Snaptastic Blog

When your storefront door opens and the bells start to chime, your initial reaction is to let out a warm welcome and greet your new or returning visitor. The personal interaction between customer and employee is sometimes the deciding factor between online vs. brick and mortar shopping. Welcoming someone new or thanking a loyal customer for visiting sets the stage for an exceptional shopping experience while laying the foundation for a meaningful relationship.

“Tell us something we don’t know!”

Certainly you’ve already mastered building customer relationships at a personal level or else you wouldn’t be where you are. But the question is have you been practicing the same when acquiring new customers online? The first step in developing the same physical customer relationship into an online relationship is to humanize your business. And you should start the same way you do in your store – with a warm welcome.

Greet All New Subscribers

Think of each new email subscriber as a new customer walking through your door. You wouldn’t let someone step into your business without being addressed, so why wouldn’t you do the same with your subscribers? Most small business owners have no plan for addressing new subscribers. They simply upload them to a distribution list and act as if they’ve been there all along. Just because you have their email address doesn’t mean you’ll be able to communicate with them forever. There always is the frightening case of unsubscribes and although they can be due to many things, a welcome campaign can help reduce them.  Setting your customers’ expectations from the beginning increases their retention and keeps them engaged.

The Welcome Mat

Uploading new contacts and placing them in their correct distribution list can be a very timely task. We’d suggest updating your email database once every month or even every quarter. Upon uploading your new subscribers, keep track of them by placing the group into a distribution list with an easily recallable name such as “New Subscribers.” Now that you have these subscribers segmented, you can begin crafting your welcome message.

Your “welcome campaign” should be designed to greet a bulk group of new subscribers and educate them on the nature of your communications. Continuously work on growing your email list and once a week, send out a group email to those new subscribers like the one shown below.

This subscriber introduction campaign can be reformatted and edited as your list grows and your business matures. If you’re using SnapRetail to send email campaigns, you’ll be able to re-use your campaign for the next batch of new subscribers. Something as simple as this has the power to make your customers feel important to your business while encouraging them to take action and open your emails.

Now where do you put them?

Once you’ve reached out to your “New Subscribers,” they aren’t new anymore and can be placed with the rest of your subscribers. Simply remove them from your “New Subscriber” list and add them to your bulk distribution list.

Of course it takes an additional step to welcome new subscribers but the extra time taken will really show in the performance of your email marketing. Developing the right campaign for new subscribers can increase your open rates, reduce your unsubscribes, and continue to make your customers happy.

What’s your welcome mat to your businesses online presence? Share with us in the comments below.