Hello everyone. I wanted to post this a bit ago, but with my move from the East to the West for a new job, this post has been delayed. But now I am one step closer to the Mozplex as I am now living in San Diego. : )
I still work for a family owned furniture store in Delaware contractually now, and recently moved our email list to Mail Chimp. First, let me say what really cool software this is and how it has allowed me to visualize how people interact with the email campaigns. Seeing the click through percentage overlaid on the email is great for the boss!
In the past, there was a single link on the home page asking people to sign up with the text ‘Send me specials’. We might have picked up 1-2 subscribers every other month. My thought was that people did not need information from furniture stores due to the fact that people do not shop for furniture every month as they would a department store.
Then I changed my thinking and everything changed with it. Now instead of just a text link, they have a nice box on the footer of each page with an offer to receive coupons when signing up.
Now we get 30+ sign ups a month!! Attributed to placing this on every page and offering customers something of value. My thinking was they are on the site shopping, so what could push them to the next step. Well who does not like coupons 
What we are seeing here is that in December I imported our old list from any emails in our current email list, which included any emails from out customer files. January had poor performance as the new sign up box was not implemented. We were also getting poor stats (views, click-throughs), so anyone in our list that did not interact with any of the emails (including opening it) was removed. This now gave us a base of actual users. They have had steady growth though April.
Their retention is quite high also as I have became a bit more creative in the emails. I now include new products, latest blog post, and any other events below the main offer and I try to bait more with the email subject. I was surprised to see these getting as many clicks as they do, and this is a great tool for the buyer as he sees what people are interested in.
The subject on this was $1,000 OFF Coupon Inside. An amazing difference a little effort brings.
- I added the email sign up to the footer of every page.
- I offered coupons to anyone signing up.
- I baited the email subject line.
- I offered more within the email then just the current deal.
Take-a-ways from this?
- Are you always in front of your audience?
- Is the call to action relevant?
- Are you giving them something of value for signing up?
- What are you doing to keep them signed up?
Thanks for reading and I look forward to reading your success story.
Cheers : )
