Sunday, June 7, 2009

Craft Fair Strategies: Email Addresses

By Ian Kleine

In the previous article, we discussed that for a good jump start in your craft fair career, you'd need two things first: sales and customer networking. But these two things can be easily swayed by different conditions, and could easily affect your profits, your market value, and your overall growth curve. You also need reinforcements to keep those two things strong, and to make sure that the only path your growth curve is taking would be upwards.

Have a gimmick. Seriously, it may sound crazy at first, or even a bit presumptuous for most people, but gimmicks are a good way to maintain a steady flow into your customer network and client base. Gimmicks are offering something in exchange for something less conventional but highly useful, at least for you anyway. Take for example, like, your customer's email address.

Do not underestimate the power of a customer's email address. A lot of businessmen would actually pay for this type of information. It's like obtaining a fertile field ready for sowing your seeds in. Email addresses are a portal for you and your customer; it is a gateway of communication, and an effective tool for breaking down the barrier between client and seller. Now, you can do a lot of things to acquire a customer's email address. Here's one gimmick. "Just sign my guest book and get a freebie!" Now, that freebie may be a small trinket, a lesser version of your product (if you're selling paintings, then a small framed picture would count), or anything that has your trademark on it.

The important thing is, to keep your guest book as limited to the important entries as possible. That means, keep it short, but keep it loaded.

You could even just limit it to name, address, email address and contact number... actually, you can scrap contact numbers, as it makes you sound business-ish. Just stick to the basic three.

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