Tips to Building Successful E-Mail Lists, Part 1 of 2

* Why reward employees? Incentivize employees to capture e-mail addresses. “Catalog people on the phone should always get e-mail addresses,” Hughes said, “but they don’t.” Reward employees for capturing e-mail addresses the same way you would for sales.

Hughes outlined a six-step process:

1. Determine who has customer contact — customer service, sales clerks, installation personnel, reservations, service staff.
2. Educate all employees on the importance and methods of acquiring e-mail addresses.
3. Everyone should be rewarded, for example, $5, $10 per e-mail address. Again, you need the double opt-in system to verify the validity of the e-mail addresses.
4. Employees enter the e-mail addresses in your system, along with their employee ID numbers.
5. If customers respond, “OK,” to the double opt-in, the employees get the rewards added to their paychecks.
6. Reward only if the e-mail is new, valid and confirmed.