Email marketing accounts for more online sales than any other generated
system according to Forresters, the independent research authority. But
how can email marketing improve your online business?
Keeping in touch with your websites visitors can be difficult without some kind of online discussion forum or blog. However this isn`t always ideal if you are selling physical products, have payrolls to deal with, shipping and of course taxes. So automating some of these processes can be a blessing and this is where autoresponders could become your best friend.
Autoresponders have been around a long time and in being so have evolved to meet the needs of a demanding online business, right down to every laborious and time consuming job.
Every online business big or small needs to have an email marketing strategy in place. Customer retention and follow up, accounts for more sales and business than on first contact. First contact no matter how good your sales page, your reputation as an already respected company or simply a new business, you will need to build up trust with your visitors. Research has shown this can take as long as seven visits before a sale is made. Unless the visitor bookmarks your site in favourites, how else can you keep in contact with them?
By simple use of an autoresponder with pre-written sales messages of your companies products or services inserted. This has two favourable factors, the first is you now have clear contact with your customer and are sure of their interest in your product/service and secondly as the name auto-responder suggests, once these messages are pre-set they will continue to deliver your sales pitch to your visitor 24/7 365 days of the year without you having to do anything else. Another plus to this automation in capturing peoples email address is; should you need to advise people of changes in your product/service you can send a `broadcast` message to alert them of these changes. With the basic cost of an autoresponder as low as $9.95 a month and a more responsive program software as high as $149 a month this is big business and a way of cementing relationships with your visitors essential before a sale is made, you can`t afford to be without one.
Once the person arrives at your site, and goes through your ordering process, another autoresponder kicks in. This autoresponder should send out a receipt, as well as information that will grant the customer access to whatever it is that they have purchased. Another autoresponder message should be sent out after this, thanking the customer for their business, and letting them know about similar or related products or services that they may be interested in.
The beauty of this is that while all of this ordering is going on, and these important customer service emails are being sent, you can be off doing something else! The more automation you can integrate into your online business, the better off you will be.
If you are using your autoresponder to sell a product or service, you must be very careful as to how you approach your potential customer. Few people like a hard sale, and marketers have known for years that in most cases, a prospect must hear your message an average of seven times before they will make a purchase. How do you accomplish this with autoresponders?
It's really quite simple, and in fact, the autoresponders make getting the message to your potential customers those seven times possible. On the Internet, without the use of autoresponders, you probably could not achieve that. Too often, marketers make the mistake of literally slamming the potential customer with a hard sales pitch with the first autoresponder message - this won't work.
You build interest slowly. Start with an informative message - a message that educates the reader in some way on the topic that your product or service is related to. At the bottom of the message, include a link to the sales page for your product. Use that first message to focus on the problem that your product or service can solve, with just a hint of the solution.
Build up from there, moving into how your product or service can solve a problem, and then with the next message, ease into the benefits of your product - giving the reader more actual information with each and every message. Your final message should be the sale pitch - not your first one! With each message, make sure that you are giving the customer information pertaining to the topic - free information.
By offering free information you can build an opt-in list of subscribers for your newsletter or through a squeeze page designed to collect their email. Through email marketing you will be able to build a customer database for your products/services allowing for repeat sales.
Autoresponders have been around a long time and in being so have evolved to meet the needs of a demanding online business, right down to every laborious and time consuming job.
Every online business big or small needs to have an email marketing strategy in place. Customer retention and follow up, accounts for more sales and business than on first contact. First contact no matter how good your sales page, your reputation as an already respected company or simply a new business, you will need to build up trust with your visitors. Research has shown this can take as long as seven visits before a sale is made. Unless the visitor bookmarks your site in favourites, how else can you keep in contact with them?
By simple use of an autoresponder with pre-written sales messages of your companies products or services inserted. This has two favourable factors, the first is you now have clear contact with your customer and are sure of their interest in your product/service and secondly as the name auto-responder suggests, once these messages are pre-set they will continue to deliver your sales pitch to your visitor 24/7 365 days of the year without you having to do anything else. Another plus to this automation in capturing peoples email address is; should you need to advise people of changes in your product/service you can send a `broadcast` message to alert them of these changes. With the basic cost of an autoresponder as low as $9.95 a month and a more responsive program software as high as $149 a month this is big business and a way of cementing relationships with your visitors essential before a sale is made, you can`t afford to be without one.
Once the person arrives at your site, and goes through your ordering process, another autoresponder kicks in. This autoresponder should send out a receipt, as well as information that will grant the customer access to whatever it is that they have purchased. Another autoresponder message should be sent out after this, thanking the customer for their business, and letting them know about similar or related products or services that they may be interested in.
The beauty of this is that while all of this ordering is going on, and these important customer service emails are being sent, you can be off doing something else! The more automation you can integrate into your online business, the better off you will be.
If you are using your autoresponder to sell a product or service, you must be very careful as to how you approach your potential customer. Few people like a hard sale, and marketers have known for years that in most cases, a prospect must hear your message an average of seven times before they will make a purchase. How do you accomplish this with autoresponders?
It's really quite simple, and in fact, the autoresponders make getting the message to your potential customers those seven times possible. On the Internet, without the use of autoresponders, you probably could not achieve that. Too often, marketers make the mistake of literally slamming the potential customer with a hard sales pitch with the first autoresponder message - this won't work.
You build interest slowly. Start with an informative message - a message that educates the reader in some way on the topic that your product or service is related to. At the bottom of the message, include a link to the sales page for your product. Use that first message to focus on the problem that your product or service can solve, with just a hint of the solution.
Build up from there, moving into how your product or service can solve a problem, and then with the next message, ease into the benefits of your product - giving the reader more actual information with each and every message. Your final message should be the sale pitch - not your first one! With each message, make sure that you are giving the customer information pertaining to the topic - free information.
By offering free information you can build an opt-in list of subscribers for your newsletter or through a squeeze page designed to collect their email. Through email marketing you will be able to build a customer database for your products/services allowing for repeat sales.
