Power Sellers Unite

Hotspur8 · Joined: 05 Aug 2006 Posts: 34 Location: Pasadena, Texas

I am a former eBay store owner. I still own a store, just not on eBay. However, I once had a few hundred customers, some of whom bought from me more than once.

My questions are:

1) Is it okay to contact them via e-mail and let them know I have moved, and where, and why?

2) Will I be booted off of eBay if someone reports me (and should I care)?

3) How does one do a mass e-mail using yahoo?

FYI: I was looking for addresses for potential clients, when I ran across my very first ebay sell via my store. Imagine my suprise when I could still access the listing (no picture), but this was March of 2005. I guess that store listings stay with eBay a while.

Thanks for any help.

elgato · Joined: 24 Feb 2005 Posts: 17241 Location: Texas

Welcome to the PSU forums hotspur8!

Do as most of us have done and contact your loyal buyers though their paypal addys to direct them to your new online selling venue :D

Thanks for joining us here at PSU!!

envirobay · Joined: 17 Nov 2005 Posts: 624 Location: Boise, Id

The paypal idea is good, unless they paid with a money order. When an item sells on ebay they will send you a notification email. This email has the buyer's contact info (email address). Since I use gmail I don't ever have to delete any of my messages. All of my transactions since I started using gmail are saved in the archives. They have a huge amount of storage that gets bigger every minute. All I have to do is search thru my archives using the integrated gmail search.

If anyone wants a gmail account I have a ton of invites. Just PM me.

I also have a great little program that turns your gmail storage into a virtual harddrive (ftp style). This is a great way to increase your hard drive space. It is also good to store files that you might want to access from public terminals, guest computers, etc.

LurkeyLou · Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 2:15 am Post subject:

Hotspur8, those are YOUR customers, YOU have the business relationship with them. They simply used eBay's software to conduct the trade. YOURS!

You can export your entire PayPal history as a .tsv (or .csv?!) - mine goes back several years - and open it in Excel or OpenOffice and harvest your customer infos.

If you don't keep a DB on your customers, but use the USPS interface (as opposed to shipping through eBay/PayPal) you will have record of even the customers who paid via check/money order.

A mass e-mail through the Yahoo interface, you want to add addresses to the BCC to protect everyone's e-mail addresses. If you use CC, all the addys will be hanging out for easy harvesting.

The only issue w/ using the BCC is that the TO: address will appear as the person for whom the mail was intended - it looks like misdirected mail. I use one of my SPAM boxes for the TO: field. Inevitably, I get a query wondering why mail to Ting is arriving in their box. TIP: you don't want your subject line to be vague or cryptic. You need to fire up their memory and make a connection and eliminate as many deletes as possible.

Try sending yourself mail using the CC and BCC to see the difference and kinda' learn the process before sending mail en masse.

Sooo, envirobay, that gMail/storage proggy sounds veddy intelestinghk...where'd ya' find it?? I like my USB stick, but really, really like options!

envirobay · Joined: 17 Nov 2005 Posts: 624 Location: Boise, Id

Here is more info on that gmail virtual hdd: http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm

Another good trick I use: When you have a gmail account, they give you like 100 invites, right? So invite/create yourself a few more gmail accounts. Each new account you have will add another 2.7GB of space. I have a great plugin that allows you to login to all of your gmail accounts at once (using firefox). It notifies you when you have a new message on any account and allows you to swithc back and forth very easily. This is really handy if you use different email addresses for different seller accounts (i.e. multiple ebay accounts).

2BOYSandTOYS · Joined: 14 Mar 2005 Posts: 10095 Location: Kansas

I agree 100% with Lurkey and have been doing this since the fee hike of '05. Whenever I sell something 'there' or even 'other sites with fewer listings', I always point them towards my site and/or where I have the most listings or current promotions.

I also in my close of auction/sale thank you letter be sure to tell the buyer that I will combine shipping and it's not limited to this venue, and like/similar items are listed 'here'...

Absolutely you can market to existing customers!!! Go forth and conquer. I do NOT do mass mailings tho, as I would consider this as 'spam' (if I were a buyer). I do individual, personalized letters - starting with those who have purchased within the last 3 months, then work my way backwards. I don't want any buyer to get concerned they've been added to a bulk email address list they can't opt out of!! :D

psunite · Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 6213 Location: Columbus OH

envirobay
Can you send me a link to that program where you can check multiple gmail accounts.
Thanks

envirobay · Joined: 17 Nov 2005 Posts: 624 Location: Boise, Id

The gmail manager can be found here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1320/
It only works with a firefox browser.

Enjoy!