The Art of Getting and Retaining Customers

[KHALID HASSAN]

Email List Building: The Art of Getting and Retaining Customers If you run an online business, then effective email list building is vital not only for the survival of your business but for a steady and profitable growth as well. For as long as your website is able to remain high on search engine rankings, you will find enough traffic. However, the moment a competing site overtakes you or ranking formulas are changed by Google, then you are in trouble. You will find sales dwindling leaving you high and dry. Email list building is not a once in a life time process. With a properly designed website with a landing page, a squeeze page and a defined product and a marketing plan, you should be receiving newer subscribers every day to enable business to increase logarithmically. Defense against Search Engine Unpredictability: By resorting to email list building, you build a strong defense against any such unforeseen circumstances. Traffic generation is now entirely in your hands. Strong Customer Relationship: The benefits of purchase email list building do not end here. This technique is very effective in ensuring a long standing, strong, loyal and trusting relationship with your prospective and existing customers. An excellent idea is to send newsletters and to keep in touch with your existing customers and visitors who opt-in. This will help them gain knowledge on your products and make an informed purchase decision. Valuable information can be offered thus through industry news, product reviews, articles and surveys in your newsletters. Make your newsletter fun and entertaining to ensure visitors enjoy and look forward to reading them. Each newsletter could be loaded with an offer for something free or bonus points and could also include a preview of what is to come in the next issue. This makes prospects look forward to receiving the next newsletter with anticipation. Invite readers to submit their views and articles for publication in your newsletters. Market Research: You can send periodic questions to your subscribers to find out what exactly they are interested in. Instant answers through surveys are another vital benefit of email list building. Such a survey page could also offer a bonus freebie as an incentive for taking the survey. Enhanced Response and Conversion Rates: Normally, those who sign up for commercial email messages of their own accord are interested in the product or service on offer and it is likely they are considering purchase at some point in time. Follow up these opt-in with emails showing interest in maintaining contact and offering some new angle on your product in brief in each mail. This ensures higher conversion rates. Reach out to target audience: Email list building and opt-in marketing, helps internet marketers reach out to a huge audience base. This in turn assures marketers access to a focused, targeted market. For this, it is necessary for businesses to build fresh customer base as well as maintain a constant contact with existing customers. Affordability: Email list building and marketing is a much more affordable option as compared to renting or purchasing email lists that are not effectively targeted. Goodwill and Reputation: Many companies are in the bad books of prospective customers because they tend to spam messages to unwilling targets. This in turn results in the damage to the reputation of the company and impacts sales in the long run. Email list building and sending messages only to opt-in subscribers makes it possible for companies to avoid being labeled a spammer. Along with the commercial message, you can also mix high quality information that will be very useful for subscribers. Providing rich and valuable content helps build good will with the readers. Minimal or No Legal Hassles: By opting for opt-in marketing, companies can be assured of being on the right side of the law. This will help them avoid huge amounts on fines resulting from commercial emails that are unsolicited. Email list building thus offers many benefits and is one of the most effective ways of reaching out to a highly targeted audience. Whether you are a start-up or a seasoned internet marketer, opt-in marketing can help drive sales and enhance profits and is virtually indispensable these days.