SolveYourProblem
Article Series:
Start
An eBay Business
Turn
eBay Bidders into Long-term Customers
by Jeff Cohen
Once someone’s bought something from you on
eBay, you suddenly have all sorts of details on them. In marketing
terms, this information is gold dust. If someone’s bought from
you once before, then the chances are that at some point in
the future they’ll want to buy a similar item, and you can
take advantage of this to market to them directly.
The simplest form of direct marketing is the email
newsletter – and it’s one that is still oddly underused on eBay. Simply
ask people who buy from you if they’d like to be added to your
mailing list, and then send them a monthly update on your new
items. You should also include some information you think might
be useful to them, to give the email more value.
For example, here’s a newsletter you might write if you were
selling DVDs.
“Here are the dates for this month’s new DVD releases:
[list of release dates].
If you want to pre-order anything on this list, just click
here [your website/email] and let us know.
Meanwhile, we’ve got some great deals for you this month!
[links to your best ebay auctions]
You are receiving this email because you signed up for my
newsletter when you bought an item from me on eBay. To unsubscribe,
hit reply and type ‘remove’.”
Isn’t that simple? As long as you can remember to do it once
a month, people will come to like your information, and perhaps
take a look at some of the things you’re offering.
It’s all about building up a customer relationship, and making
the customer feel like you are providing them with some information
they wouldn’t otherwise have. Make your email a useful service
to them, whether they buy anything from it or not.
Remember that it’s
not a newsletter without the news, and
send out the best things you can think of: you might even try
writing an article or two. Think of it as a free gift for your
customers: the gift of useful information. Apart from anything
else, it’s quite fun to have your own newsletter.
If you sell items that a seller is likely to need more than
one of, like auto parts for example, then you can even try
highly targeted emails like this.
“I’m sending you this email because you bought a [item name]
from me a while ago – I hope you were happy with it. This is
just to let you know that if you ever need another [item],
I’m currently doing special offers on them. [link]”.
You would probably want
to automate this, though, as it could
quickly get tedious to do it manually.
# # # # # SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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