Lets Play Business!!

Hello world, today I interviewed the “Fabric Lady” or Ms. Anne Seiwert. If you haven’t read my first blog then you probably don’t know what I’m talking about, but that’s okay. The short of it is the “Fabric Lady” is the first person to ever send me a newsletter. Ms. Anne Seiwert is a very nice lady that owns a charming fabric store in the Plaza called the Thread Bear. It’s a beautiful store and I recommend it to any one that needs fabric, knitting, quilting, or embroidery products. She also offers classes relating to her products. Automatically I loved her store. As soon as I walked in it felt warm and inviting and the beautiful patterns of fabric made me forget why I came to her store in the first place. After looking around for fifteen minutes and buying a bag full of fabrics, I finally asked her about internet marketing.

My purpose for coming to her store was to find out if small businesses that send out newsletters believe in what their doing. Do they believe that newsletters traffic customers into their store…?? I asked Ms. Siewert what internet marketing strategies does she use to promote her business and she told me that she sends out newsletters and e-mails to customers periodically if she knows they are interested in a certain subject. The second question I asked her was if she believed her newsletters and e-mails traffic customers to her store. Ms. Siewert told me that she definitely believes that newsletters and e-mails work.

I mentioned in my last blog that I am an example of Thread Bear’s newsletters working, but I am surprised that Thread Bear is the only small business that I’ve received newsletters or e-mails from since I came here. There are many small businesses in Las Vegas and I’ve frequented a few of them. Since writing about newsletters I’ve wondered, why haven’t any businesses sent out any newsletters or e-mails to promote their business and traffic customers to their establishment…? Hopefully, I’ll have an answer to that question in my next blog.

Although, I have read in the past and now write about marketing I’ve never really known the importance of advertising and promoting products until now. I’m always looking for ways to make money without getting a real “nine to five job”. I’m a full time mom, student, and athlete and it makes it almost impossible to find a job that will work with my schedule. My aunt gave me the opportunity to make money that would fit into my busy schedule. She sells jewelry at the flea market in Hawaii and she told me that she would send jewelry to me so I could sell stuff at the flea market here in Las Vegas. The catch is if the flea market isn’t open it’s really hard to make sales and this is when I learned the importance of marketing.

In Hawaii, the flea market (a.k.a. swap meet) is always open, but that’s because our weather stays relatively the same throughout the year. In New Mexico, bad weather means no flea market and nowhere for us to sell our goods. An important fact that me and my aunt didn’t think about until after she sent the jewelry. This made it hard to “push” our goods. As of now I am selling jewelry by word of mouth. I’ve made sales, but only because I’ve been hefting cases of rings, pendants, flowers, and earrings everywhere I went, just to get them noticed. I was pretty much a walking bill board.

A friend that read my blog had the idea that I should write a newsletter, like I talked about in my first blog, and send it out to promote my jewelry and gain more customers. I thought this was a great idea. Word of mouth and hefting loads of jewelry does make sales, but from what I’ve been reading and learning in my business classes is if a business wants to be successful they need to do whatever they can to promote their product. Everyone’s on the internet now, so it only made sense to try and reach customers or potential customers via e-mail. I am currently in the process of creating an e-mail list and making a newsletter. The e-mail list is a slow process because of the lack of exposure and the fact that I have no real location for customers to find me. I was afraid to ask at first, but now every time a person looks at or buys something from me I ask them for their e-mail address. Everyone I’ve asked was very open to the idea of me sending them a newsletter and a few girls even wrote down their cell numbers.

Since I’m trying to create an e-mail list for my jewelry, I would like to share what I’ve learned about the subject. The very first thing I read when I was researching, was that the quality of the people interested in a businesses product is more important then the number of people that is on an e-mail list. I think I have it stuck in my head that more is better, but again it’s not. It’s more important to have a “fresh” list with customers that are interested then ones who are not. Knowing that the customer’s attention isn’t being captured can help the business to know they need to try something else to recapture their customer’s attention.

Another important aspect to building a list is to never let an opportunity pass by. Whenever there is an interaction between customers or potential customers businesses should have sign-up forms ready at the checkout or event. If a business has an online website I read that they should have the “subscribe” or “sign-up” on every page of the website. I also think this is important because I know that Lina commented on the fact that she wanted to “unsubscribe” from GNC, but didn’t know where it was on the site. Having “subscribe” on every page enables customers to see where they can “subscribe”, but to also see where the can “unsubscribe” if they are no longer interested. These are just some of the things I’ve learned and I thought would be useful for anyone out there wanting to make an e-mail list.

I would like to conclude my second blog here, but if anyone has any tips for me on how to create an e-mail list or newsletter I would appreciate it. I’m very nervous about marketing online and I feel like I'm a little kid pretending to play business, but I think it would be a good way for me to apply the things I’ve learned in class to a real life experience.

Thank You World for reading my second blog. Peace and Love