If you don’t already have a email provider, this is too good an offer to pass up. Mailchimp (our second favorite email provider) wants to encourage small businesses to user their service, so they are offering a basic plan with up to 3,000 e-mails a month as long as you have less then 500 people on your email list.

If you aren’t already sending professional email newsletters, you now officially have no excuse.

Bonus Tip: recently I read about a business that was able to collect many more email addresses from prospective customers by adding this text to their sign-up forms:

We will use this email address to send you a monthly newsletter with tips and specials. We promise to never give your email address to anyone else.

For example, if you’re a wedding photographer who collects email addresses at the reception, you should put this on the card. The extra promise - and the fact that you use a professional email provider - will encourage customers to trust you.

Back in the old days, running a small business was as simple as opening a checking account, keeping track of sales, and paying your taxes on time.

Not anymore.

Their are two new laws on the books that can effect your business. Get caught breaking them, and you could be subject to tens of thousands of dollars in fines that could bankrupt you overnight. They are:

PCI Compliance

We’ve all read the stories about hackers stealing thousands of credit card numbers from large retailers. But you may not know that small businesses that accept credit cards account for the majority of credit card theft. If a customer’s information is stolen from you (by a hacker or an employee), you can be held responsible.

What is it? To protect customer information, the PCI Security Standards Council was formed. This industry watch-dog group has created a set of security standards for any business that handles credit cards.

Why is it important? While the PCI standards are not federal law, some states have adopted them as law, and PCI non-compliance has been used by the courts as proof of negligence in credit card theft cases.

What can you do? Start by downloading and filling out one of the PCI self-assessment worksheets. This will tell you what level of security you are responsible for. It could be as simple as filling out the worksheet and keeping it on file (in case you are ever audited) or as complicated as hiring a third-party consultant to independently audit your business.

CAN-SPAM Act

What is it? The CAN-SPAM Act is a federal law that “establishes requirements for those who send commercial email, spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products are advertised in spam if they violate the law, and gives consumers the right to ask emailers to stop spamming them.” Basically, that means that if you send out advertising e-mail, you need it to conform to the law.

Why is it important? Nobody likes spam email. In an effort to combat it, congress defined spam as anything from the Nigerian prince who sends out a million copies to the small business that sends out a few dozen coupons. Last month, Alan Ralsky of Detroit, Michigan was sentenced to 61 months in jail and ordered to pay $250,000 in fines. While sending lots of spam email was a factor, what brought him to the attention of prosecutors were complaints by private citizens (think of an unhappy customer with too much time on their hands).

What can you do? Make sure any email you send meets the requirements: Don’t use any false or misleading information, clear subject line, identify yourself as a business, provide a way for the recipient to get off your list, etc. Rather than keep track of all the rules, many businesses use an online email service like Constant Contact, MailChimp or Vertical Response (the one we use). These programs are designed to insure your mailings follow all the rules.

In Building your e-mail address list - Part 1, I explain how to build your e-mail list from past customers, friends and referrals.

Once you’ve added all the people you know to your e-mailing list, it’s time to start adding people you’ve never even met. These are folks who’ve visited your website and want to learn more about you.

To gather their e-mail address, you need to:

• Put a professional contact form page on your website. Use a “Contact me” menu option or button in the upper right-hand corner of every page to link to your form. Don’t just show your e-mail address - make it easy for potential customers to contact you by e-mail.
• Put an e-mail newsletter sign-up form on every page of your website. Link to the sign-up form from your Facebook page, and put a link to it at the bottom of e-mails you send out daily.

The two tools I recommend for this are Wufoo and Vertical Response. Wufoo lets you create a professional contact form on your website, then collects the e-mail addresses in an easy-to-use file you can import into Vertical Response. Vertical Response lets you create a professional e-mail newsletter sign-up form you can put on every page, collects e-mail addresses, and automatically adds them to your e-mail newsletter list.

Sound confusing? Here are the steps:

1. Open a free Vertical Response account. Upload every e-mail address you have into your master list.
2. While in the List tab, create a new e-mail newsletter opt-in form. design the form, then copy and paste the code into every page on your website. If you aren’t comfortable modifying your website, you should have your web designer do it for you.
3. At the bottom of every e-mail you send out (even for personal notes), put a link to the e-mail newsletter opt-in form. You’ll be surprised how many people will take the time to click the link and join your mailing list.
4. Open a free Wufoo account. Design a contact page, then copy and paste the code into your contact page on your website. If you already have a contact page (some website templates have them pre-installed), whenever you answer an e-mail, make sure you manually copy the e-mail address to your vertical response master e-mail list.
5. When you’re ready to send your first e-mail newsletter in Vertical Response, you’ll have a master list including past customers, friends, family, anyone who has contacted you, and anyone who signed up for your email newsletter. If you use Wufoo, you can easily download the list of everyone who has contacted you from your website, then upload it into your Vertical response master list (don’t worry - Vertical Response weeds out the duplicates automatically).

Note that while both Wufoo and Vertical Response are free to use, when it is time to send out an e-mail newsletter, Vertical Response charges 1.5 cents per e-mail sent. Since they also throw out duplicates, that is a pretty good bargain.

If you are diligent about building your e-mail marketing list, you should see it grow by dozens of people every month. Because it is inexpensive to send e-mail newsletters to these folks, you’ll soon find that your e-mail list is your most important marketing tool.

UPDATE:

I just received this great link from Vertical Response to an article called 29 Ways to Collect E-Mail Addresses for Your Business. This is a great list you can copy and check off for your studio.

Next to your camera, your e-mail list is your most valuable business asset. It connects you with the group of people most likely to need your services.

Before e-mail, your customer list was was the best marketing tool you had. But your e-mail list can contain:

1. Past customers
2. Friends and family
3. Folks you’ve met in person
4. Referrals from clients
5. People who visit your website (or Facebook page, or Twitter)

Notice how as you move from 1 to 5 you move from customers most likely to purchase from you to least likely (the marketing jargon for this is concentric circles of influence). When mailings were expensive, your tendency was to focus on marketing to the first group only. But with e-mail, you can market to all five for only pennies apiece.

So how do you get e-mail addresses from each of these groups?

1. Past customers - If you’ve been in business for a while, chances are you only have e-mail addresses for a small percentage of your old clients. If you typically contact them by post card, when you send the next one offer them a free gift if they go to your website and “register”, i.e. give you their e-mail address. the gift could be a coupon, a limited edition print, or a PDF booklet you’ve written called “My top 10 tips for taking great snapshots.” It should have a high enough perceived value to get them to give up their e-mail address.

2. Friends and family - This one is easy. export your personal and business e-mail lists into your customer list.

3. Folks you’ve met in person - Always carry business cards. When you meet someone, offer them a card. If they give you one back, add them to your e-mail list. If they don’t have a card, ask for their e-mail anyway.

4. Referrals from clients - I wrote a post about referrals here, but the idea is that if you don’t get them to book a session, at least get their e-mail address.

5. People who visit your website - To get these folks you should have a contact and sign-up form available from every page on your website. If you don’t have this, the next post will explain the tools that I recommend to use.