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January 3, 2001
E-mail Promoting
E-mail newsletters can remind valuable customers to visit your online and physical stores
Having an online store is a great way to increase sales, but it's worthless unless you can get customers to visit and visit often. Repeat customers are the most valuable, but they won't just flock to your online store every week or month – you must bring them back. One simple way to do this is to start an e-mail newsletter. Depending on how much time you have, you can send newsletters every two weeks, once a month or just when there's a special promotion.
To start an effective e-mail newsletter, the first thing you need to do is build a subscriber list. Put up a page on your Web site where customers can sign up to receive the newsletter. Promote it on your site's home page with a message such as "Sign up here to receive special offers by e-mail." Also, if you have an e-commerce site, give customers the chance to sign up when they check out.
The next step is to tap your physical store's customer base. Come up with a creative way to get customers' e-mail addresses. You could give away something small in exchange for e-mail addresses, or hold a drawing for a bigger item and make sure customers include their e-mail addresses on the entry form. You could also just ask. Your repeat customers may be happy to give you their e-mail addresses if it means they'll get advance notice about online sales.
Once you have newsletter subscribers, you need to decide what you want the newsletter to do. Do you want to send a newsletter twice a month to alert customers about new products and sales, or would you rather send the newsletter around holidays when jewelry is a common gift? Consider your customers: determine what would be best for them. No matter what you do, remember to send e-mail sparingly. Overloading customers with e-mail could result in fewer customers.
After you set up a time frame for your newsletter, come up with ideas to make the newsletter unique and useful. For example, you could include:
- Store-only or Internet-only coupons
- Advance notice about upcoming in-store and online sales
- New product details
- An in-depth look at a different piece of jewelry in each newsletter
- Interesting facts about jewelry
- Updates on the latest jewelry trends
- A glossary of jewelry terms that consumers may not be aware of
- Links to consumer information sites about jewelry
- An "Ask the Jeweler" section where a different customer's question is answered in each newsletter
- Updates about new additions to your Web site
Keep in mind that the more useful your newsletters are, the more customers will read them.
Before sending your first newsletter, there are a few more things to consider. First, how will you maintain your subscriber list and send your newsletter? You could use your e-mail program to set up a list of addresses and mail the newsletter from your own e-mail account. This works until you have more than a few hundred subscribers. Then you'll tie up your computer while it tries to send hundreds of e-mails at once, and you could overload your computer or your e-mail host's servers. Another option is to sign up with an Internet newsletter host, such as Listbot (www.listbot.com). Most of these hosts allow you to store your subscriber list in your personal profile. It takes a few clicks and a minute or two to send the newsletter to all your subscribers. Charges for this can range from none – if you include the host's advertisement – to small fees based on the size of the newsletter and the number of subscribers.
You also need to decide if you want your newsletter to be in plain text or HTML format. HTML gives you the flexibility to use multiple fonts, colors, styles and images, but many people still use e-mail software that can't read HTML formatting. If your newsletter is simple, the safest thing to do is use plain text. It isn't as exciting to look at, but all of your subscribers will be able to see it Lay it out well, and it will be just as effective in getting your message across.
- by Julia M. Duncan
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