Targeted e-mail clubs reap sales bonanza

They e-mail me to offer me books that I actually want to read. What a wacky, radical idea.

E-mail clubs make it easier for customers to buy more with greater frequency. Likely the very first e-mail clubs were started by distraught school teachers who sought to whip students into line by using technology to stay in closer contact with parents. If e-mail can improve communication between teachers, teens and parents, it can work advantageously to keep you in touch with your best customers.

An e-mail club is sort of like a computer dating service that conducts a brief survey to prequalify people and then matches them with more compatible types. In this way, you might avoid dating someone dreadful, like the last person you met over the Internet – except Barnes and Noble e-mail won’t leave you stuck late at night in some field on a dead-end road off Kearney Street.

Simply put, when I signed up for their e-mail club, Barnes and Noble surveyed me about what I enjoy reading. I also suspect they tracked my purchases to verify the genre of books I generally buy. What a devious pair of guys they are! Now they only send me e-mail that features special offers on specific books and authors that I dig – books I am prone to purchase.

The bottom line is that I now spend about four times more money at Barnes & Noble than I ever did before. Wow! What if you could get your customers to do that?

Maybe you can. Generally, e-mail clubs work best for businesses with moderately priced merchandise and high traffic counts, like bookstores and other retailers.

Restaurateurs who have e-mail clubs motivate their regulars to come back more often, too. Frequent diners like to know about new menu choices offered by their favorite dining establishments. Everyone seeks ways to celebrate special events, like birthdays and anniversaries, and having an e-mail club lets you capitalize on your customers’ important dates and events.

Above all, as more and more people look for ways to save money (notice the price of gas, lately?), e-mail directs special values to valued customers, a proven way to get them back in the store.

E-mail clubs are a hot idea for medical care professionals, weight loss and nutrition centers, supermarkets, gift shops, hardware and do-it-yourself retailers, oil and tune-up facilities, theaters, nightclubs and other attractions.

Banks, insurance agencies, furniture stores, even wholesalers and distributors are candidates for e-mail clubs.

Any business that wants a deeper relationship with its existing customers can benefit from establishing an e-mail club.

So, where do you start?

Step 1: Ask your customers if they want it. Pose this simple question to the next 10 customers: “May I e-mail you special offers from my store?” If more than two of them say, “Yes,” get going. For starters, all you need is the customer’s e-mail address, so collect as many as you can. When folks go on a rant about e-mail spam (and they will) promise them that you will NEVER share their e-mail address with ANYONE.

Step 2: Shop for a software program that will effectively administer your e-mail club program. You can do this on the Internet or you can visit a local store that sells same.

Step 3: Cancel Step 2. You don’t have the time to shop, compare, buy, install and administer your own e-mail club program. Admit it. If you did, you’d already have one.

Step 2 (revisited): For less money than it takes to clean your carpet there are companies who will provide you a turnkey e-mail club program. Call them and let them put you on the right track. Local e-mail club service providers may be found under Web Site Design and also Advertising/Internet in the SBC Yellow Pages.

Make sure your e-mail club includes the following features:

• A simple, easy way to capture and process your customer’s e-mail address, birthday and anniversary data;

• A way for you to (automatically) send a brief “Welcome” to all of your new e-mail club members;

• A way for you to survey your e-mail club members;

• A way for you to (automatically) send attractive, trackable, printable coupons to your customers, any time you desire, especially around holidays, birthdays and anniversaries;

• A way for your customers to refer your special offer(s) to others; and

• A way to keep count of your results.

Also, you have exclusive rights to your customer’s e-mail addresses. Make sure such data will never be sold or shared, and that you can capture it, in full, at any time you choose.

Barnes & Noble advertising works much better since they took aim at my heart instead of my head. While you check out local e-mail club providers, I’ll take a minute to read my e-mail.

I’m expecting the new O. Henry book to hit the stands any time.

Bob May is former managing partner of five local radio properties and is now engaged in the publishing of large-print phone directories in about 50 small towns in southwest Missouri.