Free effective advertising

[jroy]

One of the BEST ideas I have ever had and put to use is getting clients to leave me their email addresses in a little sign-in book that I bought.  I take it home every so often and enter the new email addresses into my address book on AOL, and when it gets slow, I send out a bulk email, usually offering $10 off an hour (or $15 off a 90 minute) massage if redeemed before a specified date.  AOL has some great email features (like artwork, backgrounds, etc), so much can be done to make the email look appropriate for the season, holiday, or your other promotional interests.  I send the email to the entire group (about 60 email addresses in there, so far), and within 48 hours, I have at least 6 or so clients from that one little email alone, and by the end of the promotion, I will have seen a good 25% or more of the people I emailed back for a return visit.  When the season is slow, this is a nice little return!  All for FREE!(P.S.  I never use this to spam or send out corny chain letters;  Only info that is actually helpful to them or that pertains to their condition or interests.)   After I recover some more from my car accident, I plan to send out a bulk email to all my clients to get me back into work.  In the near future, I plan to find ways that I can get as many email addresses as possible (a health fair, perhaps?), and then I can email "new client offers" to these interested individuals.  If I can get my webpage up and running soon, so much the better!Does anyone else here do this as well?  How do you make your emails special, or stand out?  Do you have ways of collecting email addresses that are worthy of sharing with all of us?    What else do you do that is free (or nearly free) that seems to get great results?  

 

[jakemonster4]

I also do an email newsletter, but I do it once a month. I only do a plain text email though, so its nothing special.  I have only collected email addresses from the intake form that I have people fill out, but am going to purchase a book to take to seated massage events that I attend.I have made up some referral cards, that I give to each client.  It consists of this: when they refer someone to me they get $10 off their next visit and the new client also gets $10 off their first visit also.  This has worked great for me.