Today Ken Magill published this story about Bath and Body‘s email acquisition program and how it grew to 10 million subscribers in less then 2 years.

What you can learn from this story:

  1. Knowing your target audience is critical.
  2. Giving the right incentive and call to action is important. To collect you must print and returning their email to your retail location.
  3. Getting the customer to return leads to additional sales: First purchase in store is used to collect the shoppers email address and other details, return visit to collect incentive results in additional purchases.
  4. Retail bye-in: By having customers return the printed email offer store managers immediately feel the ROI and benefit from working with a program geared to drive retail sales.

Finding a successful recipe like this and maximizing it’s effectiveness are keys to building email. The next trick is sending relevant email to 10 million subscribers and staying out of the junk folder.