Have Permission!

Make sure you are up front about what kind of content you are going to send to them. As you are collecting the email addresses, make sure that you keep up from where you are gaining this information. Know if people are signing up via your website for your newsletter or instore to receive notice about promotions or special offers. Again, make sure that people now what they are signing up to receive and always give them a way to change what kind of information they are receiving from you. You can do this simply by having an option in your email footer to update their email preferences.

Meet Their Expectations!

Whatever content (information) that you told the customer that they would be receiving when they gave you their email address needs to be the content that you send them. Remember that you are building trust and fostering a long-term relationship with your customer. You don’t want to break this trust early in the game by sending them content that didn’t ask for. This is also something good to check when going over your email metrics – are you sending the content that you said you would? Focusing on making sure that you are sending content that they expect and that will provide value to them will continue to build their trust.

And if you are currently still using Excel to keep your email lists all together and UpToDate, I would recommend finding a good Content Management System (CMS) to keep track of those emails for you. There are some great resources like HubSpot, Constant Contact, and MailChimp just to name a few. They allow you to set up lists and collect people’s information, creating landing pages, and send out emails much more effectively than your Excel sheet.