Direct mail, its online sibling, e-campaigns and advertising are favourite tools for spreading messages to large potential audiences. Increasingly businesses of all sizes are dipping their toes into social media - attracting attention through Twitter, Facebook business pages, and - soon to come - Google business pages.
While these messages reach a wide audience, that doesn’t automatically mean they’ll convert to large volumes of sales. You can raise the rate of your success by making sure you have thought of everything.
If you're mailing a list or placing an ad, does the product or service you're promoting match your target audience?
Why will people read what you have to say? Are you fulfilling a need or making a tempting offer?
Are you able to turn what you’re offering into strong reasons for people to want to buy? Your products and services may be full to the brim of bells and whistles, but are you making it clear how your those features will benefit your customers?
Don't forget to make it easy for people to take the next step. Lead them through the chain from first bite to more information to call/fill in the form/click to buy clearly and easily.
Showing posts with label email marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label email marketing. Show all posts
Six tips for writing great web links
When you send out an online newsletter, sales letter or invitation, you want your audience to find out more by clicking on a link that takes them to a place where they can find out more and buy.
How much do you think about the positioning and look of your web links?
1. Are they saying something useful? "Click here" gets your reader to the next page, but it's much better to say something like "Download the white paper" or "Buy here". That's a clear signpost to your audience - and to search engines who will give you brownie points for good links and help to raise your search engine ranking.
2. Are you being too clever with your links? As Gerry McGovern, web guru, points out, if the world is used to web links that are blue and underlined, why try to do something different? It may look great graphically, but it's not going to help your reader get to the buying stage if you disguise your links.
3. Don't be mean with your links. Again, Gerry McGovern shows that the same link at the bottom of the page as well as the top can greatly increase the clicks through to the next stage
4. Think about where your links are taking your audience. If you link items in a newsletter to the home page of your web site, and then expect your audience to search your site for the information they want - they won't. Make sure your links go straight to the appropriate point of the right page.
5. Spread your links generously but with discrimination. You can add links to web sites and blogs to your signature on emails and in communities. This is person-to-person marketing and again appealing to search engines. Don't overdo it though - there's always a thin line between a reasonable marketing push and just being irritating to your readers.
6. Test all your links before you go live!
How much do you think about the positioning and look of your web links?
1. Are they saying something useful? "Click here" gets your reader to the next page, but it's much better to say something like "Download the white paper" or "Buy here". That's a clear signpost to your audience - and to search engines who will give you brownie points for good links and help to raise your search engine ranking.
2. Are you being too clever with your links? As Gerry McGovern, web guru, points out, if the world is used to web links that are blue and underlined, why try to do something different? It may look great graphically, but it's not going to help your reader get to the buying stage if you disguise your links.
3. Don't be mean with your links. Again, Gerry McGovern shows that the same link at the bottom of the page as well as the top can greatly increase the clicks through to the next stage
4. Think about where your links are taking your audience. If you link items in a newsletter to the home page of your web site, and then expect your audience to search your site for the information they want - they won't. Make sure your links go straight to the appropriate point of the right page.
5. Spread your links generously but with discrimination. You can add links to web sites and blogs to your signature on emails and in communities. This is person-to-person marketing and again appealing to search engines. Don't overdo it though - there's always a thin line between a reasonable marketing push and just being irritating to your readers.
6. Test all your links before you go live!
Keep in touch with your customers
Once you've made a sale, how do build and maintain a relationship with your customer? Do you wait for them to come back to your site again, or do you invite them to receive offers and information on a regular basis? If you aim to maintain contact, you have opportunities to become a preferred vendor and make further sales.
Despite tight budgets, at least half of marketers are refusing to cut their email marketing budgets, and 40% will actually be increasing their budgets in 2010, according to a study reported in BizReport.
Their reasons? They believe they can improve customer loyalty and increase revenue by keeping in touch with their customers. Of course their email messages need to be good. Appealingly titled to be opened in the first place. Intelligently written to be easy to read and to the point. And full of useful information and offers, so that customers learn that this vendor's messages are worth taking a look.
In fact, many marketers are banking on recipients not only opening and reading their emails, but passing them on. There's a rapidly growing set of buttons that you can add to emails to make them easy to share: Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Reddit and many more. Even a simple Share This and a pop-up email box is a valuable addition to your newsletters. The strength of this viral marketing is that your message gets out to more readers, and that it arrives with the added bonus of being passed on by a trusted friend or colleague.
Despite tight budgets, at least half of marketers are refusing to cut their email marketing budgets, and 40% will actually be increasing their budgets in 2010, according to a study reported in BizReport.
Their reasons? They believe they can improve customer loyalty and increase revenue by keeping in touch with their customers. Of course their email messages need to be good. Appealingly titled to be opened in the first place. Intelligently written to be easy to read and to the point. And full of useful information and offers, so that customers learn that this vendor's messages are worth taking a look.
In fact, many marketers are banking on recipients not only opening and reading their emails, but passing them on. There's a rapidly growing set of buttons that you can add to emails to make them easy to share: Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Reddit and many more. Even a simple Share This and a pop-up email box is a valuable addition to your newsletters. The strength of this viral marketing is that your message gets out to more readers, and that it arrives with the added bonus of being passed on by a trusted friend or colleague.
Making your promotions work harder
When you're advertising, leafleting, sending out direct mail - what do you suggest the reader does next? They could just give you a call, or you could give them a web site address for further information. That could be your general web site, or you could put together a special page - a landing page - that relates to your promotional campaign. How helpful would that be to encouraging sales?
Say you are offering special prices for your products or services for a limited time. You could:
Say you are offering special prices for your products or services for a limited time. You could:
- Add a page to your web site called www.xxxx.com/specialoffer or something similar
- Put this URL on your promotional materials as a "call to action" for more information
- Give extra details about the offer and prices (very important that you expand on you said in your direct mail or advertising - don't just repeat yourself)
- Clearly and obviously explain how to book or buy
- Provide a link to your main web site to explain more about your business
- Include any relevant approved comments from current customers
- Provide links to any other relevant sites - perhaps product suppliers, good review sites or anything else that gives your customers a fuller picture about your offer
- Gather together any data sheets, case studies and more that you can provide as downloads in pdf format
- Provide a Frequently Asked Questions section
Don't put this in your subject line!
The people at SubscriberMail have put together a list of a 100+ words and phrases that will deter your audience from receiving your emails, let alone reading them. As well as the more obvious "As seen on" and "online pharmacy" there are other phrases that you may actually have thought of including in your email marketing:
"Free"
"x% off"
"Amazing"
"Apply now"
"Compare"
"Double your"
"Get"
"Information you requested"
"Lose"
"Now only"
"Open"
"Opportunity"
"Satisfaction"
"Winner"
"Free"
"x% off"
"Amazing"
"Apply now"
"Compare"
"Double your"
"Get"
"Information you requested"
"Lose"
"Now only"
"Open"
"Opportunity"
"Satisfaction"
"Winner"
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