Corissa St. Laurent said
6 months ago: Hi E N Brown (@supereb)! The something unique to WOW your customers, clients or members is not something you create new each day. This is something that is part of your business structure or offering (like Zappos’ customer service policies or something smaller, like offering dog treats to your customer’s dogs when they come into the store). When you find a way to rise above the ordinary (this means it doesn’t need to be big) when you interact with your customers, they’ll remember you more and be more willing to stay in touch when you ask them to join your email list or connect with one of your social networks. You can certainly change up the WOW whenever you’d like (especially when it’s not working to WOW anyone), but the point is to pick something that becomes iconic to your brand. As far as the content you’ll share with your audience…my advice is to sit down and write down all of the things your business does well, your expertise, your passions, and your resources. From that list, you can create posts, articles, or lists based on what’s already in your head. If you’re using tools that allow you to measure engagement, you can check out who is opening, clicking, liking, commenting, sharing, etc. Oh, and back to content for a second…always be collecting ideas, so you have a cache ready to turn to when you want to send/post something, rather than sitting down when you want to send and spending the better part of the day staring at a blank screen!
On to your second question on list-building…you must give your audience every opportunity to connect with you, so make sure you have a sign up button on your website, links on your social sites and in your email signature. Train yourself and your staff to ask for email addresses in every transaction (whether a purchase is made or not). Here’s an example: “We’d love to stay in touch with you and send you coupons and exclusive deals. We just need your email address.” or “We send expert advice, tips, and resources to our community. Would you like to sign up for that?” Whatever way it’s comfortable for you to ask, you should, because you’re letting them know you have great, valuable things to share with them in exchange. Building a quality list of email subscribers can take some time, but it’s so much better in the long run because you know those people really do want to be in touch with you and will then more likely open/click/forward and share your content with the people they know. Thanks for the questions E N!
