Over the coming days, I’m going to show you how you can use email marketing software to turn your website visitors into subscribers, and then turn those subscribers into paying customers. I’ll cover topics like:
- How to effectively collect email subscribers
- Easy sources of email content that you can use to quickly build a powerful email campaign
- How to make your email messages more personal
- How to measure the success of your email campaign, and ways you can improve on that success
I will be using Aweber for the demos. If you have an Aweber account, you’ll be able to follow right along. I’ve been using AWeber for my email marketing needs for quite some time now. I’ll be sharing a lot of the software’s benefits with you in the posts to come.
If you don’t have an Aweber account, you can try them out for a month for only a dollar. If after a month you decide that the email marketing tools aren’t what you’re looking for, let Aweber know and they’ll refund your money with no questions asked. Yes, they will refund $1.
Does Your Website Try To Hit a Homerun… But Strike Out
Let’s suppose for a minute that you’ve set up a website or blog to market your product or service. You’ve used a combination of tactics like search, paid advertising and word of mouth to drive traffic to your site. You’ve put great content on your site explaining to visitors how you can help them.
And yet, the sales aren’t rolling in (at least, not the way you want them to). Your phone isn’t ringing off the hook. Online sales trickle in, but you don’t want a trickle — you want a flood! There are many possible culprits for disappointing sales figures, and today I’d like to address one common culprit….. your own website.
My Website? But My Website’s Great!
Your website is great… at doing certain things:
- Serving as a “virtual storefront” where people can see what you have to offer
- Hosting SEO friendly content so that you can get traffic from Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.
- Creating a brand/image for your company and products
But while those things are important, there’s one major flaw that plagues many otherwise great websites.
They Only Take One Shot At The Sale
Tell me if this sounds familiar: you’re at your computer, doing some research on a purchase you intend to make in the next month or so. You come to Joe Business Owner’s site, and he has a perfect solution: it does what you want, it’s just about the right price, he’ll ship it to your door. However, you’re just not ready today. After all, you want to shop around some, and you need this in the next month or so, not necessarily today or tomorrow.
What Happens When The First Shot Fails?
You pass on Joe’s offer, and tell yourself that you’ll come back in a few weeks and order from Joe then. But you lose his website address, or you forget about him (hey, it’s not your fault, you’re a busy person!).
You end up buying from another business. Joe’s competition. But what about Joe? You were *so close* to buying from him! He’s outta luck. He had his shot when you went to his site, and he didn’t make the sale. Too bad for him. Joe relied on his website to hit a home run for him… but it struck out.
Email Gives You Multiple Chances To Close
What Joe *should have done* is offer to send you some more information by email. Let’s say he does that instead. While you still don’t buy anything from him that day, you *do* take him up on his offer of a free consumer guide – and you give him your email address to get it.
You read it and realize that Joe really knows his stuff and he seems like a stand-up guy, too. The kind you like doing business with. He even checks in with you by email to see if you have any questions for him, or to tell you more about how he can help you.
When you are ready to buy, guess whose website address (and email address!) you have right in your inbox? Guess who you trust? Guess who you’re going to purchase from?
Just like a good baseball team, Joe knows that a bunch of hits (emails) lead to more success than the occasional home run. He eventually sold you, even though his website couldn’t do it on the first try.
Is It Hard to Put Together an Email Campaign?
Unlike poor Joe, you know that your website doesn’t have to sell your prospects on the first visit to be successful, because your email campaign can close them afterwards. But you might not be sure if you’ll be able to create an effective email campaign. The good news? Building your first email campaign is a snap!
What’s Next?
Not sure you can come up with good emails like Joe and turn your own visitors into customers? Don’t worry. Tomorrow, I’ll show you the number one place to get great message content, and a few others that can be handy as well. In the mean time, go start your $1 Aweber test account.