If You Don’t Say Hello To Your Clients Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later
Should Your Business Have a Newsletter?
One of my mentors in my former direct selling business taught me to keep in constant contact with both prospects and the already converted buyers. She sends Christmas cards or invitations to product launches. My other mentor in the financial products business does the same. This is an old-school sound networking must-do.
Say Hello to their Real World Mailbox
Receiving a handwritten or even typewritten but snail-mailed letter is a rarity. It takes time, special paper, mail merging, envelope labeling (does anyone even actually know how to insert the envelope in the printer?) - a lot of cost goes into just "keeping in touch".
If you can set aside a budget to do these 'just to say hello' mass mailings once or twice a year, that will be warmly felt by your customer base.
You Can't Afford Those Massive Direct Mail Just to Say Hello?
A cheaper alternative or complement to your real-world mailings is establishing an email list (1 or even more) just for you to either say hello, to send them a personalized invite to a product launch, or to just give an update for change of address or a new team member.
Are you the only business who doesn't even send a Christmas shoutout?
Didn't you receive a bunch of nice Christmas messages last year? I like to open them and see what my suppliers' greetings say. And maybe they have a Christmas promo I could use.
Nowadays, email software can personalize your messages so that the name of the recipient is in the greeting. This comes in handy even when you have 10 or 1000 subscribers -- do you really want to type those names and email addresses by hand every time?
If your business is a flower or gift shop, you can create an email reminder that sends every customer wife's birthday or send a mass promo email before Valentine's or Mothers Day.
Make the most out of the peak seasons in your business and tap those customers who already know you.
You Don't Have an Email List?
Sort through the business cards you've collected and put them in a spreadsheet (You can use Excel, OpenOffice Google Docs, or EditGrid).
Do you have customer information sheets? Just to make sure they don't consider your message as spam, US CAN-SPAM Law says that it's okay if they bought from you in the past 2 years.
Or next time you give them a ring, mention that you're updating your Rolodex, get their email address, and ask if it's okay to update them via email about future promos or events.
Wouldn't they hate me for spamming them?
Well, if you got their permission like I mentioned before, you should be safe -- because they do want to hear from you. But perhaps sending invites to the same product launch every 2 days might be overdoing it.
Sending out email newsletters is free, right? I can just do it from my email account and email blast them.
Of course you can - if you do it right and process unsubscribe requests quickly. I receive a lot of "manual mailing list" emails like that... sadly I almost always mark them as spam. I can even see the email addresses of everyone else they sent the message to! It shows unprofessionalism -- pretty much the same effect as using a free domain name and free hosting, the business is either a cheapskate or they don't know anything about nurturing their online presence. Thumbs down right straightaway.
What's even more terrible is having a manual unsubscribe instruction -- and they take ages to unsubscribe you -- so I just auto-spam their messages so I don't get annoyed so often.
Managing and personalizing your email list will entail the costs of the email software, creating and maintaining the mailing list, processing unsubscribe requests, and more importantly (and most often forgotten) analysis and reports on how effective your email was. Did they click on your link? Did they avail of your promo? Sending an email to a "manual mailing list" doesn't allow you to directly monitor the results of your email.