Getting store staff to collect email addresses

More Ken Magill, this time with a brief case study of how Bath and Body Works built a ginormous email list in no time at all. No, they didn't buy one of those CD-ROMs on eBay.

One of the reasons..."when customers began coming into the store asking about specials offered online, store managers immediately saw the benefit of getting customers' e-mail addresses."

This reminds me of conversations I had with a hotel chain, who took a very proactive approach to enlisting the support of front desk staff in their efforts to gather email opt-ins.

Among the highlights:

• The email team visited every hotel and talked with staff to explain the importance of email marketing and the benefits to the hotel itself
• They trained staff to ask for the right email address in the right way, addressing the same concerns and motivations that we talk about for our online sign-up forms
  
• ...and taught them how to correct obvious typos when entering the address given on a written form
• Then they gave regular feedback on how the emails were used, how many were collected, with bonuses for those hotels doing the best job of collection.

The full case study with all the details of these and other tactics is over at MarketingSherpa, and well worth reading if I say so myself.

More on list growth | Tags: email marketing, list building, list acquisition, collecting addresses offline

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