It’s important to remember every possible touch point when looking to grow your email list. You might not think of print ads as an opportunity to do that, but you’d be incorrect. With QR codes, SMS or simply putting a URL, you can grow your list with this offline opportunity.

00:23 Andy Shore: Welcome back, everybody. We are continuing our conversation on growing your list and today, it might sound like an archaic way of doing it, but good old-fashioned print ads are a good place to grow your list. Why is that?

00:38 Daniel Miller: Well, as we’ve been saying throughout the beginning of these series, you wanna be in multiple channels at once, don’t ever rely on just one channel for your marketing. And at the same time, when it comes down to it, the digital space can be just as congested as any other space, so try to switch it up a bit. When it comes down to print ads, we’re gonna talk today about a lot of different ways that you can have signup forms, or I guess, an entry point to a signup form on a print ad, and it’s something that you’ll be able to use in all of the different methods that we talked earlier, go to trade shows and stuff like that.

01:16 AS: Yeah, it’s just all about turning all those offline opportunities into digital conversations, because that’s the way people communicate nowadays. Whether…

01:24 DM: Exactly.

01:25 AS: Grandpa likes it or not, that’s how it’s happening. And so we’re just trying to cover all those possible customer touch points, even the ones that aren’t necessarily online, where you can turn to to grow your list. So how do you do that when you have a print ad?

01:39 DM: Well, one of the most common ways in this day and age are QR codes. I know they look ugly, I know, trust me. There’s some companies out there that kinda allow you to play with the QR code, that you can add an image to it, or your logo, or something else, but the real benefit of it is the potential that it has, the speed that it has as well. As we said in one of our earlier episodes, if you have a restaurant, you may wanna put those little flyers on each page with a small, little QR code that somebody could scan and go right there and sign up to your email list. We’re gonna mention also, you can put a URL, but the problem with the URL is it tends to be long, people can do a typo, they get frustrated, it may not work as well. A QR code, they just have to point their camera to it, and I think every single phone now has a very easy way to access QR codes. The iPhone finally added it to their camera, to where now you just pull out your camera, you point it at the QR code and it will automatically detect that and go straight to that website. So again, it’s probably one of the easiest ways to have the QR codes.

02:46 AS: Yeah, and that’s a good point, on highlighting the advantage of that over the good old-fashioned URL. But that other way is, I’m sure you’ve seen it a million times is, “Text subscribe to 4755,” or something like that, and doing it through SMS also helps avoid those typo issues or the remembering issues, ’cause they can hop on their phone that’s probably already in their hand, if we’re being honest, and subscribe to your list quickly and easily, whether that’s on signage somewhere, in a print ad on a table, in a magazine, in the newspaper, flyers you’re handing out at events, any of those things that, later, they can… When they pick it out to look at it, they can subscribe very easily. So where should you look for those opportunities like we’re talking about?

03:29 DM: Magazines on tables, flyers. If you’re at a trade show and you have pull up banners, you can put it there. If you have a brick and mortar store, little stickers on the window, ’cause don’t forget, when your store is closed, people may still pass by your store, and it’s closed now, but if there’s something that they can get more information from, they’ll probably scan that and wanna sign up. As a matter of fact, I once saw somebody with a truck. It was a construction thing, I think he was a contractor, and he had a giant QR code on the side of his car, it was just for that, ’cause wherever he parks his contracting car, if somebody wants to learn more about his services and prices and so forth, all they gotta do is scan that code and they’re in. It really makes it that easy.

04:13 AS: Yeah, and Daniel mentioned those stickers and that reminded me, how many places do you go where you see that sticker out front, find us on Yelp? Or something like that? But that’s them going to Yelp, but why not bring them to your newsletter or your website with that QR code, where you’re controlling that conversation rather than it happening in a third party site like Yelp? I think that sticker is a really good point, and like we mentioned before, you’re doing direct mail ads, flyers, if you’re giving handouts, or you have one sheets that are good information on your business, throw that QR code or URL for signup, or SMS, so that they can get those follow-ups with you. And I think that’s it.

04:54 DM: Yeah, I think that’s it. I hope you guys enjoyed our series of growing list and… Yeah.

05:00 AS: Yeah, to really put a button on growing the list, we’re gonna make all our interns listen to these first nine episodes, and then they’re gonna get to ask us questions, because when it comes to email marketing, they’re still the most clueless ones in the office. I hope you guys hear that. So they’re all gonna be a little less clueless after listening to this, but we’re gonna give them a chance to ask us questions and see if we missed anything or left any gaps there. So tune in next time, we appreciate you all listening, we’re gonna keep going and continue beyond growing your list into all the different timing aspects of growing your list, not just the places you need to be to do it. Thanks for listening, we’ll catch you next time, bye.