Last week I told you to find the list you already have. A shop owner on Sheridan Street found six hundred names in her point of sale system and split them into two piles: locals and past visitors.
From here on I’ll call those piles segments instead. Same idea, it’s just the real term the email tools use, and you’ll see it again in this series.
If you did that too, you’re sitting on the same thing she is. A list that isn’t doing anything.
That’s this week’s tip. Not that you lack an audience, you don’t. It’s that the audience is waiting to hear something and hearing nothing.
Most owners stall here. They don’t know what to say. Or they worry an email sounds like a pitch nobody asked for.
Silence gets read as news too. A past visitor who saw one scary wildfire headline and never heard different from you assumes the worst is still true.
A local who hasn’t been in for a month assumes you’re doing fine without them. Both are wrong, and you’re the only one who can correct it.
It doesn’t matter if your list is six hundred names or six. The discomfort of hitting send lasts a few minutes. The relief, for you and for them, lasts the rest of the month. Do it once and next month it’s already easier.
This week: write two short emails, one for each segment, and send them. Not sales copy, plain, in your own words.
To the locals: what’s actually open right now, and one honest ask, come in, and tell a neighbor.
To the past visitors: the real status of the closure (entry points are reopening in stages, Ely itself never closed), and one specific reason to plan a trip later this year.
How you send it depends on the size. A short list: use your own inbox. BCC ten or twenty at a time, not everyone at once.
A longer list, six hundred names like the shop owner’s, needs a tool built for it. Check your point of sale system first, several can email your list straight from the same dashboard.
No tool there? A free-tier email platform will do it. Either way, skip anything that looks designed: no logo, no stock photo, no template. It should read like it came from you, because it did.
Keep each one short enough to read on a phone standing in a kitchen.
The shop owner sent hers this week. Not every address on an old list still works, a few of her six hundred bounced, but most of them heard it from her instead of from a headline. That’s the whole job this week: send the two emails, one to each segment.
Next week: turn those local walkins into proof a stranger can see before they even ask.
Richard Stuart builds websites and revenue systems for owner-operated businesses from his home in Ely. Have a question you’d like answered in a future column? Send it to [email protected]. If something’s quietly costing you customers, let’s talk: richardstuart.me.
