It may seem to you that lately all small business marketing and Internet marketing how-to sites and blogs are focused on the newest social media trend. Me too! My friend Joel Williams, The Blog Tech Guy, reminds us–not so fast. In his guest post below, Joel explains that as a small business owner, you can benefit from sending regular email updates to share new product and service information and keep your most loyal subscribers and buyers engaged.
by Joel Williams, The Blog Tech Guy
These days, more and more organizations are getting online, with the result that readers are at risk of being bombarded with information overkill. At every turn, people using the World Wide Web are encouraged to sign up to new communications, follow RSS feeds and subscribe to newsletters, e-magazines and e-mail updates.
All this information can lead people to feel a little jaded, resulting in potential customers becoming wary of giving out their contact details in order that businesses can keep them updated with news, promotions and events relating to their organization. This means that it is harder than ever before for companies to engage their audience through targeted marketing, and make sure that their customers are kept in the loop when it comes to offering new products and services.
Scheduling your ongoing communications
As a small business owner, the chances are that your marketing strategy for your firm does have some element of monthly communication to it. Having a set schedule for providing updates helps you to stay focused, keeps your customers engaged and gives you a regular vehicle for updating people about what you are up to. All of these bring benefits such as keeping your firm at the forefront of people’s minds when they make purchasing decisions, and support you to keep on top of your communications and provide timely, relevant updates to those of your customers whom you are the most keen to keep on board.
This obviously leads to a dilemma. You don’t want to give up on monthly updates and e-newsletters, as you recognize that they still hold value in our world of online communications. At the same time, you need to find innovative ways of getting around the information overload which affects most people who sign up to things, online. The following tips are designed to help you overcome the negativity many people feel when they are asked to subscribe to a new site, and make sure your customers are happy to be kept informed on a regular basis.
Increasing newsletter sign-up without alienating your readership
The first thing to remember when you consider people signing up for your newsletter, is that no-one will bother unless you can bring them some demonstrable value. To this end, it makes a lot of sense to offer people an incentive to sign up. Providing a free download of a useful product helps people to appreciate the benefit which joining your subscription list can offer. When they download your product, you can ask them if they mind automatically being registered. Most people don’t mind joining you if you have given them something of use, so this is an ideal way of encouraging uptake of your communications.
In essence, this incentive can be viewed as a positive bribe. Whether you offer a free course, e-tips, or a PDF, or even discount vouchers for use against future purchases, people will respond well to knowing that they have a mutual agreement with you.
Take simple steps to encourage people to join you
Another thing which really helps may seem obvious, but many site owners forget ñ make your opt-in highly visible. If people can’t find out where to sign up in a matter of seconds, they simply won’t bother.
If you are not sure how to go about encouraging people to join you, check out some of the plug-ins that are available for your site. Products such as Pop-up Domination and Subscribers Magnet will help you to add forms to your site easily, making it a very simple process for people to identify how to join up to your offers and receive communications from you.
If you get the opportunity, another useful trick for encouraging subscribers is to test your options. If your provider allows you to, undertake split tests to see which method for encouraging uptake works the best, or use Google Website Optimizer to test different headlines, colors and layouts to establish which one performs best. This gives you your blueprint for future use, making it easier than ever before to encourage an outstanding uptake from your customers, and leaving you free to communicate all of your news, product updates and offers.
You can read Joel’s blog here.
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