Grow Your Email List, and Your Sales, In-Store

It happens almost every time I purchase something at a store. At checkout, a clerk asks for my email address. The bigger chain stores are usually consistent in asking customers to join their email list, but few offer a compelling reason to do so. I remember a short while back, asking a cashier what I would be sent if I did give her my email address. She shrugged and said, “I guess some coupons and stuff.”

Maybe it was her lack of enthusiasm, but I wasn’t convinced to hand over my email address.

Email marketing is an important and profitable component of small business marketing. However, businesses must offer an appealing value exchange to customers when collecting personal information. In other words, I as the customer need to clearly see the benefit of giving you the ability to contact me. Otherwise, why would I want to hear from you?

If you improve your value exchange, you’ll start collecting more email addresses. And if you run a retail business with a brick-and-mortar storefront, you can leverage your value exchange to increase repeat customer visits and spending.

Take a look at this article detailing how Bath and Body Works built a record-breaking email list, and then grew visits and spend with a clever offer. Store employees offered customers free tubes of lip-gloss in exchange for an email address. But here’s the catch: the customer would receive an email, which they then brought to the store to receive their free gift. So customers visited the store, purchased something, and gave their email address to claim the free lip-gloss. After receiving the email redeemable for the free gift, many customers visited the store again and, in addition to claiming their free gift, purchased more from the store! Bath and Body Works effectively turned their offer for free lip-gloss into both a data acquisition engine, and a repeat customer engine. And remember that it costs much less to keep a current customer than it does to acquire a new one.

This is a highly effective method of growing your customer database, store visits, and sales, at the low cost of an email and a small free giveaway. Perhaps the best part is that it provides great value exchange – you can grow your business, and your customers feel they are being rewarded for giving you their information.

Ready to get started with email marketing? Check out pbSmartConnections. To learn more, or if you already have an account, click here.