If you’re a business owner, you may feel like you have overwhelming amount of emails you are trying to keep track of and you’re unsure how to do that simply and successfully.
From prospective clients to current clients to like-minded business owners, the email addresses keep piling up and all you want is to put them in a safe place where you can access them at anytime and feel confident that you aren’t missing any opportunities.
As a business ourselves, we understand you don’t have all the time in the world to put email lists together. That means it has to be simple, efficient, and easy to understand.
We’ve gathered a list of the best ways to keep track of and collect email addresses in the simplest ways possible.
Google Sheets
If you’re even somewhat Internet savvy, you’ve probably picked up on the current love for Google Drive. This is the place where you can store documents, photos, videos, drawings, and more. Google Drive has quickly become the spot where business owners realize just how easy it is to upload, share, and print documents, whether it’s a Google Form, Google Sheets, or Google Doc. Our favorite place for tracking email addresses is Google Sheets. If you’ve used Microsoft Excel, you’ll most likely be able to quickly pick up on Google Sheets. The best part? It’s completely free and easy to edit or update as needed.
The second best part? We’ve already created a simple template for you! Visit http://bit.ly/cdm-email-template to get a free template to start using today that you can easily customize for your own business. You’ll be prompted to make a copy of the spreadsheet, which will make it your own to use.
Mailchimp
Most business users are very well aware of Mailchimp. With over 14 million users, Mailchimp may be able to help you in ways you didn’t expect. While it is an amazing platform for sending mass emails or newsletters to a group of people, it also has the potential for you to track and grow your email lists.
Built within Mailchimp is the ability to have mailing lists. In the case of building your email list relating to this article, we can view this more as Client Categories.
For example, I’ve created a list called Prospective Clients.
Email addresses do not have to come from someone subscribing to your newsletter or an opt-in form from your website. Instead, you can add contacts manually. You have the option to Add a subscriber or Import contacts.
Once you’re in the Add a subscriber option, you can easily put the information you might have been given for a prospective client (or whichever category you are looking at). The only required input is the Email Address, but we prefer to also include a name if we have it available.
Now, there is one part I need to mention. There will be a section called “This person gave me permission to email them.” If you are strictly using this for a place to gather emails, you are good to go. You’ll have to select it as they have given you permission. If, however, you want to send them a newsletter eventually, you have to have permission to email them. You cannot select it and assume they have opted-in. Whenever you have their email address, you can always feel free to say, “I have a newsletter I send out as well. Would you like to be included in that?” If they say yes, you’re in great shape. If they say no, you’re going to have to make sure you don’t send them an accidental newsletter or mass email. Again, that is not the purpose of using Mailchimp in this situation.
Though the categories you create, you’ll be able to have email lists that help separate your clients easily.
Mailchimp also has Tags, which can help you to separate clients based on their particular tags you select for them individually. You may have noticed when you were creating a contact, that there is an option to add a tag(s).
If you have just one mailing list, this is another place you can separate them. You could add tags to your contacts, such as Prospective, Past, Current, etc. to keep track of who is who.
Gmail Contacts
If you’re already using Gmail for your business email, this is a perfect way to keep your email list on track. If the only thing you want to do is have a contact’s email available to you at any time, you can’t find a simpler way to do this. But if you’ve been using a different mailing account, you can easily create a Google Drive account just to access the contacts section.
On contacts.google.com, you will find a list of contacts from your Gmail account. If you’re new to Gmail, it might be empty. But if you’ve been using Gmail for awhile, you may notice some familiar names and emails on there.
Google Contacts allows you to add contacts manually with notes so you can always remember who they are, where you met them, the next step, etc.
And if that’s not easy enough, they also have categories you can move contacts to.
And once that’s completed, you now have a new section added where all your lists will be:
This way, you never have to wonder which category someone fits. And if you forget, you can refer back to the notes section to jog your memory on how you met them or other tidbits of information (if you choose to include that).
Keep Your Email List Happy
There will always be pros and cons of the way you decide to track your email addresses. The most important thing is that it works for you. You may have to try out some different methods to find the perfect one. We’ve found at Capstone Digital Marketing that simplicity is key. When you start to add too many things, it gets too confusing and not worth the trouble.
We hope this list helped and we’ve love to chat with you on how to get more business so that you have emails to fill up all those lists!
Feel free to email us at contact@capstonedigitalmarketing.com. We’ve helped dozens of business owners just like you with their SEO and other marketing needs and would love to help you succeed.
