Follow Up On Your Visitors & Maximize Your Sales

Follow Up On Your Visitors & Maximize Your Sales
Copyright 2002 lessworkmoremoney.com
By Armand Melanson

You know the annoying popup windows that show up when you
arrive or leave many websites? They offer a free
subscription to a newsletter or a free eBook in return for
your name & email. Those popups are responsible for up to
75% of the income generated by most web sellers.

Let me explain how: Let's say you've got a site selling
home security products. Even if you have targeted traffic &
powerful marketing copy, you won't likely sell to more than
2 out of every 100 1st time visitors. That's a conversion
rate of 2%. That means that 98% of your visitors did not
buy - unless you do something about it, you will never hear
from them again.

Instead of letting them walk away forever, you offer them a
subscription to a newsletter filled with helpful info on
home security topics. You will likely capture the name &
email address of 10%-20% of 1st time visitors this way.
These 10%-20% of 1st time visitors are the most valuable
source of income you will have because a good number of
them will actually buy one or more of your products in the
future.

Once you have them on your e-mailing list, you will send out
helpful emails at regular intervals. These emails will
build trust between you & the prospects and give them a
good feeling about who you are. They will personalize you &
make buying easy because you have built the credibility
that often prevents 1st time visitors from buying.

Of course, you need to provide legitimate value in your
newsletter. But you're an expert in home security, so you
can probably bang off several helpful articles in a few
hours.

Over the course of the next few weeks, your newsletters
will include subtle reminders about the great products you
are selling & may even offer special discounts to
subscribers only. It may take up to 7 contacts between you
& your prospects before they buy.

So let's do the math. Assuming you get 4000 unique
visitors/month, your product sells for $30 and you convert
2% of your traffic:


NO NEWSLETTER

2% of 4000 visitors = 80 buyers

80 buyers x $30 = $2400 in sales

===>TOTAL SALES = $2400<===


WITH NEWSLETTER

2% of 4000 = 80 buyers

80 buyers x $30 = $2400 in sales

AND

15% of 4000 = 600 email subscribers

15% buy within 1 month ( 600 x 15% = 90)

So 90 buyers + 80 buyers is 170 buyers

170 buyers x $30 = $5100 in sales

===>TOTAL SALES = $5100<===


Sales doubled simply by spending a few hours writing
helpful articles on a topic you know plenty about. Even if
you didn't know anything about a particular subject
related to what you are selling, you could quickly learn
everything there is to know about it on the Internet. Then
you strip it down to a few short newsletters. Anyone can do
it.

And we haven't even talked about the lifetime value of
these extra buyers - a portion of them will be repeat
buyers whose repeat purchases will dwarf the sales revenue
you get from the initial sales. All of this because they
subscribed to a simple newsletter.

The technical side of running an opt-in email newsletter is
pretty straight forward. There is common JavaScript to
have the popup appear when your site loads, as well as
create the cookie which will be used to prevent re-popping
up during the same visit.

When your visitor submits the form data, they are added
to your email list database. Since most web startups
don't have a dedicated programmer guy, you should
outsource the management of your mail list to someone else.

Several companies offer newsletter management services for
under $20/month.

http://freeautobot.com/
http://www.getresponse.com/
http://www.aweber.com/
http://www.postmasteronline.com/
http://rapidreply.net/


The newsletter management software is really a beefed up
autoresponder that automates the subscribe, un-subscribe
and mailout process. These autoresponders can be setup in a
timed series so that an email goes out at the time of
subscription, then another goes out 15 days later, and so
on.

Once the process is in place, it is completely automated.
All you have to do is post the newsletter articles to the
autoresponder software, and watch your subscriber base
and your sales grow.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Armand Melanson is an emarketing
consultant & author. For free marketing tips & articles you
can re-use, visit him at http://lessworkmoremoney.com
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