Email Marketing For Independent Bookstores

These are tough times for traditional, “brick and mortar” bookstores—the toughest, in fact. With Amazon.com
edefining not only how people shop for books but how they consume them, as well, thanks to the Kindle, the old-fashioned bookstore is in danger of becoming as extinct as the typewriter and the telegram. The future for bookstores got even bleaker late in 2011, when the Borders chain closed, leaving only Barnes and Noble standing among the major chain bookstores.

As murky as things look for bookstores and the conventional way of reading books, though, there remains hope there will always be room for the independent bookstore, which can provide the type of individualized customer service, employee expertise and welcoming atmosphere that the Amazons and Barnes and Nobles of the world cannot. And email marketing for independent bookstores is the best way for these businesses to reach the readers who can help keep them afloat!

While these campaigns serve as a very broad and all-encompassing way of promoting the store—from the reading groups and book signings it hosts to the deals and sales it is offering—email marketing for independent bookstores can also further the connection between the store and the consumer by emphasizing all the things that separate the independent bookstore from its larger competitors.

For instance, when collecting addresses to begin an email marketing campaign for independent bookstores, ask patrons to also list their favorite authors and genres of books. For independent bookstores, email marketing messages can be tailored to each recipient so that fans of science fiction, sports and non-fiction books (just to name three examples) all get different emails. These messages will grab the attention of consumers, who will be more likely to shop at a bookstore that caters to their tastes and has a staff that is informed about what their readers do and do not like.

Email marketing software makes it easy to implement such customization within email marketing campaigns for independent bookstores. The software allows not only for a personalized greeting, which will ensure the recipient opens and reads the message, but also for the inclusion of pictures, links and other text within the message. Think of the email marketing campaign as an all-in-one message delivered straight to the target audience. There’s no need to worry about people missing the ad in the daily newspaper or skipping over the commercial on the television or radio.

Most importantly, the software is very inexpensive to purchase and install and can be managed by anyone with a moderate amount of computer knowledge. There’s no reason to hire additional staff to oversee the independent bookstore’s email marketing campaign—no small consideration these days with all bookstores operating with such a thin profit margin.

While the chains are falling by the wayside, independent bookstores still have a place in a dot-com, E-reader world. An independent bookstore’s email marketing campaign is a wonderful method by which to tap into readers who enjoy the conventional way of shopping, reading and talking about books!