Discuss the fun task of marketing a t-shirt shop. Where to advertise, local marketing tips, word of mouth, press releases, search engine marketing, keyword advertising, magazines, etc.
Hi all,
I do custom screen printing. I went through all my 500+ contacts in my gmail, basically anyone whom I have ever exchanged emails with. It didn't take too long to go through them all, and check the emails to see if it was an order or an order inquiry. I put over 100 contacts into a group so that I could send a mass email to everyone to advertise or try to drum up repeat business, or first time orders from those people who never converted into a real custom sale. (I'd put the contacts in bcc: so as to not expose their contact info to other recipients.)
I was wondering who else here has tried this and how well it worked?
If 5% of the contactees responded and converted, I'd be thrilled. I am thinking I will try it if a coming week looks slow, and I don't plan to do it often.
I'm also thinking I would validate it further by offering some small sale, and most likely a time sensitive sale, like 50% off set up cost for the first color if you order by January 15th or whatever.
Interested to see what you guys think.
Thanks in advance
Hi Stuart- we have found that sending emails to our previous customers is the most cost effective way to go. We have been doing this since 1999 for all of our businesses. A 5% return is a very good number to shoot for... Also you may want to look in to using some sort of email marketing software (we use ContstantContact.com ) so that your efforts can be tracked. Constant Contact provides easy to edit templates (no web building knowledge necessary) and you can track which links are clicked within your email, who opens your email and which links they choose to click on... You can offer coupons too. It also offers a way for the person who is receiving the email to unsubscribe if they do not want to receive the emails. Very simple to use with great tracking results! Best of luck!
How do you interpret this line, from the wiki article?
"There are no restrictions against a company emailing its existing customers or anyone who has inquired about its products or services, as this constitutes a "prior relationship" under CAN-SPAM."
"There are no restrictions against a company emailing its existing customers or anyone who has inquired about its products or services, as this constitutes a "prior relationship" under CAN-SPAM."
That seems pretty cut and dried - you CAN safely email somone who has bought from you or previously inquired about your products.
WAIT! I just said the same thing.
SPAM is Unsolicited Commercial Email. By them contacting you first, through an order or an inquiry, they opened the "conversation". Therefor, you contacting them is not "unsolicited".
There are any number of ways to send the emails. I won't go into them all, you've had some suggestions here.
BUT, I'm going to tell you one way NOT to send them. Don't use any of the MS Office / Outlook kind of stuff that sends out everyone you send to email address to everyone else in the group.
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Sounds like a good idea to me. Even if they don't place an order, you are keeping your name fresh in their minds, and when they DO need to fill an order, they will think of you first.
All of the more established/larger online t-shirt stores I've bought from send me email newsletters every so often. As you would expect they are a mixture of new products, news and special offers. As long as they are done well and are not too frequent I don't mind them, after all I have already bought something from them in the past.
All of the more established/larger online t-shirt stores I've bought from send me email newsletters every so often. As you would expect they are a mixture of new products, news and special offers. As long as they are done well and are not too frequent I don't mind them, after all I have already bought something from them in the past.
TRUE THAT! Tshirthell.com sends out like 1 email ad every week! Its frick'n annoying. So watch how frequently you send them.
my advice would be to add pictures to you email because i will be more likely to go to a site if i see something i like.
my 2 cents
Pics are good but at the same time it increases the changes of a server catching the email as spam..... and most email servers like Hotmail and Gmail dont display pictures unless they are a contact of yours.
My advice - being that I was a computer programmer- is to use pictures but dont have your entire message as a picture like some of the ones I get. That way if the pics are blocked they still have the text to see whats going on.
efficacy of mass emailing previous customers? 
