An active e-mail marketing funnel is a great way to increase sales. If you haven’t already developed one, here is why you should.
1. An E-Mail List Starts with Self-Selection
Rather than having to make a lot of cold calls and go around beating the bushes for sales prospects, your sales team can relax and let potential customers come to them. People who sign up to receive your e-mail updates have visited your website, looked around, and decided they have at least some interest in the products and services you are selling. You can help this process along by placing a strong call to action on website pages. You might consider offering clients who sign up a small gift like an e-book or a discount on their purchase.
2. Reach Hundreds with the Click of a Button
Lead nurturing is easy when you’ve built up a strong e-mail list. With practically no effort at all, your sales team can send compelling, persuasive e-mails to everyone on that list, whether it be 20 people or 1000. A word to the wise: it’s fine – in fact, expected – for you to send regular updates, but don’t become a nuisance. If you flood your potential client with emails, they’ll simply opt out of your list. That is not the way you want to see them leave your funnel.
3. E-Mail Allows for Regular Contact
When you use e-mail marketing, you can make sure that your sales prospects hear from you several times a month. This wouldn’t be possible if you were trying to keep in touch with each prospect by phone or with face-to-face contact.
4. Potential Customers Are Re-Exposed to Your Message
Most people don’t decide to purchase a product or service the first time they see it advertised, or even the second time or the third time. In fact 80% of sales are made between the 5th contact and the 12th contact. If you can consistently keep your product or service in front of the prospect’s eyes, you improve your odds of making the sale.
5. In E-Mail Marketing, Customers Stay in the Funnel
Imagine that a potential customer receives an e-mail from you. She or he is mildly interested in a deal you’re offering, so he or she clicks through to your website. Once there, the prospect decides he or she isn’t ready to make a purchase and clicks away. In a phone conversation or a person-to-person interview, the prospect’s decision to walk away would end the sales process. In e-mail marketing, though, the sales prospect remains in the funnel. She or he will get more of your email messages and may, eventually, make a purchase. The only way a prospect leaves the funnel in e-mail marketing is to opt out or to become a customer.
If you don’t already have a strong e-mail program set up, consider developing one as part of your marketing plan. It will allow you to win customers with relatively little effort.