Why you need to start building an email list ASAP

Why you need to start building an email list ASAP

When doing your marketing have you ever thought “wow I wish there was a way I could contact all the customers who I have ever had, only qualified leads who I know have been to my business, and tell them why they should come back”. Well let me tell you, there is just the thing for you, email marketing. 

‍

Email marketing is essential when you are running a location based entertainment business, collect emails for your list with your bookings and reservations, and BAM you have a list of people who are in your primary demographic, they are the people who have already been your customers. These are people who already know your business, your brand, your experiences, and hopefully they enjoyed it. There’s the old marketing quote, “the cost of acquiring a new customer is five times higher than retaining existing customers”, when you build up an email list you have all those existing customers to retain right at your fingertips.

The nicest thing about email marketing is there are no algorithms or new platforms you need to learn, it’s just straight from you to your audience. Not all your customers may have a TikTok or Facebook, but nowadays everyone has email.

Building an email list is easier than ever when you’re in the location based entertainment industry, because there's one advantage we have, we take a lot of reservations and bookings. When was the last time you had to give Walmart your email address before you could walk into the store to shop? Never. (although I’m sure their marketing team would love it if you had to.) When you’re a business with an online booking system that takes reservations in advance, that means you will have access to at least 1 person from every booking that you take before they even walk in the door. 

Now here where we’re from (Canada) you can’t just take that email and start sending them promotions because of our anti-spam laws, BUT the easiest way to get around that is by putting a little check box (pre-checked) on your booking form that asks them to be signed up for your marketing list. This is something you probably see every day, it’s nothing new.

You can easily collect more emails if you require waivers for your activity, axe throwing, VR, escape rooms, golf simulators, all of the ones I have attended have had some sort of liability waiver I had to sign before. Integrate that on your website, or have tablets on location so you can collect those digitally, and then same thing, have the little opt-in button and get every customer in your business onto your mailing list.

Now the power of the email list is that now you have access to every customer who has visited your business (and did not deselect the pre-selected opt-in checkbox). In my opinion this is better than having 10,000+ followers on social media, because these are people who have actually been to your business. 

‍

#1 RULE OF EMAIL MARKETING

Don’t abuse your email list. Think quality not quantity when it comes to your email list, if you’re sending out daily emails about your facility I can almost guarantee that your numbers will start dwindling, people will block you, unsubscribe, and be annoyed by you. Especially for the location based entertainment industry, for example don’t send out an email on a Monday morning, because I can almost guarantee your customers aren’t in the mindset of trying to figure out what fun activities they want to do next weekend. Email your clients when you have something important to say that they will see value with.

‍

USE A SOFTWARE

There’s a large variety of different free softwares out there, none of them have paid me to say this so I’m not going to recommend a specific one. But I have used a variety of different platforms, if you just Google “Free email marketing software” you’ll see a ton of different options. 

The benefit of using an email software is it manages your list, helps you create the emails, and gives you the analytics. You can typically integrate right into your booking system and waiver system for those opt-in check boxes, and then you’re not copying and pasting into an excel file. You’re also more likely to stay out of spam folders, if you just copy and paste your mail list from an excel file into your outlook, it won’t take long for no one to ever see your emails again.

Now start collecting emails as soon as you can, it will save you money, promote customer loyalty, and help you with building a community around your business.

‍