Store Newsletter Email LIsts

Email-based store newletters can be an effective way to engage and establish some level of relationship with customers. Ebay, Amazon, Pololu, Sparkfun – they all use some form of direct email so it must be working for them.

That said, we (Tindie sellers) are currently all on our own for managing newsletters. I have a hard time getting folks to subscribe, probably mostly because they have to cut and paste a link to MailChimp and I’m not comfortable just adding buyer names without their consent

Better would be some means of integrating MailChimp (or something) into Tindie so that when folks check out they can easily opt-out or opt-in, track their preference to be subscribed or not subscribed across orders. I would expect more subscriptions, and then emails going out with exclusive coupons and new products might get more folks interested.

Thoughts?

We’re currently digging into this more and more for Tindie branded emails. However it does raise an interesting point - should sellers be able to send emails themselves? I’m not sure. We couldn’t ensure the experience at that point which means if someone spammed customers would it hurt the community as a whole? I’m not sure but just something to think about.

What do you think?

Good point. There may be a way to manage it but… stepping back, what’s the real goal? Drive sales. How about this: Tindie sends “store news” automated emails regularly with these contents.

1. New products
2. Ongoing sales

Email length has to be kept reasonable. But Tindie can help boost sales for cool, undiscovered products which may help sales overall.

How often? Certainly no more often than weekly (seems typical)

Another idea: automated store emails per store … versus a single big email from Tindie. The automated emails would contain the above, too. Buyers could opt in / opt out of particular store email newsletters.

Another idea, have moderated store newsletters (too much work for you guys, IMHO).

Right, thats what we are thinking for our emails. For each store, we can dig into that further. Will need a lot of thought so it doesn’t become overly used & annoying.

can always do per-store later. agree re annoying.