We take a look at 5 massive benefits to email marketing that help build trust, boost conversions and help you grow your business.
This is part 6 of a 6-part series on increasing sales through your website by improving its look and feel.
A Massive Trend With Opportunities You Don’t Want To Miss
I want to focus on something that’s extremely important and I can’t help but be amazed at how MANY companies miss this great opportunity. I want to look at email marketing.
Sometimes I feel that most companies are in the stone age. I know that’s a little rude, but it really does feel like that. How are not all companies using email marketing?
We live in a digital world. Wherever I look I see people on smart phones, tablets, devices and it’s all digital. In fact they’re connecting up more and more cars to the internet, TV’s, and anything else that can be connected!
If we took all of our digital information and stored it on iPad tablets and then stacked them, the stack would reach 2/3rds of the way to the moon! Statisticians estimate that in a few years, there will 6.6 stacks to the moon!
Now that’s exponential growth.
What The Trend Is Doing
This trend is not changing but growing exponentially.
This brings both challenges and opportunities.
The challenge is keeping up as a business and as well as capturing people’s attention in this busy environment.
Now, back to the opportunity that companies are missing…
You’ve got a loyal following of customers and users and you’re probably not communicating with them enough.
We’ve prepared a direct comparison between email marketing and social medias. Make sure you check the detailed infographic!
What Do Your Customers Want?
- They want to hear from you.
- They want to know what you’re up to.
- They want to know if you’ve got any new products or services they can buy.
- They want to know more about the features of your products.
- They want to know of any great discounts or promotions you’re running.
- They want to learn more from you.
How Do You Solve This?
There are a few ways and one of the easiest is to use email marketing!
This can take many forms and one of the most common and easiest to implement is to have a regular newsletter! I know you’ve seen them but are you using one?
Ideally you should have a weekly roundup of what’s been happening, but I do realize that some companies are a little small to do this.
If you’re not doing it weekly you need at LEAST a MONTHLY roundup and that can be the start of your email marketing campaign.
What Do People Need From You?
People need to trust you before they will buy from you.
Unless you’re selling drugs and they’re addicted and not thinking straight, they need to trust you!
So how do we build this trust?
You have to give them knowledge, direction and information and you do this through email marketing.
You need to focus on one new aspect of your niche every week and create something that your users will benefit and learn from. You’ll be the teacher and they’ll be the students.
This is the reason we have articles like this on Lab41. We like to share our knowledge with you and hopefully you’ll trust us enough to find out more about what we do.
EMAIL MARKETING IS THE FASTEST WAY TO BUILD TRUST.
You might think email marketing is hard, but it just needs a little creativity.
If they are already buying from you, whatever your industry, they want to know more about your products/services.
If you’re stuck for ideas, look at the how, what, where and why and answer these questions.
For example ‘how can a user use a product/service better’ or ‘why does a product/service work so well’ or ‘where to use the product/service’ and then expand on these.
Include this content on your website for everyone to see.
All this content will build authority for your users as well as the search engines. (We’ve discussed this previously!)
Users Are Not Checking Your Site For New Content
So you will need to TELL them about this new information. Send them a newsletter so they can see there’s new content.
How Do You Solve This?
BRING THEM BACK TO YOUR WEBSITE AND YOUR BRAND!
Do this as often as possible without spamming them. Keep your brand in their thoughts. The more they see your brand and what you’re offering the more they will buy.
Fullstop. Period. Easy as that.
Are You Doing This?
This is such an easy way to boost your business. I really hope you’re already doing this!
If you haven’t done so already at least get started with a monthly newsletter showcasing your new products/services or offers or anything else you want to share.
Don’t be one of those companies that’s living in the stone age.
How To Make Money For Jam From Your Customers
You’ve been in business a while so you don’t need me to tell you that it’s much easier to keep a customer than find a new customer.
The same applies to earning more money. Somebody who has bought from you before is much more likely to buy from you than somebody they haven’t heard of.
