What to Do With Your Customer Email List

The list you already have

Most businesses that have been around a few years have a list of customer email addresses: in the invoicing software, the booking system, or a folder of old emails. Most never send it anything, because it feels complicated or a little risky.

It's neither, and these are people who already know you. A short note now and then reminds them you exist, which matters the next time they need you or a friend asks who they used.

Three rules that keep you legal

Marketing email in the US falls under the CAN-SPAM Act. For a small business it comes down to three things:

• Be honest about who it's from, with a subject line that matches what's inside.
• Include an unsubscribe link, and honor it.
• Include your business's mailing address. A registered PO box is fine.

The CAN-SPAM Act has the details. A real email tool takes care of the second and third automatically.

Send from an email tool, not your inbox

Don't put a hundred customers in the BCC line of your regular email. It often goes to spam, there's no unsubscribe link, and one slip of the cursor puts everyone's address in everyone else's inbox.

Use a tool built for it, like Mailchimp or Constant Contact. Both are priced by list size, so a small list is inexpensive, and both add the unsubscribe link and your address to every message, and handle opt-outs without you thinking about it. Import your list, set your address once, and you're ready.

What to send

Keep it short and useful, and don't send often. Once a month is plenty, and every couple of months is fine. A few things that work:

• A seasonal heads-up: what customers should do before winter, before tax time, before the busy season.
• One useful tip related to what you do.
• A plain announcement: new hours, a new service, a price change, said once.

Write it the way you'd talk to a good customer, with your name at the bottom.

Your first one

If you've never emailed your list, here's the first one: subject "A quick heads-up before year end," three sentences about the one thing your clients should do before December, your name at the bottom. Send it from a real email tool so the unsubscribe link and your address are there without you thinking about it. Then don't send another one for a month.