How To Build Your Email Subscriber List According to Derek Halpern, Founder of Social Triggers, “If you’re not building an email list, you’re an idiot.” Strong words indeed but the benefits of Email Marketing are almost too good to be true. According to the Direct Marketing Association it produces a 4,300 percent return on your marketing investment which means it outperforms SEO, pay-per-click advertising andcontent marketing. Given it’s free to implement, it’s hard to ignore. So why are business owners generally more comfortable promoting their business on social media rather than email? The answer is simple, they lack an up to date list of subscribers. It’s easy for accountants, we’ve had a habit of saving our clients into ourdatabases for decades, but restaurants, retail outlets, tradies and many other businesses don’t have a current list of their customer’s email addresses. With the highest Return On Investment (ROI) of any marketing channel, it makes sense to utilise email marketing. While social media can be very effective, there are three times more email accounts than Facebook and Twitter accounts combined. Statistically speaking, you are six times more likely to get a click-through to your website from an email as opposed to Twitter. As a savvy business owner, it’s important to use email marketing and the first step is to build your email marketing subscriber list using these guidelines. ❶ Call To Action on your Website A strong call to action form on every page of your website, coupled with an offer of a free consultation, sample or free trial is the perfect way to gather contact information for your email subscriber list. ❷ Social Media The content that you share in your email marketing will probably be shared on social media too – and that’s great! However, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are making it harder for us to get into our followers news feeds without paying more money to promote our posts. It’s definitely a good idea to be communicating with your audience outside social media channels and you can send an email campaign for free. Keep sharing your content to social media, but ensure that your followers are told the benefit of signing up to your email list to receive all your best content directly into their inbox. ❸ Face to Face Online marketing has certainly made a lot of things easier but you can’t ignore the effective offline marketing tactics. In a lot of instances the best approach is to just go out there and mingle with industry groups and potential customers and clients. Your personal touch will make people much more likely to sign-up. And if you’re in the right place, you’re more likely to be speaking to real prospects who would be interested in your email content, and are more likely to convert to customers. Examples of this might include: • Bricks and mortar businesses such as restaurants and retail outlets can collect contact information at the cash register, possibly in exchange for discounts or exclusive offers. • Business to business service providers can collect contact information at networking events and conferences – next time you’re handed a business card, ask if it is OK to add them to your email        list. Other businesses may find it beneficial to attend community events or trade shows. Basically, find your ideal customer, work out where they hang out and go and talk to them. ❹ Quality or Quantity? There are plenty of business owners who never start to build a subscriber list because they think they need to have thousands of subscribers to make it a worthwhile exercise. However, you just need the right subscribers. Be proactive, attend relevant events, keep asking your customers and clients for their details and keep promoting the calls to action on your website and social media channels. It takes time and effort but the rewards can be gold. Accounting for Airbnb You will find elsewhere in this edition an article on the Tax Office treatment of the booming personal ‘taxi’ service known as Uber. The other popular service that is part of the new ‘sharing economy’ is Airbnb where thousands of taxpayers are letting out a room in their home or apartment on a short-term basis. Make no mistake, this service is big and getting bigger. In December 2016, some 22,000 properties in Sydney and another 13,000 properties in Melbourne were listed on the Airbnb website. Globally Airbnb hosts share their spaces in 190 countries and 34,000 cities. Like other sharing services including Uber, Airbnb is all managed online. As a consequence, the audit trail of income is very clear and the ATO can access these records. If you are involved in renting out your property (or part thereof) through Airbnb, it is important that you understand the taxation implications. The most commonly asked questions include: • Does the rental income need to be disclosed in my tax return? • What deductions can I claim on the property? • Am I subject to Capital Gains Tax on the sale of the property? • Do I need to register for GST and lodge regular Activity Statements? • Do I need an ABN? • What records do I need to keep? Let’s address each of these six questions. ❶ Does the Income Go In My Tax Return? The Australian Taxation Office’s guidelines are clear. Renting out a property (or a room in a property) via the sharing economy is treated the same as more traditional rental properties. The rental income needs to be disclosed in your income tax return and the only exception to the rule is where the property is offered at a rate below market value (as a favour to family members or friends) and you are looking to claim a loss for tax purposes. The only other circumstance that could potentially fall outside the conventional interpretation is where rooms in a shared house are listed on Airbnb to simply recover costs while the regular occupants are on holidays, etc. This … Continue reading On The Money – December 2017