These People are the Most Eager to Buy your Handbags…Here’s How to Sell More to Them
Most business owners struggle to find new customers, and people trying to sell their handbags are no different. But in your struggle to find new customers you may have overlooked your most valuable asset: your existing customer base.
People who have bought one or more of your handbags are the people most likely to buy from you again in the future. Getting new customers can be an expensive and difficult task. So if you’ve already done the hard work to make a woman your customer you should do everything you can to get the most out of her before spending your efforts trying to get new people to buy from you.
It’s obvious why your existing customers are your best place to sell your handbags. They have already bought from you, so they know your work and like it. They know first hand exactly how attractive your bags are and how well made they are. You don’t have to get over that initial hurdle of trust that you have to face with new prospects.
But to sell to your existing customer base you have to have a way to contact them.
An Excellent Way to Stay In Touch with Your Customers
Probably the most effective way to stay in touch with your customers is to put them on an email mailing list and periodically update them about your latest available handbags and other news happening in your business.
Email is of course cheaper than doing a postal mailing; you don’t pay for printing or postage. And it is also a lot less hassle and time-consuming than a print mailing.
You could of course also keep your customers up-to-date by running a blog on your website or adding pages to your website. The problem with this is that it requires that the customer take the initiative and visit your website. With an email newsletter, you get to decide when to contact your fans and let them know about your latest handbags. You’re thinking about your business and handbags all the time, but few of your customers are. An email from you can remind your fans that you’re still around and have some great handbags that they could own.
In addition to getting in touch with people who have already bought from you, an email newsletter lets you keep contact with many of the non-customers who visit your website. If you offer a newsletter sign up on your website, you can get women who are curious about your handbags but are not yet ready to buy an opportunity to get on your mailing list. Therefore you can send them news about your handbags, making it more likely that these prospects will buy from you in the future than if they simply leave your website, likely to never come back. You can induce these “window-shoppers” to sign up for your email newsletter by offering them some kind of coupon or discount off their first purchase. (It doesn’t have to be very much; most people can’t resist getting something for nothing.)
What to Say in Your Email Newsletter
The most obvious thing to write about in your email newsletter is your latest handbags and handbags lines. When writing about your bags you should do more than just give a plain description of the materials, price, and size of the bag and a picture of it. Let your customers know what inspired that design, how long it took you to put it together, and how you feel about your bag. Give them something more than a person who just sees the bag on your website would get.
Other items you could include in your newsletter are your appearance at any upcoming shows and any articles in the press that have been written about your bags.
You should always strive to give your newsletter a personal touch. These days people want to make a personal connection; the people who buy bags from independent designers are especially interesting in knowing the story behind the designer. If they just wanted something to carry stuff around in they would go to their local department store. Just how “personal” you want to get with the info you share with your customers is up to you, but if you’ve recently gotten married, had a child, or are going on a vacation to Hawaii, don’t hesitate to let your customers know. The more they get to know you the more their loyalty as customers will grow. You, as a person, are really a great asset to your handbag business, and an email newsletter is great way for your customers and potential customers to get to know you.
How to Go About Properly Setting Up an Email Newsletter
Unless you have a tiny number of customers (less than 10), you should not use your regular email client to run an email newsletter. The common email clients such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc are designed for personal correspondence. These email clients are not set up to broadcast newsletters. If you use your personal email address, you risk getting tagged as a spammer, which means your emails could get blacklisted and you might even get your ISP to take action against you.
If you are going to get serious about starting an email newsletter for your handbag business you should use a solution designed for the task. Autoresponder services such as Aweber make it easy to manage your email list. They have ways to help avoid your newsletter getting tagged as spam, and they also make sure that your email newsletter is fully compliant with the CAN-SPAM law passed by Congress.
Autoresponders like Aweber provide forms that make it easy for people to sign up for your newsletter. This means the subscription process occurs automatically and there is no need for you to manually enter email addresses into a list. Aweber will also make sure that everyone on your list has gone through what is known as a “Double Opt-In” process; this ensures the people on your list consist only of people who really want to receive your email newsletter.
Furthermore, Aweber provides attractive email templates. Your customers can be impressed with how nice your newsletter looks as well as what is written in it.
If you are currently running a blog, Aweber has a service that can automatically monitor your blog and send out the text of your blog post as an email newsletter. This will ensure that both people who have signed up for your email list as well as the people who visit your site can keep up with the latest news of you and your handbags.
One email newsletter service we highly recommend is Aweber. We use Aweber to manage the We Design Handbags newsletter and have been very pleased with their services and pricing. Plus, they offer a 30-day risk free trial period for their service.
Tell Us About Your Email Newsletter
We want to feature a list of handbag designers who have their own email newsletters. If you own a handbag business and use an email newsletter, we would love to find out how well it has worked for you. Please contact us and tell us about your experience.
Sign Up for the We Design Handbags Newsletter
If you want an example of what an end user goes through when signing up for a newsletter, please sign up for our We Design Handbags email newsletter. You’ll find the sign up form at the top right of every page on We-Design-Handbags.com.