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Article by: Brad Semp
The world of internet marketing has opened doors for businesses
in more ways than one. In general, the internet has destroyed
traditional boundaries by connecting businesses with client prospects
and potential customers from around the globe. Unfortunately,
the worldwide exposure doesn't necessarily translate to increased
sales.
In order to take advantage of the increased exposure that the
internet offers, the key component to improving your sales revenue
is to convert your site visitors to customers. The percentage
of the visitors to your site that buy your product or services
is referred to as the conversion rate. Understanding, tracking,
and improving your conversion rate should be the goal of any online
business.
For this reason, business owners will place a heavy emphasis
on those items that entice a person to buy. These items often
include but are not limited to website graphics, sales copy, and
sales mechanisms necessary to close a transaction. Although all
are important and vital to the success of your online business,
most businesses will only convert somewhere between 1 - 4% of
visitors (for sales transactions).
To better illustrate this situation, let's look at an example
of a site that receives 1,000 unique visitors per day. We'll assume
a fairly high conversion rate of 4%. This means that 40 of your
visitors are purchasing your product or service and are converted
into a customer. The other 960 visitors leave your site without
a completed sale.
What happens to the 96% of visitors who leave your site without
making a purchase? In most cases, you've lost this person as a
potential customer. Yes, it is true that some will bookmark your
site and return at a later date to make a purchase. However, most
of the visitors to your site will leave without making a purchase.
Are you resigned to the fact that not everyone will make a purchase?
Is there something that you can do to increase your overall conversion
rate of visitors?
The solution is e-mail marketing. E-mail marketing is important
because it provides you with a way to contact many of those who
left your site without making a purchase. How? All you have to
do is entice your site visitors to provide you with their name
and e-mail address. As soon as they do, you will begin to grow
an e-mail list which is often considered to be the single most
important asset in internet marketing.
There are advantages of using e-mail marketing as part of your
business strategy. First, you gain the ability to sell future
products to those people that have purchased from you in the past
(i.e. your customers). This is an extremely effective way to increase
your sales by selling to your "warm market". The first
sale is always the most difficult; subsequent purchases are usually
easier as the customer knows and is familiar with your website
and products.
The second advantage of e-mail marketing works directly to improve
your conversion rate. E-mail marketing enables you to contact
those visitors who did not purchase from you but who did give
you their name and e-mail address. Why is this important? Many
statistics show that people often will not make a purchase until
sometime between the 5th - 8th time that you contact them. Consistent
contact and follow-up with those visitors through e-mail marketing
techniques will help to convert additional site visitors to buying
customers.
Brad Semp is the CEO and founder of iMarketing4, LLC (http://www.iMarketing4.com)
and the CashMap Marketing System. Through Brad's research and
personal usage experience, he endorses ListPing.com (http://www.ListPing.com)
as an integrated, cost-effective solution for growing and managing
your e-mail list.
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