Email Collection Best Practices

Hosted by Justin Shoup and Vince Ventura

What not to do:

• Don’t say “Can I have your email?” or “What’s your email?”
• Don’t disguise the reason you are asking for their email address. I see so many businesses say they are asking for an email to send a receipt and then they send you marketing emails. There is a difference between transactional emails and marketing emails and different laws that surround it.
• Don’t just have a signup form or tablet and think people will sign up without asking

 

So, now that you know what not to do, what should you do?

• Ask and Tell: Would you like to sign up for our email list, so you’ll receive coupons and be the first to know about the latest products? You are asking them to sign up, but telling them the benefit of signing up for your list. Your benefit may be different.
• Consider creating a sense of belonging and exclusivity to your email list. Send exclusive email-only offers and let customers know about that benefit at time of signup. “Can I sign you up for our email list?” You’ll receive special offers that we don’t tell people about in store or on social media”
• Consider setting up a welcome email that includes a coupon to use on their next purchase. At the time of sign up let them know they will receive this. “Would you like to sign up for our email list?” If you sign up, you’ll receive a coupon in just a few minutes that you’ll be able to use next time you are in the store.”

 

Collection practices

• Have the customer sign up on a tablet or other mobile device. If they type it in on their own it will make it more likely that it is spelled and entered correctly. If they are relaying it to your sales associate it makes it more likely that it will be input incorrectly.
• Avoid handwritten forms. Handwriting can be difficult to interpret sometimes and this could cause unwanted email addresses to get on your list.
• If in-store, you have customers signing up through a form on your website or Facebook let them know that they’ll receive a verification email in a few minutes that they’ll need to watch for and click Confirm to be added to your list and receive your emails. Tell them to check their junk/spam if they don’t see it. “Thanks for signing up, just be on the lookout for an email in just a few minutes to confirm your subscription to our list, you’ll need to click confirm on it to receive our emails. If you don’t see in your inbox look in your junk or spam, sometimes the verification email will go there.

 

Quality over quantity

• Don’t worry about the number of email addresses you have. It is more important to have email addresses that actually want to receive your emails and are opening them.
• If you have a contest, drawing, or giveaway to collect email addresses make sure you are giving something away that is related to your store, so that you don’t attract email addresses that will unsubscribe or never open an email. This is especially important online.
• If you have a website email collection form add a captcha to it, so that you do not have bots flooding your email list. This will skew your numbers and make it difficult to make heads or tails of if your marketing efforts are working.