Saturday, May 20, 2006

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.

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