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Most businesses are not just online operations. Your marketing and advertising mix probably includes pre-printed materials for trade shows and conferences, direct mail, flyers, signage, in-store foot traffic, and plenty of others. Every touch point you have with customers and potential customers holds an opportunity to build your email list.
6 Ways To Build Your Email List... OFFLINE
Events - Ask for an email sign up at trade shows and conferences. Try using a laptop pointing to a page on your website which your guests can use to register. This trick eliminates having to re-key the names into your database later. Re-keying the names is a stumbling block and often the names never get used if you have to re-key them in from paper based forms. Some visitors may not want to use the laptop concept so be sure to also collect business cards and scan them in after the show.
Print - Get your URL , perferably with your opt-in link, on all print materials, bags, flyers, signage, customer forms, ads,catalogs etc. IMPORTANT: Include a short tagline explaining the benefit of reason to sign-up such as free stuff, access to special deals etc. and keep the opt-in link URL simple and easy to remember.
Direct Mail - Encourage email sign-ups on all your outbound direct mail. If you have a good sized mailing list the small investment of time will pay off by converting your list away from expensive direct mail to lower cost, highly efficient email communications.
Ask and you will recieve - Make a request for email addresses a part of all you inbound ad outbound call center scripts.
Directories - When you add your company profile to directories add a link to the sign up page for your email list to your profile and include a brief benefit statement explaining why they should consider signing up.
In-store foot traffic - Ask customers face to face when they enter your establishment or store. Get them to provide their email while you ring up their order at checkout. Or, you could keep a small pad of subscription forms next to the cash register. Also, try adding a bowl where they can leave a business card wtih their email address. Suggestion: offer the opprotunity to win a contest prize as a reason to sign up.
You might also enjoy reading these other articles in the Building Your Email List series:
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When client we have worked with planning direct mail promotions very often we are asked the question, "what response can we expect from this mailing?"