Find out more about this in:
How To Grow Your Business Through Your Website By 200%+!
You do the same and so do I. Do you use a new doctor or dentist for every visit? No. You use someone you trust.
How To Use This To Your Advantage
Firstly, if a customer doesn’t know what you offer they won’t turn to you when they need to buy it.
Secondly, customers are inundated with information and you can’t just spam them with a monologue about your products/services.
You wouldn’t listen if someone said to you ‘we offer this, and that, and that, as well as that, and that, as well as that other thing, oh, we also offer this, then there’s that….’
Not good for business.
What You Need To Do
You need to mix up some great information that subtly implies the use of your product in your email marketing campaigns.
Let’s Look At a Few Examples
If you’re a recruitment agent you might do a series on how to prepare for an interview and then mention you often help people find jobs.
If you’re a hair salon, you might write a series showcasing the pros and cons of different hair products and then mention you have a special on hair products.
If you’re an engineering company, you might do a series on how to use a particular part that the customer has bought, and then mention some great extras that add value.
You’ve got to give them knowledge and help and you’ve just got to get a little creative!
Then, you’d send them a weekly roundup of what you’ve covered. What do they do? (assuming you’ve given something interesting!)
They then visit your website and guess what? They’re right there, prepped and ready to do business with you. This really is money for jam.
How To Avoid Losing Customers To Your Competitors
Take a moment and think about what happens behind the scenes when a customer needs something?
They woke up this morning and thought ‘hey, I really need to get this sorted.’
What’s Their Next Thought?
Their very next thought is ‘who can assist me with this?’
Maybe they don’t know that you also offer a product/service that can assist them, they’re now going to go looking for someone who can.
What Happens Next?
Firstly, you’ve just lost out on that business.
Secondly, they might stop buying from you because the new supplier has offered them a better price or told them their product is better than yours.
Maybe your customer keeps their customers informed and stays in touch and YOUR CUSTOMER now goes to the competitor first.
How It Could Have Been Avoided
If you’d been keeping contact with them through a regular newsletter and they knew you offered what they were looking.
If they’d just know you offer it, they would have come to you in the first place!
Not only would you have more business but you wouldn’t risk losing you business from the customer!
Cruel isn’t it?
Really, this is so important that I can’t emphasize it enough.
What’s The Impact On Your Site?
How many customers have you lost because you haven’t kept regular contact?
Now, work out what’s the cost to you of those lost customers?
For most companies this runs into the thousands of dollars.
You really should get this resolved.
Hopefully, you’ve already got this sorted. If not, don’t you think it’s time you did something about it?
5 Gigantic Benefits Of Building Trust Through Email Marketing
As a brief recap I really need to ensure that you understand that keeping in touch with your customers, has some serious benefits.
- Builds trust with them.
- Creates familiarity with your brand.
- Creates awareness of what other products/services you offer.
- Helps you cross-sell and up-sell.
- Helps your grow your business easily.
What’s The Consequence Of Not Using Email Marketing?
What’s the consequence of behaving like you’re in the stone age?
- FIRSTLY – customers forget who you are.
- SECONDLY – they’ll have to search for new providers.
- THIRDLY – they’ll start trying out competitors.
What’s The Cost?
THIS COSTS COMPANIES MILLIONS EACH YEAR!
Pretty serious stuff. I’m sure you don’t want this to happen to you?
We’ve made it so easy to grow your business and create a level of trust and professionalism your customers are expecting in this day and age.
It took us over a year trying to work out an easy to use solution to this problem and we now are offering it to our clients at an affordable rate.
We’ve had many people say we should increase the price of this app, but for now, we’ll keep it as it is.
Your Next Step
There are quite a few tools that can help you with this, but we’ve found many are quite expensive and complicated to configure. If you need a little help integrating this, please take a look at our,
What’s Next?
You’re reached the end of our website optimization series:
Why not view some more Lab41 Resources or view the next series?
