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 Stampin’ Up! business’s success. Here are some of the main reasons to start building your list now:

1. 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.

2. Feedback – Do your customers want your next class to be on scrapbooking or holiday cards? Do they prefer a different day or time to meet for a club? Would they host a workshop if you made it a Chicks & Chocolate workshop? Don’t guess — just ask them! Email lists give you a simple way to solicit feedback from the real experts – your customers themselves.  If you use a professional email program, you can track what information they reader chooses to click on.  That’s more valuable than anything else because now you know there is an interest.

3. Education – The industry standard says it take 7 times for someone to think about a product, before they buy. Some products require more education before prospects are ready to purchase,
especially if they can’t attend a local workshop. 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.

4. Connection – 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 – scrapbooking and stamping tips, for example. When she DOES need a more stamps, 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?

5. 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.  Since you are sending the information to your email list, they don’t have to try and remember where you DBWS or blog address is.

Starting, growing, and maintaining an email list of targeted subscribers is one of the most profitable things you can do to build a successful Stampin’ Up! business. 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. I usually provide 20% pure sales and 80% value-added content as a general rule.  So you are probably asking yourself, where do I get the great content, I don’t have time to do more.  That question I will respond to for my next newsletter.

Share Your Thoughts and Questions with Me below.