How to Build a $500,000 Database –Free. Awesome Case Study For You to Learn From.

Summary: I have something extraordinary for you today. Honestly, a really, REALLY big marketing lesson. Give yourself the gift of the next few minutes and read this post. Because I'm going to give you a perspective on marketing almost nobody has ever given you before. If you'd like to know how to build a database valued at over $500,000 - and how to do it for FREE - follow this case study closely. The back story... The other day I was speaking to a client and friend. While we were talking I discovered something as valuable as all the gold in Solomon's vault (well, maybe not THAT valuable... but sure close). The business we're talking about is a restaurant. In fact, it's two restaurants. They are successful restaurants. Again, I'm not gonna tell you the names of the business... or the name of my friend out respect for her privacy. But know this... On a monthly basis the two restaurants do about 5,000 covers (for non-foodies this means 5,000 customers). The average spend is approx $60 per head. So there's good traffic and volume. Plus the restaurants even have brand value (the importance of this will be highlighted in a moment). Anyway, we were chatting the other day and I queried her about her database building. In my unusual direct way I probed about the opt in % of her website. I asked about the numbers of customers on record. And how often she emails and mails them. And then I asked... "Do you try to get the personal details of everybody dining in your restaurants?" She responded with "We don't do anything in the restaurant." "Hmmm...", I thought. "There's a really cool opportunity here... sitting right under our noses". I told her this... and she agreed. So we chatted for a little longer... trying to find an easy way to get the personal details of everybody on the table. Because I've covered this ground sooo many times with businesses, coming up with ideas was easy. We settled on a birthday offer. So customers who fill in the voucher details with their name, email address, mobile number and birthday date are invited to return for a complimentary dinner. Simple. Easy. Yes, obvious. But look at these numbers... If just 40% of people on the table give their details, it equates to 2000 names going into the system per month. That's 6,000 in 3 months... 12,000 in 6 months and so on. The cost on that? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Why? Two reasons: 1. These are customers who are already in the restaurants. We haven't had to pay to get them in through advertising. 2. We're using existing staff to manually enter the data into the system i.e. no extra wages. Is a 40% uptake rate realistic on the offer? Yes, I think it is. That's because we're going to get her awesome staff to push the offer, too. We may even incentivise them - the staff member who gets the most names might win a set of movie tickets or whatever. LET'S TAKE A BREATHER Let's look at these numbers. Ask any marketer how much it costs to get a high quality email address, phone number and name into your database and you'll hear "minimum $5 an opt in... but most likely $10... $15 ... even $20". So, let's be conservative and say building the database by 2000 names per month has a nominal value of $20,000 (2000 names multiplied by $10). I know, "value" is another subjective term. And there are many ways to slice it and dice it. But lay off me, you savvy marketer you. I want to keep the math simple so we don't miss the forest for the trees here. There's a bigger lesson! So the value is $20,000 per month for this exercise. Over 6 months its value is $120,000. That means if she was to spend money on advertising - to get these people to opt into her system - she'd easily spend 6 figures. Agreed? Great. There's more. Because, my friend, that was only the starter (I couldn't help the pun!). Why?