Email Marketing

Social media is getting a lot of attention these days and for good reason. Social media allows you to instantly communicate with millions of people and their friends. But that doesn’t mean that email marketing is dead. Email may not be the same wild west gold rush of the early days, but there are still a lot of reasons to be collecting email addresses from your website visitors.

Here are five reasons why you should still be collecting email addresses today:

1. Establishing connections – You work hard to attract website visitors and you should be be trying to capture and retain a connection with as many of those visitors as possible. Think about it, if you started a mailing list today and captured just one lead you would be dramatically increasing your ability to establish future communications with that website visitor.
2. Continuing conversations – Remember that your website is just part of an ongoing conversation between you and your website visitors. When you ask for and collect their email address, you are establishing a channel for continued conversation that is much more personal and direct. Now you can talk directly to that person on an ongoing basis even if they don’t visit your website on a regular basis.
3. Sign up offers – One of the most tangible benefits of acquiring email addresses is that you can provide the visitor with a signup offer that is only available to newsletter subscribers as a reward for joining your newsletter. Since that visitor has already shown a willingness to actively share information with you, they are just as likely to respond to an offer during the process. Keep in mind that the offer must be extremely relevant to your visitor and offer them high value to be effective. If done correctly, newsletter signup offers can result in an additional revenue stream for your website that wasn’t being realized before.
4. Repeat traffic – There are numerous benefits to maintaining a newsletter like driving repeat traffic to your website. Your newsletter should offer value to your audience and it should function as a vehicle for transporting readers back to your website. If you’re running impression ads on your website, then a newsletter alone can increase your impressions for the month and there by increase your revenue. If the intent of your email is to make an offer, don’t try to sell in the email. Use the email to invite the visitor back to your website where you can do the necessary selling activities.
5. Promotional Surveys – As part of the ongoing conversation between you and your visitors, surveys offer an effective way for you to learn more about your audience. But remember, people don’t fill out surveys, unless they have a reason that makes it worth their time. One of the most effective ways I’ve seen to combine surveys with mailing lists is to run a give away that requires the completion of a form to participate. On the form you ask for necessary details like name or email address, and then you ask the questions you’d like answered. People are much more likely to answer the questions if they think doing so depends on their being entered in a contest or give away program.

So, if you’re still not sure if you should be collecting email addresses on your website, just consider that taking action because of any one of these reasons will transform your relationship with your website visitors from a passive relationship to an active one, which will help to extend your conversation beyond the one time visit.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com