BY JANE HURST Getting out there and generating new leads for your business is all well and good, but those leads aren’t going to do muc...
Getting out there and generating new leads for your business is all well and good, but those leads aren’t going to do much good if you aren’t able to close those leads. A smart business owner knows how to get the leads, and how to close them to make sales. It really isn’t as difficult as you might think. In fact, there are many ways that you can generate and close leads. One of the best ways is to use email marketing. Let’s take a look at how you can get more leads, and close more leads, by taking advantage of something that most people use every single day.
1. Set Your Goals
You need to know what you want to get out of your email marketing before you can actually begin. Without having a specific goal, there is no way you can get what you want, because you are not being clear about what you want in the first place. Think about who the emails are being sent to, the need of the email campaign, and when to send the email in order to get the best results. Once you set your goals, it’s time to start the email campaign.
2. Use Graphics
While you don’t want to overwhelm your potential customers, you don’t want to bore them either. A good email campaign includes graphics, video, etc. But, it is still not cluttered or busy. A good video will capture the attention of your readers, and it will help to draw them into your campaign. Be sure to send an HTML and a text version of your email, to make sure that your emails don’t get filtered and end up in the spam box instead of the inbox.
3. Don’t Overwhelm Potential Customers
When people open emails and they are hit right in the face with a bunch of different fonts, graphics, colors, etc., it does exactly the opposite of what was originally intended. It is recommended that you stick with two to three fonts, and keep things simple. Emails should be easy to look at, and not too cluttered. If it is busy, it is going to turn people off, and you won’t get the sales you want.
4. Make the Subject Line Compelling
If you want people to read the email, you need to give them an incentive to do so. This means that your subject line should be very compelling. “Converting subject line is very important. When we were doing email marketing for Opporty Inc. it was pretty tough because of its huge 15 million email database, so we created few subject lines for each subscriber’s category,” said Sergey Grybniak from Clever Solution.
5. Give Something
If you are simply advertising in your email marketing, you are going to lose the interest of potential customers pretty quickly. You need to give them something that they can be interested in, and in the case of email, that something is great content. Give them content that they are interested in, and leave them hanging so they will want to click on the link to learn more. Once they click that link, you are closer than ever to closing the sale.
6. Offer Incentives
A lot of people see email marketing as junk mail, so yours needs to stand out to get noticed. Offer incentives that will entice people into opening the email, and make those incentives so great so you can close the sale. For instance, you may want to offer a free product, a great discount, etc. This will keep people from deleting your emails, or marking them as spam so no more of your emails can get through at all.
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Jane Hurst is a writer, editor and avid traveler from San Francisco.
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