Email Marketing - How to Improve Sales
By Michael Richards
In addition, the page itself has to be successfully marketed. Despite all of these efforts, the likelihood of a sale is directly related to how much traffic the site receives. However, getting traffic is costly because the only game in town that works with success is the pay-per-click campaign.
Depending on how effective the PPC campaign is a website owner could end up spending 4 dollars to make 1 dollar. That means a website owner gets to keep $25,000 out of every $100,000 in sales he or she invests in the PPC. Have no doubt; the PPC campaign is a risky investment. However, the email campaign has none of the headaches associated with website sales. In addition, they are far cheaper to manage and implement. This is why it is important to know how improve your sales with email marketing.
The first way to improve your sales with email marketing is to build your list. This will take time to do. Nevertheless, several approaches can be taken to speed up the process. If you own a regular retail establishment then make it part of your policy to gather your customer’’s email address at every opportunity. Free in-store giveaways and special offers is one way to do this. Many of the same methods that are used to gather information for a direct mail campaign can be used to gather information for an e-mail campaign. Of course, another option is to rent or buy the list and then clean it. Buying a list can be a good starting point and can show immediate results. This is a numbers game so the sales will be directly related to how large the list is.
Once you own a qualified list of clients, the next step is to design the email campaign. During the design phase, specific methods are used to write effective copy and compelling titles. The copy and the titles are then coupled with high impact graphics and unique page styles. This combination should be designed to induce a response or a sale. For instance, the graphics and text that are used to market insurance should be different when marketing something like an iPod. The results can be seen when testing. The secret to successful email campaigns is to test and measure the results. When the right combination is discovered, duplicate it. This step is often overlooked but is a very critical part of the process.
Another way to improve your sales with email marketing is to follow up regularly. There is an old phrase in the car business that says the prospect will either “Buy or Die”. This principle can be used when email marketing. Send out regular emails at specific intervals until the prospect either buys something, or dies off the list due to inactivity. Move them to a secondary list that is used less frequently like during holidays. With best practices along with some keen judgment, the email campaign can very lucrative.
About The Author
Michael Richards writes for Extravision (www.extravision.com), a leading UK email marketing company.
