Marketplace

You will often hear people singing the praises of the internet when it comes to marketing a business.  They will talk about the power to reach millions of people from all over the world by using email marketing. With the simple push of a mouse button they can have instant, and free, contact with thousands or millions of potential customers.   While this is a great aspect of using the internet for your business building, what happens if you just want to target your local area?  How does local email marketing work?

The same concept can work just as well for you even if you have a more localized focus.  Email marketing is quite simple to use and even if you've never sent an email before you can easily learn a few basics and put this technique to work for you.

Of course, the first thing you will need is a list of customers, or potential customers, names and email addresses to send the emails to.  There are a few methods you can use to start building a 'subscriber' list.  

If you have a website you should incorporate an 'opt-in' box on your website.  When they sign up to receive your emails they are opting-in to your list, which means they are giving you permission to contact them and protects you from spam complaints.   The process can easily be automated by the use of an inexpensive autoresponder service.  

Another way you can build your subscriber list is to ask the customers who come into your store to sign up for your email messages. One factor will be common to both scenarios: in order to get them to sign up to receive your emails you have to offer them a reason why.  Don't forget that your customers will be asking 'What's in it for me?" That's why it's important to let them know that they will benefit by signing up to your list.

Once they've opted- in to your list you can send them coupons, early bird sale information, etc.  This will create more customer loyalty and make them feel like they're special and appreciated.  Let your customers know what perks they'll get and that will encourage them to sign up to your email list.   

Once you've got some people on your list, if you want to send out a group of emails you can either send them yourself manually (all you have to do is put all the email addresses into a group and they will all receive the same message) or you can use a professional service to handle your email marketing, it's all up to you.

The most important thing to remember is that local email marketing is a very powerful and cost effective way to increase the number of customers you have as well as improve customer loyalty with your existing customers.  Don't overlook this extremely effective method to help you grow your business.  In todays competitive business environment you need every advantage you can get.