From time to time clients tell me they would like to send out an email to get new customers. I ask them about their email list and they tell me they are going to purchase one or they have been compiling a list of names. Of course you can send out an email from a purchased list or a compiled one, but will it work? Probably not as well as one will have hoped for. Why? Because you are not familiar to them. A key component to making your email list effective is having a relationship with the people on your list. An excellent way to do this is with a newsletter. Martina Iring wrote a excellent post on this, titled “The Greedy Email Collector” on the blog Martina’s Marketing Musings. On this post she writes:
“Many small businesses make the mistake of putting up the email sign-up form solely for their own purpose. They rub their hands together in anticipation for the new product launch they will have down the road and how they will be able to promote the hell out of it with their email list. Until then, well… nothing. Nada. No informative emails. No interesting articles.
What’s wrong with the above? Well, when your peeps finally do get an email from you, and it’s all about promotion (or whatever it is that you want them to do for your gain, whether it’s fill out a survey, or donate, whatever), they’re not going to be nearly as receptive as if you had warmed them up and made them love you with great content and useful sh**. They might even feel used. The result? Your promotion won’t get the impact you would have hoped for. Or you’ll get unsubscribers. Or, people won’t even remember who the hell you are cause they signed up so long ago, and you’ll be marked as spam (and this is really bad).”
Therefore consider creating a newsletter to develop a relationship with your email subscribers. It can help maximize your email marketing campaigns.
