events and mail list

[greenoak]

our marketing ideas run around events and keeping in touch with our customers thru our mailing list.... we have 4 events a year and the one coming up is our february sale......and every night now dh and i are stuffing envelopes....we designed the flyer, and he prints it and folds it and now we are stuffing them into envelopes..... 4000 of them.... we send it out 1st class ....the list is great, generated by actual buyers, we never try to have a drawing or anything to build the list......we get a great return, around 10% come i think.... if we get 400 customers thru the door and they all spend thats so woth our stamp bill.....
we repeat the events every year with some variation...but before it, lots of people will ask when it is.....so thats good...they are remembering and maybe planning to come....
i can imagine some variation of this working for an internet store too....the hard part is making it interesting for the customer...it cant be just i need money think ill have a sale....
we have a 25% off sale for this event, and not on everything...its a time to get rid of some old stock hopefullly, we have a half price area too.... and this might sound crazy but it was hugely popular with our customers...we send them a 5$ coupon with no strings attached for this event.... in a way we just sent out $20,000 free , and probably over half willl be used...hopefully on something costing 100$ not 6$..lol..i got that idea on another forum....the original idea had another coupon involved that you were supposed to give to a friend... we didnt try that ...yet!!! maybe at the yardsale..
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our 4 events are feb sale.......garden party.....yardsale...holiday open house....
at the yardsale we have a guy in a tux serve the free food..need more ideas like that!!! they love it....so if you have any fun event ideas for me please share... thanks.......ann

[Genuine Bloom]

we never try to have a drawing or anything to build the list......we get a great return, around 10% come i think....
Ann, I think that is so smart. Probably most people who would sign up for a drawing probably really aren't really interested in being on the mailing list anway. But the ones who sign up to be on a mailing list just to be on the mailing list really want to be on there. Hah. I'm stating the obvious I guess. :)

We have a fairly new store in town that I signed up for their mailing list, but I only got one thing from them about one of their sales, even though they have had a few. I think it's sad that they're not taking advantage of their mailing list.

When it comes to events however, where I live stores don't really hold them. I've never been to any store events or "open houses" like those described on some of these forums. They'll have sales with so much off of things...but that's really the extent of their "events".

There was one store a few hours away from here that did have a pajama party...but I didn't get to go to it. People who came wearing pj's got a percentage off. And if they brought in used women's or children's pj's in good condition to donate to a woman's shelter they got a percentage off too. It sounded really cool. That's the only 'real' event I've ever heard of around here. Or, maybe I just don't get out enough and so never here of these things. :)