Whatever your business is, you should think about collecting the email addresses of your customers as early in your business as possible. Email addresses are the best way to reach customers. You can reach out directly to an audience of people who have already purchased from you with new products, services, sales or announcements. If you don’t spam your mailing list, you’ll likely keep subscribers, and gain more as you post more content or grow as a business. Over time, this can become an invaluable asset to your business, and possibly your most successful sales channel.

You can use your mailing list for anything related to your business or industry. You can write about the latest news about your business, discuss future plans, link to blog posts, announce future products, offer pre-sales, really anything you can think of that gets your business out there. Mailing lists are a direct way to reach people who have opted into hearing from your business.

Whatever you use you mailing list for, keep track of your open rate and unsubscribe rate to inform future mailings. If you notice that your open rate is going down and people are unsubscribing, you may need to either send email less frequently, or invest more time in the quality of your mailings. Infrequent and information rich mailings can payoff by not annoying customers, and giving them something that is worth their time to read or shop. An added benefit to reduced email frequency is that you can work on your emails over time and with less stress than a weekly or daily commitment.

As for a base metric to consider, “Your conversion rate tells you, in no-nonsense terms, the efficacy of your public-facing content. If 6% of your website visitors join your mailing list or make a purchase, your website is 6% effective.

But here’s the thing: That's actually very good. In fact, a ‘good’ website conversion rate falls between 2% and 5% across all industries. Industry-specific conversion rates vary quite a bit more,” according to Mailchimp. If you’re an artist or creator that has an engaged online audience, your open rate will likely be a much higher percentage than a big box store. Once you figure out your own baseline open rate, check to see over time what content is more popular with your specific audience.

According to ConstantContact, “the average ROI through email marketing is $36 for every $1 spent. Simply put, you invest a dollar and in return receive 36 times from it.”

Every business is different, but one thing that is common amongst all businesses is that it’s best to have a direct line of communication with your customer base or audience. If you don’t think about doing this early enough in your business, you may overspend on advertising or spend too much time focusing on reaching new customers than working on your business.

If you have a retail storefront, you can collect email addresses at your cash register. If you’re an artist that sells at art fairs or a farmer selling at a farmer’s market; either keeping a signup list handy, or integrating email signup into your Square Reader can be a great way to build a mailing list. Most website hosting platforms like Squarespace and Shopify have email collection and newsletter functionality built into their products natively.

However you decide to use your mailing list, figure out a way as early as possible to be able to reach your customers or audience directly. Over time, a list of email addresses can grow into a growing customer base that can be infinitely rewarding for your business, depending on what you sell. Obviously a luxury real estate broker’s mailing list may be worth more over time than a graphic t-shirt makers, but what’s the same is the direct line of communication to an established customer base.