How to Drive Traffic With Email Marketing

Email marketing isn’t just a form of marketing that can drive traffic and revenue to your website. It is part of a greater online business strategy with many components and moving parts that should all have a common goal. Every time you send a series of messages to a target demographic of subscribers, you have the ability to transform a potential customer into a lifelong consumer of your products or services.

Use emails to receive sales, donations, or even send ads and discounts to your target demographic or existing customer base. Whatever it may be, the purpose is to raise brand awareness, build trust and loyalty, and create new and interesting relationships, which in turn drives regular purchasing patterns.

The first trick is to actually get that email list. Then you can find innovative ways to craft those promotional emails to attract a new audience and get your business message across.

Getting Those Email Addresses

Don’t Overcomplicate Things

It is often said that one of the best things you can do in business is to ask for what you want. So, do just that. No hidden gimmicks. Just ask. The best way to do this – in an organized way that gets you the most information possible – is through a form builder. Forms can help you get the right information in a central location like your CRM or e-commerce platform with almost no manual work.

Your forms don’t need to be a hassle or take long to fill out. In fact, a study done by Quick Sprout shows that a form with 3 fields yields a 25 percent conversion rate whereas one with more than that gets about 15 percent.

Provide Incentive

With the increasingly digital world we live in today, instant gratification is an absolute must. Before sending a single marketing email, there needs to be an incentive for potential customers to interact with the brand. Offer incentives and perks to subscribers, whether it be a discount code, promotion, a free piece of (really helpful) content, or an upgrade.

Set this incentive area up on a sidebar or in your calls to action on blog posts and website content on your site. You should also include the offer on all subscribe forms.

Get Social

Tap into your Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts and leverage a following there. Those who follow you are already interested, and they want to hear your voice. Let them sign up directly for your email marketing efforts from your social accounts (Facebook has some great tools for this), or visit a separate landing page. You can also collect emails from your Facebook page with an embedded form.

Be Clear With Your Expectations

A relationship with your consumers should be treated just like any other relationship. Keep communication clear and direct. Let subscribers know exactly what they are getting into when they sign up for your list. With the multitude of marketing, advertising, and PR messages that surround us every day, we as consumers have gotten increasingly wary of handing out our information.

By letting customers know exactly how many emails they can expect to get from you in any given time frame, and what kind of emails they will be, you can prevent them from hitting the “unsubscribe” button any time soon. This can easily be managed by watching your analytics. Engagement typically goes up when you are honest and open about what exactly subscribers can expect to get.

Drive traffic to your website with emails

Be Interactive

YouTube has over a billion users for a reason: people love videos, and many prefer videos to text content. Let’s admit it – we are all victim to getting bored easily and clicking away from boring content. A combination of images and sounds helps keep our ever-decreasing attention span.

Experiment with video messages that can supplement the words in your emails, and have fun with it. Yes, you are running a business and trying to make money. But if you’re not having fun creating the message, consumer’s won’t connect with it. Make sure the messaging is clear with an even clearer CTA directing your email contacts to make the next step.

Cater To Your Consumer

Speak directly to your subscribers by designing personalized emails that cater to their exact preferences and needs. You can do this by first segmenting your email lists by what type of consumer they are and what their interests may be. Then, you can send emails that are more like personalized recommendations rather than mass messages meant to please a large group.

It may be time-consuming, but having the ability to recommend specific products and services with links to purchase in the very email is an unbeatable possibility for higher conversion rates. Cut out some of the personalization work by using an e-commerce or marketing automation tool that will suggest products that match the customer’s past purchases.

Meet Customers On Their Preferred Device

Adapt to the ways customers read your emails. Most people now check their emails on their phone, so be sure that any text, videos, or images in your email are all accessible on smartphones and tablets. Don’t ignore that while many customers may read the email on their phones, they might purchase directly on your desktop app. Marketing automation tools that track customers across different platforms and devices can help you better understand where your customers find you and purchase from you.

Any business, small or large, can increase profits with well-executed and thought out email campaigns. In a world filled with distractions, it is one of the few ways left to find yourself in the palm of your consumers’ hand, both literally and figuratively.

Capitalize on the possibilities by monitoring the email addresses you are sending to, and what the engagement rates look like on one email versus another. Don’t be afraid of a little trial and error. Every consumer is different, and what works for you may not work for another business. So long as you keep track of your analytics and stay consistent with interactive messaging, the possibilities for increased profit are immense with email marketing.