stay on Their Minds – Most of your potential customers or clients won’t be ready to buy from you right now. Through email marketing, you can stay on their minds through your email autoresponders and broadcast messages. Then, when they are ready or in need, they’ll look back for your emails or remember your website and they’ll order from you.
- Save Yourself Time – Instead of sharing your message one on one, over and over again, you can now reach one to many. This is going to not only save yourself time but also leverage your time into long-term profits.
- Be Super-Human – It’s simply not humanly possible to connect one-on-one with all your prospects and customers the way you can with an email system. The great thing is, if you set it up right your message can SEEM very customized and personal even when they ARE completely automated.
- Increase Your Sales – Of course the goal here isn’t just to be awesome (though that’s a good goal in itself). What you’re really looking for in an increase in sales and profits. An email list can deliver you an increase in sales.
The challenge is that if you give up too soon, you’ll never see these benefits. Yes, email marketing starts out slow, but don’t give up! Every marketer – even those with hundreds of thousands on their lists – started with one subscriber, then two, then ten.
Yes it takes time and yes it can be frustrating waiting for the rewards but be patient and diligent, and you will see your efforts pay off over time.
What do you see as the benefit of an email list?
Working with customers’ customers, is my buiness. I read the post and I felt this would have nothing to be discussed. I fail to have any understanding any argurment against emails.
Do you have any idea how much traditional businesses pay for the information that you get thrown to you for free? Customers are YOUR ONLY source of income. But just throw that away.
The most difficult and and by far the largest cost you have once you are set up, is the finding and getting them to your site. And once there, most people do not buy.
You paid and got zero. Hopefully, you at least got their email. I do not care what industry you are in, once a customer has the positive experiance you strive so hard to give and one small order is all you ever want from a customer, then you don’t need to get it.
NO business can survive on one time customers. Do ever wonder why McDonalds and Colas advertise so much? It is the only way they have to contact their customers. If a person gets something from you, it is easier after each sale to get them to return.
The only plausible example that I can think of is a fear that some how you automatically think you need to send emails out five or more times a day.
NO that only means you have a way to create some dialoge between you and those who found you site, liked what you offered on the site, They liked what they bought through your site.
Say you have a kitchen utensil site. They somehow find you and see a colandar that they have been looking for and buy it. The company that made the first product adds a cheese grater.
If you sit there and wait, you will end up, just sitting there and waitiug. But you send an announcement of this new product to all the customers bought the first piece, you will be thanked so many times because they were wondering what else that company sells. Send an email and have a growing connection between you and them. Done properly, they get to like what you have on your site, they start asking you if you know or if you sold whatever they are looking for. The positive experiences you can open for them to take advantage of a presale event, or include a small free thank you. That is an ideal customer vendor relationship. Through your site they actual look forward to a new email or cooking idea.
But you didn’t get an email address, and while your competition is doing what I wrote earlier, it will be a long time if ever they return.
I guess you can sit staring at your site waiting for a new customer to find you in the thousands of site that cater to chefs.
Email, you send a note out with maybe an included description. The majority would buy, since they know you and the quality you deliver at that price.
Think of how upset they would get when they find the same item somewhere else. They go look at your site and it is there. You have what they wanted and you didn’t even let them know. That person will likely move their purchases to the new guy.
But at least they can;t accuse you of spanning them.
That is equal to less than zero since you not only did not get the sale, you lost future pirchases. In fact the mere lack of letting them know of your new pieces that go with what they have already could cause you a lot of bad Internet reviews because you did not contact and you know they would buy.
But, at least you can’t be accused of spamming them.