I'm thinking of gathering up all the e'mail addresses from people that have made purchases with our various websites in the past year and doing a 'shout out', so to speak, about the coming years' new products.

Also, maybe half of these people don't really know about the other related websites we have. So I thought it would be a good way to increase visibility to those sites.... one of which is getting a slick new design.

I wanted to know if anyone has had experience doing this, and if it was successful in terms of traffic, conversions, etc. Any pointers, or things I should know?

well it's definitely a good idea that's for sure

people who have previously made purchases from you and are happy with your services are far more likely to  buy again than new visitors so it's good to keep them in the loop

i certainly have some advice but first i need to know what kind of program have you used to capture your buyer's info?

'.... program to capture the buyers info'

What do ya mean? The shopping cart software? Or are you talking about their personal information like age, etc.?

email and name is really the only 2 main things you want (unless you are going to segment your lists- which depending on the scope of what you are selling may or may not be worth it)

by your last response i take it you used some sort of commercial shopping cart software? If so can u name it (or PM me the name) so i can take a look at it and see if it has other features...such as intergrated email marketing

OOOOooooohhhh.... I see what you're saying.

One site has Miva, and another one uses Mal's E-Com.

Can't remember off hand if Miva has anything, but I'm pretty sure Mal's doesn't. In any case, I didn't plan on using either one for anything.

The hosting service for one of our sites has a neat little mailing list program that I think I can use. All I have to do is set up the list, and shoot an e'mail off to whatever address I specify for it, and it go's to everyone.

Really not sure how to use it, as I just sort of peaked at it for 2 seconds a couple of weeks ago.

Anyways, initially, I'm going to have to build it by hand, which really won't take that long cause not a whole lot of people purchase these outdoors products on-line. It's just not 'that' type of crowd.

Thoughts?

just a little confused by this last line...

MrStitch wrote:

Anyways, initially, I'm going to have to build it by hand, which really won't take that long cause not a whole lot of people purchase these outdoors products on-line. It's just not 'that' type of crowd.

...are you planning to email people that did not purchase online?

email marketing can be a huge boost for any business...but with so much spam going around these days it is a very delicate matter so you want to make sure that you never send an email to anyone that has not requested email communications from you

in your case when people made purchases online they most likely had to agree to receive communications from you (maybe it is stated in your TOS)

the problem is that unlike in the real world...with email marketing you are guilty before YOU can prove you are innocent...so if you get a few spam complaints against you, you will be shut down and blacklisted in a real hurry and the only way to get back on the good side is to prove that those that made the complaints against you did in fact request it

in order to prove that in you need to show a bunch of info including when,where (ip), how, etc they requested your info

I would also look to speaking with your hosting company about this if you will be using them to send your communications through...they can probably offer good advice

Sorry about that....

What I'll be doing is going through all the purchases within the past year at all the sites, and gathering all of the e'mail addresses.

I won't be buying any kind of lists, etc. I'm merely keeping in touch with those folks that have made a purchase already. Furthermore, I won't be doing this on a regular basis. As far as I can tell, I'll be shooting one off in about March.... and that'll be it. Just the one time thing.

Yes, it's border-line spam, but with a conscious.

BTW, I just ran a test with it, and it appears to work really well... better than expected. Now I just need to build a list, and the first e'mail (be a while for that tho)

Any other suggestions?

sending from your server or your hosting company's? If it's through your hosting company are they well setup to send mail?

Oh and why not make it a regular thing? Doesn't have to be often...but even 1 every few months can help sales

From the hosting company's server. I read through the little bit of text they had about it, and there was nothing in there about having only a limited number of names/contacts, or number of e'mails that can go out in a month..... nothing.

Kind of weird. But I'm not complaining either.

hehehe...quite the 2 man conversation we got going here...

well if

> your propsects have agreed to receive communications from you (which they probably have through part of the online purchasing steps)

> and you are using your host's system to send from which is probably well setup to do this already

you should be a go

the only thing you need to worry about now iis compiling and submit your list- which you seem to ahve under control and the to create the actual emails themselves

as far as the emails themselves you can probably judge what's good or not

> do both a text and an html one
> the html one...don't make it all html or people will have to opt to "display pictures" in order to view your info
> make your subject line appealing to your audience
> make your name and email address you are sending from recognizable- (most likely your store name)
> try to provide value (maybe a special offer for repeat customers)
> and your address and opt-out links- to be can-spam compliant
> run everything through spam check filters first- even the most insignificant details can raise your spam score through the roof- spamassasin is a good one to check against


any specific Q's let me know and maybe i can help shed some light

Oh and 1 last thing...you said complie 1 list from all your different sites...not sure that's a wise move...yea it may be easier to send 1 email then to create several for each site but

> how are you going to brand it? Through a parent site?
> are they all for similar products? can you create 1 generic email to appeal to all? If not you will get way better results making sperate offers to sperate lists

All of the products cross each other. What do you call this, verticles?

We have a fishing lure site, a fishing rod site, and a marine products site.

Hardcore fishermen are mostly buying the lures (for many reasons I won't get into here). So, obviously they have a fishing rod (duh). So I'm letting them know about our other site. I'm really not expecting any conversions there for, yet again, other reasons. (strange crowd)

However, I'd really like to get the marine site going. Lots or most of these guys have boats, and we have products for those boats, and the trailers. Right now, the site just doesn't get a lot of traffic. So i'm going to rebuild that one some day, and promote it with this channel.

Now, what I plan on doing is taking all the e'mails from people that have made a purchase at any one of the sites, and grouping them all together in one single e'mail list. Then only one single e'mail go's out.

Not sure how I'm going to brand it. I suppose with the 'lures' site, and go from there. The e'mail program allows me to specify the owners e'mail, so if someone hits their reply button, then it'll come straight to me.

I gotta contact the host tho, as I just noticed a major flaw.... As a test, I sent a message from another e'mail address (one that's NOT listed as 'owner' in the control panel), and the dumb program shot it back out like a regular newsletter. I see this will be a problem if someone wants to reply, and accidentally hits 'Reply to All'.

gotcha...well it makes sense to cross promote like that...so when you taking us fishing?

Believe it or not, I don't fish.... hahahahah

Looooong story behind this one, and there isn't enough coffee around to keep everyone awake.

Since this is on-topic, has anyone tried using Dada Mail?

I was referred to it by one of my hosting companies. It's free (at least thats what they tell ya) - http://mojo.skazat.com