Email Marketing – One Of The Most Successful Online Marketing Techniques
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The internet has changed a lot about the way the world communicates. This is certainly the case on an individual, or personal, level – the adoption on a mass scale of social networking is testament to this. However, on a business level the changes are even more extreme. The internet, and the rapidity of communication that it allows, has fundamentally changed the way in which the world works. This can of course be a good thing. It means reduced costs, faster product launches and even small businesses given the opportunity to reach a customer base, the size of which would not have been previously been possible. However, business owners who fail to embrace the technology and use it to its fullest potential are doomed to be left behind by competitors who understand the importance of traffic generation and email marketing to their online success.
The subject of internet marketing is vast, and the full array of techniques can not be neatly covered in a single article. However, there are certain parts to all internet marketing campaigns that are similar to the product and regardless of the industry. In fact, many of the aspects to online marketing translate well to offline marketing techniques – from product to promotion to the "sales funnel."
A website is of course essential to promoting one's products online. It needs to be well designed and project the image of a professional company. However, in contrast to offline marketing literature, such as the direct mail leaflet, the purpose of a website is often to persuade the customer to buy, and to buy quickly. This means that, when designing a new website, significant thought needs to be put into how well the site will "convert" traffic into customers. This is a difficult task, even for professional marketers. The problem is that the Internet disconnects the salesperson from the potential customer. For a visitor who stumbles across a site for the first time – after after clicking an ad, or perhaps after finding the site in a search engine – an unknown business is illegally to garner a significant level of trust. This means sales from direct traffic are difficult to make in any internet business.
Most online businesses are anxious for their site visitors to sign up for an account, or in some other way provide their email address. The reason for this is that email marketing – where sales can be generated days, weeks or months after the visitor first visited the site – converts at a significantly higher rate than simple website traffic. The reason is psychological: By taking a site visitor's email address and emailing them regularly (sometimes about products and sometimes simply free information related to the products that a business sells), a level of trust is built; the business appears more genuine and conversion rates increase.
Email marketing should be used as one tool in a balanced marketing campaign. However, list building (aka email lead generation) and the consequential relationships this allows a business-owner to cultivate with potential customers who can be one of the most successful online marketing techniques available. Click here to find out about secrets of email marketing which internet marketing gurus will never tell you.
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