So, did that get your attention? You’re probably thinking something along the lines of “I get tons of unwanted email spam all the time and these people are telling me that email is underutilized?”. Yes, we are and here’s why. Most companies simply neglect their user base or they oversell – either way, they are not effectively using email.
A very large percentage of businesses, even Internet marketing businesses and direct response businesses – two that you would think would have this down to a science – still neglect their users. First of all, many sites do not have a way of capturing their visitor’s name and email address and those who do, do it very poorly: by utilizing a simple “Newsletter” link and leaving it at that. The percentage of people who opt in will be minuscule if you’re not doing it right. The right way to get a visitor to join your email list is to (a) have a clear call to action and (b) compel him or her to want to join with an enticing offer. Many sites fail miserably when it comes to both of these.
Having a “clear” call to action is extremely important. “Join My Newsletter” is also a call to action but a clear one can only be achieved if you have a site designed around a single purpose, that purpose being getting a person to opt into that list. How do you do that? Well, the design has a lot to do with it. If you have very “busy” site with tons of colors and graphics, it is a visual overload for your customers and they won’t even notice your request to join the mailing list. But if, instead, you purposely design an elegant yet semi-mono color and neutral site and then have a bright orange (proven through millions of dollars in research to be the best converting color to use) button for your call to action positioned above the fold (the top portion of your screen that you can see without having to scroll), you will see dramatically different response rates. Furthermore, don’t call it a newsletter! Every site on the Internet has a “newsletter” – that’s not unique, not compelling. Be creative.
Next comes creating a compelling offer. You do that by enticing the user to join your list by giving something away. This is extremely simple and effective, but again, most people miss the buss when it comes to this aspect. Instead of a single “Newsletter” link, how do you think that a “Top 10 eMail Marketing Mistakes” guide with an orange “Download Here” button would do? Much, much better! Don’t even put the email capture box on this page. Have the download link take them to a second page which is a sales page showing them all of the benefits that they will be able to take advantage of and then ask for their email address there. Simple but highly effective!
Now that you have them on your list, it’s time to move on to the next step. And, unfortunately, the second part is terribly handled by most companies. Everything you do should have a reason behind it. The reason to get them on a list is to be able to sell products or services to them. However, email selling is not very well understood by most Internet marketers. Nobody wants to be bombarded by endless “buy this, buy that” emails – and that is what most Internet marketers do because it is what they’ve been taught to do by the so called “gurus”. The problem is that it only works for them because they have massively large lists and are getting lots of new subscribers every day, so they really don’t care about losing a bunch. The proper way is to educate first and sell afterwards. Sending three emails without any promotion whatsoever, other than perhaps a one liner discreetly under the signature at the end of the post, where the purpose is to “prepare” the subscriber is always smart: offer good advice, maybe even something to download and so on. Then in your fourth email, go ahead and give them something to buy. But do it casually as if it were not the intention of the message but merely a “oh, by the way” comment attached to an educational email.
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