The Top 5 Benefits of Email Marketing by Adrian Mullan
As a small business owner, your success relies on maximising your sales while
minimising your expenses. Email allows you to do both.
A good email marketing campaign can help you:
- Increase Your Sales Conversion - Generate Repeat Sales - Up-sell and
Cross-sell Products and Services - Gain Valuable Feedback from your Visitors -
Drive Web Users to Make Offline Purchases
1. Increase Your Sales Conversion
Regardless of how good your product or service is, in reality most visitors to
your site won't convert into sales on their first visit.
In fact, research indicates that it takes the average shopper up to nine visits
before they'll make a buying decision. In other words, every effective sales
process requires an element of repetition.
Think about the times when you've picked up a new product at the supermarket
after seeing it advertised on TV a dozen times. Or a time where you've visited
a new local restaurant after driving past it every day on your way to work.
That's repetition in action, but unlike a 'bricks-and-mortar' retail store,
there is no 'drive-by' traffic on the Internet. In many cases when someone
clicks on the little 'exit' button in the top right hand corner of the
screen... they're gone forever.
On top of that, there are numerous ways someone can get distracted while
visiting your website. For example, let's say you run a website selling baby
prams.
A mother is surfing through your site and finds a product she likes - but
before she gets a chance to add the item to her shopping basket ....
- The phone rings - The baby starts crying - She accidentally closes off the
web browser - She receives an email that requires attention - A delivery man
rings the door bell
Regardless of the reason - if she leaves the site there's a 90% chance you've
lost the sale... unless you've managed to capture her email address.
If you've got her email address, you get a second chance. You can email her
with:
- Your monthly newsletter - Your free report on 'How to Choose the Perfect
Pram' - Information about new models
The bottom line is, capturing an email address gives you a 'Plan B' and allows
you to follow-up with someone after they've left your website.
2. Generate Repeat Sales
Getting new customers is hard work - it's also really expensive.
In fact, it can be up to eight to ten times more expensive to acquire a new
customer than to sell to an existing one. To acquire new customers, you have to
factor in the cost of advertising, educating and selling to them.
Therefore, a big chunk of the initial sale is simply recouping the costs you've
outlaid to get the customer in the first place.
And while new sales are great, we can't emphasize strongly enough the value of
repeat sales. Too often, businesses focus only on the initial sale and forget
about the lifetime value of a customer.
Keeping in touch with customers on a regular basis via email allows you to
generate repeat sales which can be up to four times more profitable than the
initial purchase.
A good email marketing campaign will increase the frequency of repeat purchases
from your existing customers.
3. Up-sell and Cross-sell Products & Services
"Would you like fries with that?"
McDonalds makes billions of dollars every year from this basic up-sell.
When appropriate, email provides a great opportunity for you to up-sell and
cross-sell your products and services.
For example, if you run a website that sells tennis gear, someone purchasing a
new tennis racket might also be interested in tennis balls and other
accessories.
By using simple email marketing software, it's easy to create a series of email
messages (called 'Auto-Responders') that will automatically follow-up with
offers on tennis balls, tennis shoes, tennis clothes and so on.
If you're selling a service, like dry cleaning, once a customer has made an
initial purchase you can use email to follow up with related services, like
ironing business shirts and stain removal.
This basic technique by itself can easily add an extra 30% to your average
order value and is used by almost all major companies online.
Amazon.com uses up-selling and cross-selling extensively on their site. If you
buy a book about 'home renovations', they'll follow up with a list of other
books on the same topic. Dell Computers offers printers and other accessories
as up-sells to people purchasing computer systems.
4. Gain Valuable Feedback from Your Visitors
Customer feedback is an invaluable tool for any business. This feedback allows
you to determine:
- What products and services to provide - Who to target - What the market is
willing to pay
Email in particular provides your customers with a unique opportunity to give
honest feedback. Unlike face-to-face interaction where people can be shy about
voicing their true feelings, email allows them to get right to the point.
By using email as a feedback tool you can adapt to what the market wants and
improve your business.
5. Drive Web Users to Make Offline Purchases
Surprisingly, email marketing is often a catalyst for web users to go and make
a purchase offline. When surveyed, 59% of email users said that they have made
a purchase offline after receiving an email promotion.
Why? Sometimes a user will find something they want online but they need it
straight away and can't afford to wait for delivery. Other times, the product
might need to be demonstrated (like a treadmill) and they want to see, touch
and feel the item.
If you run a conventional offline business you can use email marketing to drive
foot traffic through your door.
About the Author
Adrian Mullan is the author of 'The Internet Demystified' and founder of
WebDummy.com - a popular Internet
marketing resource for small business owners.
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