Building up a list of people that have stopped by your website or have engaged with your marketing at some point in the past would be a great way to keep in touch with them. An opt-in email list is a great marketing asset to send monthly or even weekly emails to with interesting news, advice and links to your products and services.
But why do it?
Stay in touch – it allows you to stay in contact with your prospects. They may not have been ready to buy when they signed up but keeping in touch with newsletters could keep you in mind at renewal time.
Marketing new products – having an email list allows you to test new products and services quickly without the need to spend a lot of advertising or development costs.
Adds value to your business – having a current mailing list adds value to your business.
Hopefully in that even brief introduction you can see the possible benefit of getting people onto a mailing list.
NOTE: These are people that subscribe to your list freely or in return for a guide or report. These are not email addresses that you have simply collected or harvested from the Internet.
In order to get the right kind of people onto your list you need to make sure that you have a quick and easy way to capture them. There are a large number of services online that, for a low monthly fee, can help you build and manage a database of emails, and give you the ready online tools to help capture new prospects.
Tools such as Mailchimp, GetResponse, AWeber, or Constant Contact to name a few will provide you with the ability to create basic web forms to help capture prospect information and also to them automatically followup with the subscriber and give them the initial information they have signed up for.
This tends to be a PDF download or link to a special report that they can’t get anywhere else. This also tends to be branded in the company name but foremost they are informative, not overly salesy. Here are some ideas:
- Pet Insurance – 50 doggie treat recipes to save you money at the pet shop
- General Insurance – 50 ways to save money on your weekly household spend
- General Insurance – 101 ways to save money redecorating your house
- Local Insurance – 10 ways a local broker can save you money on your insurance
So now you have a list underway, what do you say to them each week or month?
This bit can be quite daunting but don’t forget you have an advantage over the bigger sites in that you can keep it local! By focusing your marketing efforts to attract local customers you are better placed to help them and keep them interested in your newsletter
Write about local events, themes, or other businesses. Make it something that you would want to read and find useful.
Yes do mention products but try to make it more about the local area. Keep the sales stuff to minimum. Do write about a new product or service or maybe a local offer you are running. But don’t make it all about trying to force a sale.
Just because they signed up to your list, it doesn’t mean they won’t remove themselves.
Now you are off and running, do make sure you provide easy access so people can easily sign up to your newsletter. Ensure you have forms or a way to sign up via:
- your website – on every page if possible
- your blog – again on every page maybe in the sidebar
- your email footer – add it to all out going mail
- all of your social media accounts
- email all your existing customers to let them know about your list.
