The value of these two music stores might seem the same when you examine their physical assets, but one store is actually worth much more than the asking price while the other represents a significant risk to the buyer. Here’s why.

The store that represents a risk to the buyer relies on drive-by traffic, time-consuming phone calls, and expensive print adversing to attract new and existing customers to its in-store promotions and its web site.

The more valuable store gains new customers the same way as the risky store, but the staff has also worked hard to collect email addresses and permission from the thousands of musicians, parents, and music teachers who have visited the store over the years. As a result, this store has been able to continually attract customers to the store and the web site at a very low cost by emailing promotions, event invitations, and holiday sale announcements. It also continually adds more personalized information to its email list in order to remember birthday, follow up on recent purchases, and send promotions that are targeted to the exact instruments its customers play.

Whether you’re buying a business, starting a business, or running a business, it’s important to know how much money the business is making, but it’s even more important to know how reliably and cost-effectively you can continue to generate sales for your business into the future.

If you have an email list, that’s a great first step toward decreasing your costs and increasing the value of your business, because you’ve obtained a low-cost way to contact your customers and bring them in to make purchases. Your email list is even more valuable to your business, however, when you continually capture additional information such as interests, personal information, and corrections. Your email list is also made more valuable when you take measures to increase reliability, familiarity, and regularity.

This chapter provides ideas on how to continually improve the value of your email list, which will, in turn, add more value to your business and your ability to predictably sustain and grow your revenue.