Are you using Email marketing to close the deal?
All too many website owners don’t realize how low the true value of their website visitors is. Looking at your website statistics program you should look at your number of Unique Visitors with mixed feelings. Because how beneficial is a Unique Visitor really? Certainly, some of them may come back (a Repeat Visitor!), others may even contact you (yay!) but all too many will never return! Let me repeat that: they will never come back. This may be quite disturbing realization for a lot of you. Especially if you have been paying attention at Marketing or Sales seminars, where they say you have to “touch” a prospect 6 to 7 times before they actually become a client (buy from you).
You need to beef up your online marketing strategy; build those 6-7 contacts into your communication process. A few tools that allow you to contact a prospect more than once are: blogging (people can subscribe to your RSS feed), SMS marketing, Twittering (Tweeting), setting up a Facebook Page – and Email Marketing.
Using a professional Email provider like AWeber or MailChimp is highly recommended. The fact that the bulk emails are being sent from a vetted email server will increase the percentage of emails being accepted by receiving email servers (the “delivery rate”).
How to get subscribers? First of all: you have to make sure that you have permission to send emails to your subscribers. The fact that you collected emails on a Tradeshow a few years ago does not constitute “permission”. You can of course contact them and convince them to sign up for your emails. Your current customers should be asked to join as well; they can learn more about your products and services so you can perhaps increase your value per customer. And you should add an opt-in box on your website, of course, to increase readership. Offer people an incentive for signing up (like a free report or video) and explain what people can expect from your emails. Note that I say “emails”, not “email Newsletters”. Some people think they have to write a lot of articles for their email subscribers but that doesn’t have to be the case. All you have to do is provide value in whatever shape or form (even when it’s just an introduction into your new blog post!) and people will be happy to receive your email updates. Happy subscribers mean a bigger chance that after a while they realize what you can do for them, they trust you and want to do business with you. Your contact finally converts! And what good is a website without conversions…
For more information: contact Centre Wellington Chamber of Commerce Director Nardo Kuitert at nardo@ucwebs.com or 519-787-7612.
