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Sell the benefits of your email newsletter and customers will beat down your door to subscribe
By Karen Skidmore | July 2, 2008
How do you get your customers to subscribe and opt-in to your email newsletter?
“Hi Karen, I’ve been running my business for a couple of years now and have only just decided to send out my first email newsletter.
I would really like to include my existing customers in the first one, however after reading through the opt-in rules, I am a bit concerned. I didn’t really want to approach each one to ask them to opt in by going to my website and would like to know if you have any advice on how to tackle this.
My original thought was to send them the newsletter with a welcoming bit in the introduction and explaining that they could unsubscribe if they wished too. But I’m wondering now if this would fall foul of the legislation. I wonder if you can advice if this is the case or if you have an alternative way to go about this?
Thanks, Ghislaine”
Ghislaine originally posted this as a comment and as it such a great question to ask, I thought it deserved it’s own posting.
There are lots of ways of approaching your current customer database about your newsletter, and forwarding on your latest newsletter with an intro is a great way of doing this. The important point to consider here is that you are giving your customers an option to subscribe, rather than subscribing them and giving them option to un-subscribe.
You are right to be aware of the opt-in rules, but don’t let them scare you off offering a fabulous service that will help your customers in the long term. If all you were going to do was to send them sales pitch after sales pitch, then they would quite rightly get a little peeved off and report you for spam.
But a newsletter which delivers value is something to be proud of and if your existing customers benefit from using your services, then most of them would love some free articles, top tips, advice or what ever it is you are offering.
Sell the benefits of your email newsletter, offer great value and you shouldn’t be concerned about asking your customers to opt-in. They will be beating down your door wanting to sign up!
Topics: Getting started with email newsletters, Growing your subscriber list, Promoting an email newsletter |