Lighthouse Christian Supply, Dublin, Calif.

He knows that there is no line item on a spreadsheet for “buzz,” but Brian Hill’s belief in the importance of that unquantifiable dimension of successful retailing has driven his growing efforts in e-marketing.

While also helping reduce costs of hard mailings, using e-mail and social media allows him to be more nimble in coming up with promotions and helps foster the increasingly important sense of connection for which many consumers are looking.

Hill began seriously gathering e-mail addresses of shoppers at Lighthouse Christian Supply—which he co-owns and co-manages, with his mother—about four years ago. Those who provide their e-mail address are enrolled in the store’s rewards program that offers a coupon for every $100 spent and extends returns periods.

The sweetener has enabled the store to sign up about a third of its regular customers, who are sent a monthly e-newsletter. It takes Hill a couple of hours or so to produce the bulletin, which usually includes some personal reflections and details of key new releases and any special events that may be coming up. He also attaches his e-catalog from the Munce Group.

The e-newsletter is “something that is fairly inexpensive” that allows him to keep in touch more regularly than with physical mailing. In addition, the lead time is much shorter. With traditional mailings, sometimes “by the time you got your piece together, it was too late to send it out,” he said.

Hill uses the Constant Contact e-marketing service that provides a handy template and handles the distribution. “For $50 a month, it’s a pretty inexpensive way to get information and a message out, so I know I don’t have to do a whole lot (of business) for it to pay for itself,” he said. “And in some ways it does save me some money, too, as I don’t have to print and mail as many postcards.”

Hill has found that having the e-mail go out earlier in the morning seems to work “pretty well; I think a lot of people check their e-mails at work.” Typically around 500 people open the e-newsletter out of the 3,000 he sends, “which is pretty good, compared to what I have seen.”

However it is hard to quantify specific returns. “Occasionally, when we do send out a coupon, we can see how many we get back,” he said. “And then every once in a while, we get a few comments on what I have written, someone will come into the store and tell us they got the e-mail.”

More recently, Hill has begun exploring social media, growing his store’s Facebook friends fourfold in a few months by posting almost daily messages and offering specials for different holidays. One zany promotion brought people in to compete in and vote on a chicken dance contest, with an iPad as the prize.

“It gives people a reason to talk about us,” Hill said. “It’s pretty hard to compete with Amazon on price. Even with something on sale, someone isn’t likely to go home and tell their neighbor or someone at church about that, but if they come in here and compete in a chicken dance, they are probably going to tell others at the Bible study about it.”

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