What to do with all these customer emails??

Are all of these emails interested in different type of products? Do you have them sorted in any way?

Depends on the niche, but a newsletter with information on the topic would be a good start. Build up trust and then phase into selling them more stuff related to the Niche.

A newsletter offering discount codes might work to encourage repeat business.

Email lists and follow up allow you to sell to the same customers over and over again.

But it depends how old these lists are. Followup should start the moment they buy a product from you and is something you should always be doing with customers.

The lifetime value of a lead should be worth much more to you than the initial purchase.

Howdy. I'm not sure how you'd convert an eBay buyer's list into a typical email list, but I have an idea or two. Immediately after they make a purchase, follow up with an email asking their opinion of their purchase. Let them know you have a newsletter wherein you discuss topics of particular interest in that niche: news, happenings, product updates. You have to invite them to opt-in separately -- otherwise you'll get spam complaints, as you've already discovered (d'oh).

Basically, in that follow-up email, you want to a)thank them for their purchase and ask whether they're satisfied b)let them know you have more information of interest to share c)give them a compelling reason to join your email list.

CAVEAT!

I do not sell things on eBay (I'd like to sell my girlfriend's cat, but she won't let me). Before you act on the above suggestions, make good and damn well sure that by doing so you aren't violating any of eBay's terms and conditions. The last thing you want to do is get your eBay store shut down.

I do hope this helps.

Jonathan

Your first e-mail to them should have been:

"Thank-you for your purchase from my eBay auction. If you would like to receive additional e-mail from me related to this item topic, please confirm your e-mail subscription"

If they are all customers of your's that have bought from you, send a clever and funny email to reactivate them... that will encourage them to buy from you again.

And once they buy from you again, dont wait forever to send them an email offer. Consider contacting them every 15-30 days.

Start giving them Value. If you build trust with them and they love reading your newsletter they won't mind if no and then you send them a special offer. As long as you keep giving them unexpected value they'll love you and "feed" you.

you can try the various methods of warming up the cold list. However if you do have an e-commerce store - It would look genuine that the email was coming from the store.

You would need to clarify they are receiving the email because they made a purchase on ebay etc. You could test segments of the list and see what approach works best. You should then find complementing product to what they originally purchased and that would be the general approach

Another method - You could try out would be old fashioned direct mail. You again could test a segment - if they purchase through you , you should have their address. you could essentially send out direct mail - promoting your store / products and receive % OFF with this code.

If you could convert those people into buyers and essentially get them onto your store. Then you could re-kindly that relationship you lost.

Well that's just a few things you may do

Hope that helps

Ali Chowdhry

Send them a newsletter and then try to sell to them, if they've brought from you in the past they are more likely to buy from you again!