What if you lost your Instagram account? Why you need to build a customer email list.

Hackers gonna hack. This is why you NEED to build a customer email list.

A few weeks ago, my absolute worst nightmare came true for a local Winnipeg company; their Instagram account, which had well over 35,000 followers, was hacked, held for ransom, and deleted. Though I had never worked for or with this company, my heart completely broke for them. These days social media is power, and 35,000 likes or followers can make a business. Losing that reach would be devastating.

Though this story has a happy ending (they found some sort of internet wizard who was able to get back into their account and restore it untouched!), it could have very easily gone the other way. So how do you protect yourself?

You need to build an email list of your customers.

Building a customer email list is not sexy or glamorous, but an email list is something that you own forever. Sure, contacts can become out of date, and CASL laws make it harder to acquire email addresses, but an email list (or even a traditional snail mail list) is something that you OWN.

Think about it: social media platforms can change or shut down, and your Instagram account can get hacked, but a customer email list will hold strong. You will ALWAYS be able to keep in touch with your customer base, even if Russian hackers hold your Insta accounts hostage.

So how do you convince people to sign up to your mailing list and keep them there?

Build a customer email list by offering value

Let’s be honest; people like a deal. A solid pop-up on your website that offers people 10% off of their first service or order once they subscribe to your mailing list will go a long way. Yes, 10% off an order can be a big investment but think of all the chances you’ll have to market to these folks and recoup their investment down the line.

If you don’t want to offer a discount, consider offering knowledge for their sign-up. In my line of work, this may look like a social media calendar template. You give me your email address, and you get the same template that I use for my clients. Easy Peasy.

(Note to future self: create a downloadable social media calendar template.)

Don’t make them search

Your website is probably dialled in to convert leads, but it should also be dialled in to keep those leads hot. One of the best ways to do that is to advertise your mailing list (and why people should join it) frequently.

I already mentioned that a pop-up works well, but it should also be at the bottom of every webpage so that people don’t need to go hunting to find it. A simple “Join our mailing list and receive 10% off your first order” works wonders.

Keep them interested

I don’t wanna shame but The Gap sends me a LOT of emails. Sometimes it’s twice daily – way too often in my opinion. So why don’t I hit that ‘unsubscribe’ button? Because if I did I wouldn’t get early access to their sales, or web-exclusive sale codes. Because they give me nuggets like that, and I get cheap hoodies out of the deal, I put up with their twice-a-day emails.

Another great way to keep people interested is with information. If they’re looking at you online, they’re interested in what you do or what you sell. A landscaper for example should take advantage of the fact that people are enjoying their website and use their email list to push their blog posts further into the world.

This would hypothetically look like this:

I give the landscaper my email address for 10% off my service.
They come and cut my grass and I save 10%.
They then write a great blog post on how to prepare your lawn for winter.
They publish that to their website so that they can push that out on their social media channels (Why? Read this.).
They also send it to their email list, which I’m on.
I realize that it’s way too much work to prepare my lawn for winter so I call them and they get a sale.
Or, maybe I do the winter work myself but also forward the email to my sister so she knows what to do.
Perhaps she calls the landscaper for help, or now she’s interested in learning more and goes to their website to claim her 10% off.

BOOM! That’s smart marketing right there.

So ya, build a customer email list!

Nurture those leads, protect your business from a lost password, crazy hacker, or rogue Billionaire, and secure your future by collecting those customer emails. Your future self will thank you!