We discussed offline marketing opportunities for websites in a previous post. But what about online marketing strategies? As a copywriter, my conversation with a client always includes questions about how clients will market their sites and strategies they should consider.
There’s really no point in creating or re-creating a website unless you are going to market it - and market it actively. Often businesses haven’t thought that far ahead. Yet, the purpose of marketing the website is to drive traffic to the site. Without traffic all the content writing in the world will fall flat. Traffic doesn’t just come… it has to be directed to the website with a series of tactics done regularly over time.
Top strategies include
- Email/ENewsletters and Ezines
- Landing pages,
- Social bookmarking,
- Articles
- Blogging
- Link campaigns
- PPC (Pay Per Click)
- Premium content creation
- Tweeting
Today we will look at Email and ENewsletters or Ezines.
Email and ENewsletters/EZines
Email, when it’s done right can be one of the best ways to build relationships with customers. Your client send out emails to people who have opted in to receive them. The emails should have news, information and special promotions… content that is valuable to their clients. In return your client can grow a loyal following and repeat sales. Many businesses feel sending out regular content-rich email to their customers is time consuming and too much work. It doesn’t have to be. There are many relationship building tools that automate the process… including tracking responses. When it comes to building relationships with your clients, this needs to be your client’s key objective. Newsletters and Ezines do the same thing. A newsletter may be sent physically, though more often it is online. An Ezine is short for Electronic Magazine. As its name suggests it is always online. Email tends to be shorter than an newsletter; in some instances there is no difference.
- Ensure clients offer an incentive for prospects and customers to sign up for communications from them
- Offer regular incentives and keep the quality consistently high
- Ensure there is a way for capturing their email addresses and sending them regular email updates – many client’s may not know about auto-responders or email newsletter software, so, as the copywriter, you will need to educate them on these
- Two of the most well-known are Aweber (the one I use) and Constant Contact
Help clients create content- rich newsletters, emails or Ezines.They should be regular and contain interesting content that’s truly of value to their customers. Many businesses make the mistake of out sending blatant sales pitches, boring corporate updates, uninteresting or unfocused content and a stream of ads. Any one of these is a good way to turn customers off, and have them unsubscribing with annoyance. Email marketing can be a very powerful tool for building relationships and getting repeat sales. And while it may not be difficult to do, building a relationship it takes time. People have to trust you before they do business with you, especially where social media offers them more choices than ever in terms of who they connect and engage with. Encourage your clients to commit the time to their email campaigns and they will see their traffic, conversions and eventually sales – rise.
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Nicky- Your points are right on the mark- no surprise!We use both e-mail and e-newsletters as a way to stay in touch with clients,friends and potentials. We use Constant Contact as our tool and it allows you see who is opening and clicking through on your messages. We also use the survey option to ask industry or timely questions that we then share.Keep up the good work.
Any thoughts on the best open source software options for email?
Thanks for this John.