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One of the pleasures of owning a local business is the feeling that it's an integral part of customers' lives, as important to their daily routine as the newspaper and the mail. If properly nurtured, these people can develop a relationship with the business that no competitor can disrupt, creating an important base for future growth.

Bob Devaney knows this — he operates three “Drycleaning by Dorothy” stores in the South Boston suburbs. The stores convey a “family” feel in many ways, including employing several of the Devaney clan as managers. But he says weekly e-mailings to the 3,000 customers on his house list also have become part of the family tradition at Dorothy's.

“Dry cleaning is largely a convenience business; you patronize a store because it's on your way to somewhere,” Devaney says. “I'm interested in making my customers feel more like they're family. Just the fact that I'm always visible, sending them something each week — that helps make me their dry cleaner.”

Like most small businessmen, Devaney says he found he never had enough time to devote to promoting his services properly. “I was running around like a headless chicken, fixing machines and talking to customers,” he says. “I always was sitting down to design my coupon ad campaigns at the last minute, and paying a lot of money to do so.” So in 2001 Devaney saw no reason not to take an e-mail service provider up on a free trial offer. He put sign-up sheets on his store counters and offered $5 in free dry cleaning to customers who submitted their e-mail addresses.

Four years later, Dorothy's house list grows by 25 to 30 names a week, using the sign-up sheets and other acquisition efforts. Coupons Devaney runs in local “marriage packs” include a request that visitors come to Dorothy's Web site and sign up for “free coupons in your [e-]mailbox.” And his weekly e-mails never fail to include an active “refer a friend” link.

“Customers forward the e-mail to their sons and daughters in the neighborhood,” he says. “So I often get twice the business from a piece of e-mail, and even some new names if those users then sign up to receive my e-mail too. As a result, the list is almost building itself at this point.”

Of course, sending e-mail is one thing; getting it opened is definitely another. For content, Devaney believes in providing real eye-opening value. It can't be just an incremental deal; 10% or 20% discounts on regular prices won't do the trick. “You have to have two-for-one deals, or three-for-two, 30% off, 50% off — that's what creates action by the consumer,” he says. In early March, a Dorothy's e-mailing offered a one-day sale: half off any dry cleaning order brought in on St. Patrick's Day. Devaney says his stores all got “bombed” with business on March 17 as a result of that offer.

The Constant Contact e-mail marketing system Devaney employs lets him draw up coupons that recipients can print out and bring in for redemption. But he says it's not rare for customers to bring their cleaning in without the coupons. During that St. Patrick's Day sale, for example, a customer came in with a $100 order. The counterperson recognized him from the e-mail list and asked if he'd received the coupon for the one-day sale. The customer said he had, and that was what motivated him to bring his business in; but he hadn't printed the coupon and was willing to pay full price.

In a recent e-mail, Devaney included his personal cell phone number and wrote, “Everyone wants to have a doctor or a plumber in the family. Now you have a dry cleaner in the family.” He encouraged his customers to call with any dry-cleaning problems. No one has used the number yet, but Devaney says that's the same kind of personal touch the weekly e-mail campaign provides.

The business cost of the special offers in his e-mail marketing is not a big concern for Devaney. “I'm not trying to make a profit off my e-mail promotions,” he says. “My first aim is to solidify current customer relations and make new ones.” Customers actually call the stores if Devaney slips up and neglects to send out his weekly e-mail offer. He periodically surveys recipients to find out how frequently they want to be e-mailed; weekly is still the popular choice. In four years, Devaney says, he's had just three customers unsubscribe.

Small businesses usually don't have a lot of ad dollars to spend, and many feel they don't have the time or know-how to run an e-mail campaign on their own. But Devaney thinks they should at least investigate the available online options. “I've been marketing for 25 years, and e-mail is by far the best thing we've ever done,” he says. “I can contact up to 5,000 addresses for $50 a month. I can envision some day not doing any other promotion.”

And Devaney has a word of advice for those small businesses that still shy away from e-mail marketing: Get those e-mail addresses, even if you don't have a use for them now. “Start collecting e-mail [addresses] with your other customer data,” he says. “That's the address of the future, to my mind.”