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Double Your Online Sales With A Sure-Fire E-Mail Marketing Strategy
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Jim Moore
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Dec 22, 2002 21:28 PST
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Double Your Online Sales With A Sure-Fire E-Mail Marketing Strategy
By Szymon Grabowski
Try to recall any business related inquiry you received recently that
didn't close a sale. Once you delivered the first marketing message, did
you send further information?
Many will answer 'no', believing that follow up marketing is simply a
waste of time.
Your potential customers may simply forget about your initial message or
they simply may have a bad day. Don't let them slip of your grasp! Why
let them take their business elsewhere, when they could be your valuable
customers?
Did you know that it often takes 5 contacts before a sale is closed? It
means that if you don't follow up with your prospects at least five
times after sending your initial message, you are actually losing your
marketing dollars!
If you contact your prospects 6 times, your conversion rate should break
down as follows:
First contact 44%
Second contact 16%
Third contact 14%
Fourth contact 12%
Fifth contact 8%
Sixth contact 3%
This means that over 50% of the overall conversion is generated by
follow up messages!
Let me tell you about my first experience with follow up marketing. A
while ago, I started a simple competition giving my visitors a chance to
win a weekend for two in a hotel. They simply had to send me a feedback
form and join my mailing list. You would be surprised how many new leads
I got this way! I built a mailing list with their e-mail addresses and
followed up with them. This resulted in a healthy 50% increase in book
sales.
I've discovered that one method of follow up e-mail marketing works
especially well - treating all potential customers individually. This
can be achieved by sending them personalized first message and following
up with them at preset time intervals. You can start with a manual
processing of all inquiries, but you would be probably better off
getting an automatic, follow up autoresponder system (there are a couple
available on the market right now). Either way you will have to develop
your follow up messages and set correct time intervals.
Take a break now. Get yourself a piece of paper and a pencil. Write down
your product or service's benefits and potential uses. This will be a
great a help when you start working on your follow up messages.
Start with your existing sales letter as your first message. Modify it
if you wish. Consider making it a bit shorter - don't overwhelm your
prospects.
Your second message should be sent a day after initial contact. Provide
more information, more details and - most importantly - more BENEFITS.
Maybe you could write a couple paragraphs and include a free report or
an article on your area of expertise? Your prospects will appreciate
that and your sales won't drop either!
Your next two follow up messages should act as powerful reminders sent
between one or two days apart. It's now or never! If you don't sell your
product or service in these messages, there is a fat chance that you
never will. Mention more benefits, special offers, free trials - just
make them buy!
Final follow up messages (fifth and further contacts) should be sent
with much more time in between them. Everything below 5 days could annoy
your potential customers. Consider a week. Briefly describe your product
or service again (as your prospects might have forgot - it's been a long
time after all!) and stress out the most important benefits and
potential uses. Chances that you are going to close the sale are getting
slim Ask your prospects why they haven't bought from you and whether
they have any questions.
I hope that this article will help you to develop a system of following
up with your leads. Once you have it - stick to it!
Best of luck and now get going with it!
Szymon Grabowski
e-mail: in-@GetResponse.com
WWW: http://www.getresponse.com/
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