The First Hundred Subscribers

Why a small list is worth having

Because it is the only audience you own.

Search visibility depends on an algorithm. Social reach depends on a platform. Advertising stops when you stop paying.

A list of people who gave you their address and agreed to hear from you can be reached whenever you choose, and nobody can take it away or charge you more for access.

At a hundred people that is not a marketing channel. It is a foundation, and it grows from customers rather than from tactics.

Where the first hundred come from

• Existing customers, who already know you and are the easiest yes.
• People who enquired and did not proceed, who were interested once.
• The website, if there is a reason to sign up.
• In person, at the point of doing work or taking payment.
• A supplier or partner mentioning you to their own audience.

The first is where most of the hundred will come from, and it is the one businesses skip because asking feels awkward.

The second is under-used and legitimate, provided you have a proper basis for contacting them.

Giving a reason to sign up

The single thing that separates a list that grows from one that does not.

Nobody wants updates or news. Those are what you want to send, not what anybody wants to receive.

What works is specific and useful: a seasonal reminder about maintenance, first notice of availability, a short guide to something people ask about, or a heads-up when a service opens for booking.

"Join our mailing list" produces almost nothing. "We send one email each spring reminding you what to check before the season" produces sign-ups, because it says what arrives and how often.

State the frequency. People decline lists mainly because they fear volume, and saying four times a year removes that objection entirely.

A worked example

A chimney sweep with a signup box saying subscribe to our newsletter, which had collected eleven addresses in two years.

He changed it to an offer: an annual reminder in early autumn that it is time to book, sent once, plus anything urgent about safety.

He also began asking every customer at the end of a job whether they wanted the reminder, which almost everybody did because it solved a thing they actually forgot.

Within a year he had over four hundred addresses.

The autumn email produced enough bookings to fill several weeks, from customers who would otherwise have remembered in November when everybody else does.

The list works because it does something for the recipient rather than for him, and the two turn out to be the same thing.

Asking properly

The moment matters more than the wording.

At the end of a job, when somebody is pleased with the work, is the easiest yes you will get. Ask verbally and add them yourself with their permission.

On an invoice or a completion note, as a line rather than a form.

And on the website, where the form should be near content the person was already reading rather than in a popup that interrupts them.

What does not work: asking before you have done anything for them, which is asking for something in exchange for nothing.

The counter-case

Where a list is not worth building.

A business whose customers use it once and never again, where there is nothing to send and nothing to come back for.

Anywhere the useful contact is a phone call rather than an email, which is true of a good deal of trade work.

And any business that will not actually send anything. A list collected and never used is worse than none, because the first email after two years of silence reads as spam to people who have forgotten agreeing.

The honest question before starting: what would you send, and would you still send it in a busy month.

What not to do

Two things that seem efficient and are not.

Buying a list, which produces addresses that never agreed, generates complaints, damages your sending reputation and is contrary to Canadian rules.

Adding everybody you have ever emailed, which has the same problem in a more sympathetic form. Somebody who wrote to ask about a job has not agreed to a newsletter.

Both look like a shortcut to a large list and both produce a list that performs badly and creates risk.

A hundred people who chose to be there outperforms a thousand who did not, on every measure including how it feels to send to them.

Where the form should go

Placement decides most of the sign-up rate, and popups are not the answer people assume.

The most effective position is at the end of something worth reading, where somebody has just found the content useful and would plausibly want more of it.

A form in the footer collects almost nothing, because nobody arrives at a footer feeling enthusiastic.

An interrupting popup collects addresses and a proportion of them are given to make it go away, which produces a list that does not open anything.

For a small business the sensible arrangement is one form, on the pages people actually read, with a specific promise beside it.

Recording consent

Necessary rather than optional, and easy if done at the time.

For each address: when they agreed, how, and what they agreed to. A date and a note is sufficient.

If somebody signed up on the website, most services record that automatically. If you added them after a conversation, note the date and that they agreed verbally.

That record is what you would need if anybody ever questioned it, and it takes seconds at the point of adding somebody.

Reconstructing it later for four hundred addresses is not possible, which is why doing it from the first one matters.

Starting properly

1. Decide what you will send and how often.
2. Choose a proper email service, not your own mailbox.
3. Ask your last twenty customers directly.
4. Put a specific offer on the website, not a generic signup.
5. Record consent from the first address.
6. Send something within a month, so nobody has forgotten you.

The sixth prevents the most common failure, which is building a list carefully and then never using it until it has gone completely cold.

Making sure what you send actually arrives is covered in why your email goes to spam.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.