Many of my clients ask, Whats the best way to market my website? While keeping your content fresh and up-to-date is vital (click here for my article on this subject), another important and often overlooked ingredient is working with the customers you have.

If your business is tourist-based, as are most of the clients that I service, an email list is a remarkably useful and easy tool. For the purposes of this article, I will use a hotel or inn as a model, and you can adapt the strategies for your particular business niche. Most important, anyone who comes in the front door or calls on the phone should be offered the chance to be included in your email broadcast list. Here are a few other things to consider while working to build an email list:

• Train your front desk staff to ask Would you like to join our email newsletter?. You may offer incentives to front desk employees or help them set goals for acquiring new email addresses. Any reservation request can include the question Are you on our email list?
  
  
• Offer guest incentives. Consider offering a modest discount to your email newsletter subscribers. Dont go overboard and try to reinvent the frequent flyer program but make sure that being a list member has value to the recipients.
  
  
• Use the list! Even if you have a modest list size, you can use it to get some traction with your subscribers. Meaningful content that is sent periodically can help fill in the gaps during off-season times. Sending an email broadcast too infrequently typically leads to high unsubscribe rates or undeliverable emails.
  
  
• Make it easy to sign up. Have a form set up on your site that enables users to add themselves to your list and enables you to add new users. Add the form to your favorites on a computer that is closest to your checkout desk. When you get a new email address, add it immediately.
  
  
• Honor your customers' needs. If you do email reservation confirmations, you may have email addresses for some customers who do not want to receive your broadcast emails. Be sure to honor those requests! Customers who want to keep their inbox clear will appreciate your attention to the small things, which will also help to build loyalty.

Remember - Keep it simple! Ask for the email addresses of all your visitors. And always make it easy for new members to be added or to add themselves. Even a modest email list can help fill in the gaps.