Follow Up On Your Visitors & Maximize Your ... 2002 ... By Armand Melanson You know the annoying popup windows that show up when ... or leave many ... They off
Follow Up On Your Visitors & Maximize Your Sales Copyright 2002 lessworkmoremoney.com By Armand Melanson
You know the annoying popup windows that show up when you arrive or leave many websites? They offer a free subscription to a newsletter or a free eBook in return for your name & email. Those popups are responsible for up to 75% of the income generated by most web sellers.
Let me explain how: Let's say you've got a site selling home security products. Even if you have targeted traffic & powerful marketing copy, you won't likely sell to more than 2 out of every 100 1st time visitors. That's a conversion rate of 2%. That means that 98% of your visitors did not buy - unless you do something about it, you will never hear from them again.
Instead of letting them walk away forever, you offer them a subscription to a newsletter filled with helpful info on home security topics. You will likely capture the name & email address of 10%-20% of 1st time visitors this way. These 10%-20% of 1st time visitors are the most valuable source of income you will have because a good number of them will actually buy one or more of your products in the future.
Once you have them on your e-mailing list, you will send out helpful emails at regular intervals. These emails will build trust between you & the prospects and give them a good feeling about who you are. They will personalize you & make buying easy because you have built the credibility that often prevents 1st time visitors from buying.
Of course, you need to provide legitimate value in your newsletter. But you're an expert in home security, so you can probably bang off several helpful articles in a few hours.
Over the course of the next few weeks, your newsletters will include subtle reminders about the great products you are selling & may even offer special discounts to subscribers only. It may take up to 7 contacts between you & your prospects before they buy.
So let's do the math. Assuming you get 4000 unique visitors/month, your product sells for $30 and you convert 2% of your traffic:
NO NEWSLETTER
2% of 4000 visitors = 80 buyers
80 buyers x $30 = $2400 in sales
===>TOTAL SALES = $2400<===
WITH NEWSLETTER
2% of 4000 = 80 buyers
80 buyers x $30 = $2400 in sales
AND
15% of 4000 = 600 email subscribers
15% buy within 1 month ( 600 x 15% = 90)
So 90 buyers + 80 buyers is 170 buyers
170 buyers x $30 = $5100 in sales
===>TOTAL SALES = $5100<===
Sales doubled simply by spending a few hours writing helpful articles on a topic you know plenty about. Even if you didn't know anything about a particular subject related to what you are selling, you could quickly learn everything there is to know about it on the Internet. Then you strip it down to a few short newsletters. Anyone can do it.
And we haven't even talked about the lifetime value of these extra buyers - a portion of them will be repeat buyers whose repeat purchases will dwarf the sales revenue you get from the initial sales. All of this because they subscribed to a simple newsletter.
The technical side of running an opt-in email newsletter is pretty straight forward. There is common JavaScript to have the popup appear when your site loads, as well as create the cookie which will be used to prevent re-popping up during the same visit.
When your visitor submits the form data, they are added to your email list database. Since most web startups don't have a dedicated programmer guy, you should outsource the management of your mail list to someone else.
Several companies offer newsletter management services for under $20/month.
The newsletter management software is really a beefed up autoresponder that automates the subscribe, un-subscribe and mailout process. These autoresponders can be setup in a timed series so that an email goes out at the time of subscription, then another goes out 15 days later, and so on.
Once the process is in place, it is completely automated. All you have to do is post the newsletter articles to the autoresponder software, and watch your subscriber base and your sales grow.
---------------------------------------------------- ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Armand Melanson is an emarketing consultant & author. For free marketing tips & articles you can re-use, visit him at http://lessworkmoremoney.com ----------------------------------------------------
