E-mail marketing is another piece to the “successful e-biz” puzzle you must fit in.
Here’s why...
- A properly ran e-mail marketing campaign builds relationships and trust in your subscribers.
- It’s a great tool for maintaining a connection with your audience and delivering real value.
- Your wallet is going to like your e-mail marketing campaign.
Fact, even if you have the most compelling sales letter ever written the majority of people that visit your site will not choose to place an order.
So, what’s the next best thing you can do to maintain non buyer interest... they could very well be sitting on the decision fence. If the latter is the case, there is a really good chance you can get these visitors to give you their e-mail address. In return you provide a free information service like a newsletter or some sort of gift.
So, it’s not a sale, but it’s the next best thing. Maybe they needed more value or information before placing and order. Maybe they didn’t have their credit card handy when they reviewed your site.
Whatever the reason, now you have permission to e-mail them. On the first e-mail you send, maybe a day or two after they opted in, you should convert 5% – 7%+ of those subscribers into paying customers.
On the second e-mail, maybe six days after they opted in you should convert between 3% - 6%+ into paying customers.
Important: You can’t send take action type e-mails without delivering some value. Each e-mail that asks for a sale should gently lead into that take action statement that helps send them back to your sales letter for a second or third consideration.
Remember, we spoke about the “decision fence” above. Do not push them over that fence. An overly aggressive or pushy e-mail style will get you in trouble.
What you want to do is pull them over that fence. You achieve this goal by being honest and candid. You’re running a small business... your customers and subscribers are expecting a much more personal experience than the big companies offer. Use that to your advantage.
We have lots of experience working the pushy direct response style of marketing in the past. You get results, but it’s not worth the effort. Eventually it damages your brand, unsubscribe are high and it sets incorrect expectations, which translated means lot’s of refunds.
Pushy e-mail marketing and sales copy exhausts your market quickly.
We have spoken about why you want a campaign, now; let’s shift gear sand chat about the management of it.
Automation is a key component to a successful e-mail marketing campaign.
First, it will help to know we have helped design and trouble shot advanced e-mail marketing management solutions.
Our experience is not limited to internet marketing. We have played large roles is both supporting and developing software that helps marketers like you better manage their business
We know how the e-mail industry works, both from a marketing and technical perspective.
We have worked with aweber.com, constantcontact.com, 1shoppingcart.com, getresponse.com, mailloop.com and many other e-mail management software solutions. We know the strong and weak points in each application.
The top three key features you want in any e-mail marketing solution as follows:
- 99%+ e-mail deliverability rate – this can only be achieved if you use a third party solution like aweber.com
- Delayed auto responders – the ability to automatically send a series of e-mail a given number of days after some sort of action has take place like a new subscription or order.
- E-mail list segmentation – the ability to drill into you list an pull out a smaller more targeted sub group
The technical side of managing an e-mail marketing campaign will take you time to learn. If you are in a situation that allows you to take on an ongoing e-mail marketing management we recommend you try aweber.com (our current favourite solution).
Alternatively, hire us to come in and build you a completely automated e-mail campaign. We can train you how to manage it after its all setup or maintain it for you.
So, give it some thought and if you’re interested in adding this key component to a successful online business contact us for a quote. We hope to hear from you.