Local Business Must Ask for Customers Email Addresses

The sad truth is that most businesses, whether they sell high-dollar services or $40 gift-baskets, completely “miss the boat” when it comes to asking for customer emails.  Though email predates the Web, the following 5 mistakes highlight just how much opportunity still remains for improvement in small business email marketing.

Email Marketing Mistakes

Mistake #1: Not Asking

How hard do you work to get people into your store or office?

How much do you pay in advertising to get people to your website?

Cultivating a list of customers and prospects you communicate with via email rates as the most cost-effective way to stay in touch. Nothing else offers the time leverage and speed of communication (no, not even Facebook or Twitter), yet the vast majority of businesses never ask for an email address. ASK! Start using the Internet’s most basic communication tool to build your business.

Mistake #2: Inconsistency

Train your staff to ask for customer emails consistently and tell them exactly what to say and when. Don’t leave anything to chance. You might even try incentivizing your staff to ask for customer emails. Pay them $1 for every customer email they collect (the right way) so they get into the habit of asking. By the way, $1 for a targeted email with name and contact information is pure GOLD and will definitely get your team in the habit of asking consistently!

Mistake #3: No Value Exchange

The majority of businesses that do ask for email don’t operate with a standard script. The request for email comes as an afterthought or with an apologetic “My boss made me ask you” attitude from the person behind the cash register. I experienced that on a trip to Toys-R-Us some years ago when buying a new Playstaion. As the young lady behind the counter rang up the sale, she sullenly asked “Do you want to join our email list?” My knee-jerk reaction was “No! You’ll spam me!”

In other words, when I didn’t see value in the way she asked, I said no.

Mistake #4: Unclear Promise

When you ask someone to give you their email, they immediately fire off a set of internal questions:

• Why do you want my email?
• What’s in it for me?
• Will you spam me?

No matter what size business you operate, asking for email with a simple script that offers a clear promise of value often defuses customer concerns. You can do this either with the name of the list or the offer for joining the list.

For example, you could say:

• Would you like to join our Online Newsletter & Specials Club?
• Would you like a free subscription to our Online Updates & Discount Club?
• Would you like instant access to unadvertised specials and customer-only updates?

Mistake #5: No Obvious Opt-In

When anyone visits your website, you need to let them know they CAN sign up for you list. Though it sounds obvious here, most websites don’t make a big, bold, benefit-driven promise to entice people to sign up. Just as with live people coming into your store, don’t hide the fact that you offer value through email on your website. Always make an obvious and compelling promise for why people should opt-in to your list.

Bottom line:

Sum up the promise of joining your email list in 1-2 sentences and consistently make that offer to new and existing customers. Once you get that email address, follow up consistently, send valuable, relevant information and build anticipation for every message you send to your subscribers. Do this for 30 days and you’ll be amazed at how quickly you can build up a responsive, profitable email list.

Reprinted from http://smallbusinessmarketingweekly.com/email-marketing-mistakes/.

Do you use email in your business? The CAN-SPAM Act, a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.

Despite its name, the CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t apply just to bulk email. It covers all commercial messages, which the law defines as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,” including email that promotes content on commercial websites. The law makes no exception for business-to-business email. That means all email – for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line – must comply with the law.

Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, so non-compliance can be costly. But following the law isn’t complicated. Here’s a rundown of CAN-SPAM’s main requirements:

1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
3. Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.
4. Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.
5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.
6. Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.