One effective way to increase your contact list with an email marketing program is to have contests, online or in your store. These contests will provide an incentive for your customers to sign up to your mailing list. For an online store, what you can do is place a sign-up box on your website asking visitors to sign up to receive promotional offers. You can run a contest for a free TV, computer, gaming system, or entertainment center. Give away whatever you can, depending on your budget. Just make sure the prize is relevant to your target audience, to ensure higher numbers are signing up. Another way for an online store to increase sign-ups is through a forward to friends contest. This can be done from your website or from the emails that you send to your existing subscriber list from your email marketing program. In this case, the contest winner is for the person who signs up the most “friends" or “forwards" the most emails. The top email marketing programs will offer you the option to automatically add a ‘Forward to a Friend' link at the bottom of your emails. The very best email marketing programs will even allow you to track which of your subscribers clicked on that link and forwarded your email contest to their friends. In-store promotions and contests are quite similar. The only real difference is that you have to present the promotion within your email campaigns, as opposed to on your website, while also providing the opportunity to sign up in store. Your customers will be signing up for your contests on an application form, or by dropping off their business cards. Within you email campaigns you can also send out the “forward to friends" promotion. Email marketing programs can track your subscribers' “clicks" to determine the winner of the contests.

Once you have gained a larger audience you can consistently have a promotion of this sort to continue growing your database while also increasing your sales. Developing a plan to enhance your client base can have other positive effects too. If your contest becomes consistent (once a year, or one in summer one in winter) you will create buzz around your store. This is huge. Having customers anticipating your promotions is the best way to increase your brand recognition and image to the public. This will give you a competitive edge. It is tough to compete against the big box stores when you're an independently-owned electronics retailer. However, email marketing programs give you a competitive edge, so you're well on your way to being one of the giants.

You've already seen how email marketing programs can help you keep in contact with your current customers, so why not maximize the potential of your on-line or in-store electronics and technology store by using it to grow your contact list? The contests and promotions you establish through email marketing programs will expand your number of subscribers as well as promote your brand name. The bottom-line is that more subscribers translate to more potential sales.

Robert Burko is the President of Elite Email (http://www.eliteemail.com), the complete email marketing program package used by electronics outlets around the world. You can deploy comprehensive email marketing for your electronics outlet with a no risk free trial. Start harnessing the power of email marketing today!