Visit Your Visitors! The Value of an Email Newsletter
By Paula Mariedaughter and Jeanne Neath
Building a relationship with customers who return again and again to purchase your products is the key to a thriving business. To keep the customer base coming back, “brick and mortar” shops have countless strategies including advertised sales, block of the month clubs, and ongoing classes.
Your web site needs the same kind of attention from you. Sure you have done the basics: you have optimized your site for search engine attention or you are using pay per click advertising. But, these strategies are only good for bringing in new customers. How can you get site visitors to return again and again as regular customers? One strategy is to send them an email newsletter.
Your challenge is to make your email newsletter relevant to the visitor’s desires and needs. How can you create a newsletter that your visitor will welcome?
As with a store, people return to a web site for a variety of reasons. Curiosity or a chance click may bring new people, but these are some of the reasons people return to favored sites:
- A large selection or a good mix of products
- Bargains--free or sale items
- New products or services
- New or interesting information
- Creative inspiration
Providing these kinds of information through an email newsletter can create ongoing interest in your web site and your products.
Shops sending out newsletters by mail usually send one lengthy newsletter to their entire mailing list. But, the ability to offer special interest email newsletters is one way to maximize the possibility that your customers will welcome your email communication! If you are a sewing machine dealer, you may want to offer a different specialty newsletter for each of your best selling brands of sewing machines. If you are a needlework shop, you may want to consider three specialty newsletters: one for quilters, one for knitters and one for those interested in cross-stitch. If a customer is interested in all the areas, she could sign up for each of the specialty newsletters.
You may want to rent or purchase software to send out newsletters from your web site instead of trying to send a newsletter from your own computer. Why? Successful delivery of your email newsletter can be a challenge. Depending on the policies of your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and the email software on your computer, you may encounter problems once you try to email the same message to different addresses. Your carefully crafted newsletter may be pegged as “spam.” The appropriate newsletter software would collect email addresses from each visitor, keeping track of which specialty newsletter the visitor wanted.
Other than the cost of renting or purchasing the software, you would have no newsletter expenses! After talking to numerous shop owners, we know a big chunk of your budget often goes into the printing and postage for your current newsletters. Depending on the particular newsletter software you decide on, you may be able to display the newsletter on your web site or even print copies of the newsletter from your web site, rather than having to layout and print a separate newsletter.
Once you have the newsletter software, you have to use it for it to be effective! A stale out-of-date newsletter on your web site is worse than no newsletter at all. Keeping current can be a challenge. You might consider five formal email newsletters per year: one per season and one in anticipation of the holiday selling season with a short weekly or monthly update.
Let your customers know that you value them and their willingness to give you their business. Creating loyal customers is a year round pursuit. An up-to-date newsletter is one of your most effective tools to communicate with your customers.
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