If your business is tourist-based, as are most of the clients that I service, an email list is a remarkably useful and easy tool. For the purposes of this article, I will use a hotel or inn as a model, and you can adapt the strategies for your particular business niche. Most important, anyone who comes in the front door or calls on the phone should be offered the chance to be included in your email broadcast list. Here are a few other things to consider while working building an email list: ?Train your front desk staff to ask ?Would you like to join our email newsletter?? You may offer incentives to front desk employees or help them set goals for acquiring new email addresses. Any reservation request can include the question ?Are you on our email list?? ?Offer guest incentives. Consider offering a modest discount to your email newsletter subscribers. Don't go overboard and try to reinvent the frequent flyer program but make sure that being a list member has value to the recipients. ?Use the list! Even if you have a modest list size, you can use it to get some traction with your subscribers. Meaningful content that is sent periodically can help fill in the gaps during off-season times. Sending an email broadcast too infrequently typically leads to high unsubscribe rates or undeliverable emails. ?Make it easy to sign up. Have a form set up on your site that enables users to add themselves to your list and enables you to add new users. Add the form to your favorites on a computer that is closest to your checkout desk. When you get a new email address, add it immediately. ?Honor your customers' needs. If you do email reservation confirmations, you may have email addresses for some customers who do not want to receive your broadcast emails. Be sure to honor those requests! Customers who want to keep their inbox clear will appreciate your attention to the small things, which will also help to build loyalty.
Remember - Keep it simple! Ask for the email addresses of all your visitors. And always make it easy for new members to be added or to add themselves. Even a modest email list can help fill in the gaps.
If you are one of these people...Kudos to you! When maintained correctly, your database will provide a super source of mortgage referrals and new loans, keeping your pipeline filled for many years to come.
If you're like me, you're probably experiencing more and more pieces of your mailing being returned than when you first started mailing to your lists. You see things like "Undeliverable as addressed" or even "Forwarding Order Expired."
Its unfortunate but, every time you mail to a contact that has moved or just can't be found for some reason, you have just thrown good money down the drain. Not only did it cost you to produce the mailing piece...you also paid for the postage to send it. In all of this, here's the really bad news...there is absolutely no possibility of getting any kind of response from those returns.
Now, if you're relatively new to the mortgage business and/or maintain a very modest database of contacts this isn't a problem for you. But, if you've been in the business for a number of years, your list may consist of many hundreds and possibly thousands of contacts.
When you have a huge list, you just can't talk to everyone and take them to lunch. Most of them are contacts you have acquired over the years and you use direct mail to keep your name in front of them. You have found that by doing this, a goodly number of them call you when it's mortgage time.
So...You maintain your database the best way you can by going into your list of names and delete the "returns" that you receive. No more bad addresses (until the next mailing), no more wasted mailers, and no more wasted postage. We also lost some contacts in the process that we worked so hard to get.
This just might be a better solution for you...
Our US Postal Service has an NCOA (National Change of Address) System that a limited number of companies are licensed to access. These companies or Service Providers are able to take your list and check it against the USPS address system.
By using this service, you'll receive a report that will let you know if anyone on your list has moved, gone out of business, or even if the zip code that contact was in was changed by the Post Office itself. You'll also receive a new copy of your list that has been cleaned, scrubbed, and updated.
The cost for having your list checked is extremely economical (about $5.00 per thousand records) and will allow you to keep getting your mortgage marketing message out to as many people on your list as possible.
The NCOA service is by far the easiest and most effective way that I have found to keep your marketing lists clean and your costs down. So, eliminate some of your list maintenance chores and save on your next mailing. When you're ready to keep in touch, make your life easier and check your list.
Both Hamoon & Tom Domin are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Hamoon has sinced written about articles on various topics from AutoResponders, Body Building and Email Advertising. Author: Hamoon ArbabiSign up to a FREE Email Automatic Responder (Autoresponder) and build a huge number of opt-in lists easily and rapidly!!!! Please visit