If you run a small business, and if you’re not currently experiencing the levels of success with your website that you would like to, or if you’re just starting out & you want to be sure that you pull out all the stops & succeed online with your business, then the missing link for your business is quite likely to be email marketing – also known as list building & marketing, but NOT to be confused with SPAM.
Many small business people ignore email marketing as it sounds like a dirty word – but they do so at their peril, for reasons we will explain shortly.
First of all – lets get something straight, we’re NOT talking about spam!
What is the different between genuine, legal & effective email marketing and SPAM?
I can answer this in 2 very short words: “Opt In!”
While this really isn’t the correct technical definition of what makes SPAM, (because in theory you can send non opt-in mail without it being spam) it’s not the technical definition which matters, it’s the recipients definititian which matters.
Techically you can buy an email list, and mail to it without it being spamming – however if you receive a marketing email from someone that you haven’t requested to receive emails from, then as far as you’re concerned, it’s SPAM – and you’re not likely to become a client of sender – and that’s what matters.
Ask yourself this – do you respond to marketing emails from people you’ve not requested to receive emails from? If the answer to this question is YES, then you’re incredibly rare!
So we’re talking about opt in marketing – someone actually asks you to send them emails. This is worlds apart from spamming.
Avoid email marketing at your peril
I said I would explain why it’s so dangerous to avoid email marketing – the answer is, converstion rates…
Web conversion rates are usually incredibly low, so low that your traffic levels as a small business, will probably not make any real difference to your sales – so if you were hoping that your website would grow to become a major source of sales or enquiries, then the chances are that it won’t, not without email marketing. Whether you class a conversion as an enquiry, or an online sale – websites are statistically pretty awful at converting. The reason for this, is competition.
How many other websites are there which are supplying the same or similar products / services? The chances are that the answer to this is : “LOADS!”
Unless you happen to be in a very rare & incredible niche which has very little competition and great search volumes, the chances are that your conversion rates are going to be small. On average, sales conversion rates are in the region of 0.1% – 0.5%.
This means that to make one sale, you need between 200 – 1000 visits!!
If we go for the middle ground & assume conversion rates of 0.25%, you need roughly 400 visits to convert into a sale. If you’re paying on average 50p per click for PPC traffic, then this means you’re paying £200 to make one sale. If you make an average net profit of £30 – then, oops!!
This is the reason most small businesses fail online!
Not enough traffic + too small conversion rates = miserable website performance.
Most small business websites just don’t generate the kind of traffic levels to sustain a business, or to make any noticeable positive impact on sales.
This is where email list building & marketing comes in.
Converting sales from web pages vs. converting sales from list building & marketing, is very similar to the difference between rod fishing & net fishing.
In fact a more realistic analogy, is that attempting to convert (to sales, or to enquiries) from web pages is like sitting on a boat in the middle of the sea with a fishing rod – while email list building & marketing is like using a net, and then transferring the fish to small tank to be fished out with much less effort & patience required.
Building an email list building & marketing system into your website, can help you to squeeze out much higher cnversion rates – and therefore more profit.
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Unfortunately – all of our web marketing consultancy services are full to capacity, including our Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) consultancy services!
We get so many client referrals, and we lose so few clients – that we cannot take on any new marketing consultancy clients at this time. We are of course able to continue to offer fantastic quality, search engine friendly website design, at very competitive prices – however all of our consultancy services are maxed out.
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If you have heard great things about the quality of our consultancy services, and you would like to wait until we’re able to help you – please simply enter your name & email below – and we will send you an email whenever we are able to take on any more consultancy work.
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