I recently attended a webinar by one of my favorite marketers and authors, Chris Brogan, and this advice 
was hands down the best takeaway. I am grateful to Chris for reminding me how important email marketing is for building business. We easily get caught up in finding new customers, learning new apps, using the right keywords, and over analyzing blog titles, that we sometimes forget about tried and true practices like email marketing.
Since that webinar, I have been reminding all my clients to go back to their lists and nurture them. We are getting reacquainted with a practice most of us have done since the beginning – snail mail, then email. It’s actually been fun coming up with fresh ideas for content, catchy subject lines, and good old-fashioned personalization.
Think about how many marketing emails you receive. Chances are good you open several a week, and it’s likely that some of them prompt you to take some kind of action. This call to action may be to sign a petition, share something in social media, or actually purchase something. The fact is, email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to market your products and services.
Here are some tips to start building your list today:
- Revive your old list. It may be a list in your email client, or an old spreadsheet you have not looked at in months, but resuscitate it and put it back to work for you.
- Start collecting new contacts. No existing database? Add an email collection application to your website and social media profiles and start collecting. MailChimp and Constant Contact are two great resources.
- Build a database with what you already have. Former and current customers, Facebook page Likers, and LinkedIn connections all have the potential to become e-newsletter recipients. It’s important how you go about converting these connections to subscribers so adhere to laws, guidelines and common sense.
- Friends and family. Ask them to subscribe to your e-newsletter. They seem to like you so it’s a safe bet that most will support you this way.
- Colleagues. Reach out to your contacts and tell them about what is happening with your business, and ask them to subscribe. Send out a personal email or forward them your latest e-newsletter with a message. It’s perfectly acceptable to ask them to subscribe.
Start putting the power of your social capital to work for you today. And, I highly recommend subscribing to Chris Brogan’s blog here. You can learn a lot from how Chris nurtures his list.