Ten ways to get new retail customers with e-mail

E-mail marketing is a cost-efficient, effective way for retailers to identify and reach prospects -- if you can avoid spam filters and Internet-service provider blacklists to create new, profitable customer relationships.  Here are 10 steps to guide your success:

1. Buying lists: Just say no
Don’t use purchased lists, opt in or not. These subscribers have not requested information from your company and are more likely to mark the message as spam without even opening the e-mail. Chances are also good that the list will contain invalid or spam trap e-mail addresses causing problems with inbox delivery. Your bid for new customers can end up compromising the delivery of e-mails you want to get to your legitimate subscribers.

2. Sign-ups: Make it easy 
First, get interested parties to sign up for your messages. Make it easy, starting with a clear link to the subscribe form on your Web site. That link should appear in every mailing, so that forwarded messages still make it easy to subscribe. Writing blog posts or articles (online or print) that include a link to your subscribe form can also be effective in driving traffic. Offline, let people sign up at brick-and-mortar locations and display the URL to the subscribe form on all printed material.

3. Don’t rush it
Rushing your new business efforts and adding addresses by the bushel from a poorly managed or purchased list will often drag down your deliverability with a high number of invalid e-mail addresses and unwanted spam complaints -- hurting your ability to reach a smaller, engaged audience. Slowly build your core audience by sending prospective list members to a “subscribe form” that highlights list member benefits.

4. Start a conversation
The more relevant and targeted your e-mails, the happier your subscribers, and the more likely they are to refer your communications to new prospects. Find out what e-mails and content subscribers would like to receive. One great way to start that conversation is by using your campaign landing pages to grow your subscribers. Instead of linking your ads and e-mails to your homepage, contact page, etc., create a custom landing page with a form that entices prospects to share information.

5. Provide an incentive
Offer an incentive to bring in new subscribers (i.e., sign up for the newsletter and receive a 10% off coupon). Include the incentive in your initial welcome e-mail to new subscribers. But probably the best incentive is to make good on your promise of supplying relevant, interesting content that subscribers will share. Keep reinforcing that value to recipients in all messages.

6. Share it
Put a “Forward to a Friend” link in your e-mails, or share it among other interested communities via social networks or blogs, and include a link to the sign-up form or your Web site where they can sign up to receive future e-mails. Some of the best customers come through referrals.

7. Keep it clean
Keep your list clean and current to maintain delivery rates to existing and new customers.  Limit sending e-mails to subscribers out of contact for over six months as they are more likely to have forgotten signing up or may have closed that e-mail account. But if you do, sprinkle their addresses among more recent addresses so if you get a few spam complaints it is less likely to cause you problems.

8. Addresses to avoid
Many e-mail lists contain inappropriate e-mail addresses. Departmental and group addresses, such as sales@, webmaster@ or postmaster@, or all@, everyone@, etc., are major offenders. Often pulled directly from Web sites, these are addresses to avoid and should be set to non-active status.

9. Make the connection
If you are sending to e-mail addresses you received from a trade show or other event, start the relationship off right by referencing that connection in the e-mail so the subscriber knows why you are contacting them.

10. Give them an out
Make sure the unsubscribe link is easy to see, and that it works. If a subscriber is not interested in receiving your e-mails anymore, you are better off having them unsubscribe rather than marking the message as spam, cutting off that channel to new business.

Dan Forootan is the president of StreamSend Email Marketing, a leading provider of e-mail marketing solutions. He can be reached at dforootan@streamsend.com.