We’re still focusing on the various touch points for growing your list. We continue looking at off-line options by discussing opportunities to grow your list in-store.

00:22 Andy Shore: Welcome back to Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer, and our continued conversation on Growing Your List. And today, we’re gonna talk about doing it in-store. I know email marketing is a digital space, and it all seems like it happens online, but physical locations for businesses is still a thing for now, even as the Toys “R” Us’s of the world sadly disappear. We go to restaurants, we go to stores. It happens. You should be growing your list from your brick and mortar location. And why is that, Daniel?

00:51 Daniel Miller: Well, I think one of the first and most important reasons is repeat business. And I’m gonna give you a great scenario right now. Here, there’s oftentimes that we’ll go out to lunch, and every time that we go out to lunch it feels like we’re reinventing the wheel again. Everyone looks at each other, “Where are we going?” “Oh, I don’t know, let’s go here. Let’s try to find a new place.” Having an email system set up that right around noon, an email goes out and tries to bring in customers with a free drink, a buy one get one, bring a friend, all those different creative ideas can really help your business grow. And I’ll tell you this, I see a lot of restaurants and businesses that don’t leverage this as much as they can. But really obtaining the email of your customer as they come in and try to get them to come back in works very, very well.

01:38 AS: Exactly, and Daniel brought up restaurants and our lunch or  deals every day. We have a perfect example that we’re gonna close this talk with, so stay tuned for all of it. We’ve got a real life applicable example to give you that worked on us and then we subscribed, so we’ll get into that. And that’s how a teaser works, ladies and gentlemen. The other reason why you should do it is sometimes there’s gonna be people that come into the store that aren’t gonna purchase that first time. But if you get them on that list, like Daniel said, you’re gonna draw them in with those promo emails and turn those looky-loos into customers. So now we know why. Let’s talk about how. And signage is really where it all starts, right?

02:17 DM: Exactly. And I’m sure we’ve all gone to purchase something at a store, whether it’s a restaurant, it’s a retail store, whatever that is. And you go in and at the cashier there is either like a phone number or a QR code or something that tells you sign up for emails. In some cases, it’s just a fish bowl and you put in a business card for them to contact you. So there’s a lot of different ways that you can try to generate and build your list, whatever is your preferred method. Here’s some pro-tips to keep in mind. Pro-tip number one, if you decide to do it at the cash register, make sure that it’s quick. You’re building up a line, it’s noon, people are there from work, they don’t have two hours to sit down for lunch, they need to eat and get out. If your signage process is holding up that line and creating a line that’s twice as long than it should be, that’s gonna be a problem. That’s gonna annoy people.

03:13 DM: If you’re using QR codes and they’re scanning, and the code doesn’t link right or something like that, always make sure to test everything out first and make sure that it’s efficient. So a recommendation, if you’re doing something like a restaurant, I highly recommend maybe putting it out on tables, as your guests are eating at the tables, they will see that, they’re enjoying the food. And again, it’s all about flowing with the experience. Don’t try to ask for the emails in weird situations, don’t try to abrupt the flow of the experience is what I’m trying to say.

03:45 AS: Yeah, or if you have sales people throughout the store who are helping you, they can even be walking around with tablets that have a quick sign-up form. And as you’re talking and browsing through the store that you can sign up real quick and then get like, “Hey we’re giving you 10% off today if you sign up for our newsletter.”

04:02 DM: Exactly.

04:02 AS: Any of those things that right there, you’re gonna get those customers. And Daniel talked about all those good different ways to do it, whether it’s with an SMS code, QR code, they go to URL to do it.

04:13 DM: Yeah, and then there’s a… Something that’s becoming more and more popular as Andy kind of referred to, at the moment of purchase when you use a credit card, they ask you, “Do you want the printed receipt or email?” And a lot of people are starting to choose email. And the cool thing about that is if you use your credit card, let’s say with Square, and you type in your email once, that now saves to the Square database, and you no longer have to save your email again. It detects by with the credit card. So any time that you use that credit card at a later store, you’re email is already in there, you can automatically subscribe to that store, making it easier for everybody.

04:49 AS: Yeah, and we mentioned a real-life example. And Daniel talked about putting something right there at the table. A week or two ago, Daniel and I decided to go to lunch at Chili’s and they had those little electronic tablet type things, electronic kiosk almost, right there on the table at every table. You can order through it, you can pay through it. But the waiter came by and said, “Hey if you sign up right now for our loyalty program, you can get free chips and salsa or soda right now.” And so we’re like, “Okay.” And two minutes later, we had free chips and salsa right there on our table for us to enjoy during lunch. And I’ve been getting follow-up emails ever since. And they’re sending me yummy food that makes me wanna go back. And Chili’s isn’t necessarily the place I always think of when I wanna go to lunch, but when they’re sending me emails and doing good email marketing, I can probably bet that before too long Daniel and I will be back there for lunch. And that’s why it’s important to use your in-store locations to grow your list.

05:48 DM: And we get free chips and salsa every time now because you’re part of their loyalty program.

05:52 AS: Wooh. You guys know I’m all about that free food. Alright guys, that wraps up our conversation for Growing Your Store in Growing Your Store. Well, you’ll grow your store too, if you’re doing good email marketing. Growing Your List In Store. Catch us next time. Thanks guys.