Ecommerce Website Owners: Are You Leaving Money On The Counter?
By: Robin Porter -
Own an ecommerce website? Do you have a mailing list?
If not, youre potentially leaving a lot of money on the
counter.
Keeping in touch with your past customers and visitors, is one of
the easiest and cost effective methods of increasing your website
sales. You simply must have a mechanism to collect the email
addresses of both buyers and browsers alike.
Collecting buyers email addresses is a no brainer after all you
need to send them confirmation details, receipts etc. Just make
sure you ask their permission to keep them up to date on future
special offers.
Collecting visitor details is a bit trickier, and you must offer
some kind of incentive in return for them handing over their
valuable email address. Here are several ways:
A discount voucher off their first order
The amount you are prepared to offer will depend on the profit
margin in your business, and the drawback is you may only get the
email addresses of people who were going to purchase anyway.
A competition to win one of your products.
Do make sure you are honest and pick a winner put past winner
details on your site to emphasise this
An insiders buyers guide
If you offer technical products that can be tricky to understand
such as electronics, audio-visual etc, then write a short guide
Special reports or tips guides
If you sell golf equipment, search for articles on golf tips
online, obtain the authors permission and compile them into a PDF
report.
Managing your list
Depending on what ecommerce system your website is based on, you
may already have the ability to manage email lists. If not, use a
list management service such as Aweber (www.aweber.com), which
allows you to set up autoresponder sequences, multiple lists and
send HTML emails.
Which brings me nicely to the next *must* . . . send HTML
emails!
HTML emails are the ones full of images and graphics, rather like
webpages as opposed to plain text emails.
Why? They are far more eyecatching, which is essential given the
increasing amounts of email we get every day. You stand a better
chance if you include images of your products after all a picture
is worth a thousand words, right?
(the only exception to this is people selling non tangible products
or services - for example, information products usually work better
in text emails.)
What should you communicate in your emails?
Special offers
Any products that you have put on special offer, sale items, end of
line stock etc. Adding a message of limited availability or ends by
a certain date will help increase response.
Seasonal offers
Garden furniture and barbecues in Spring, for example.
Offers tied to special events
Before the recent FIFA World Cup, I was inundated with special
offers on all kinds of TVs for watching it on. If you can tie your
products to a popular event in some way, so much the better.
New product reviews
Reviews of the latest product offerings to hit your marketplace,
will interest your customers.
Technical how tos
If you sell any kind of technical product, your customers will
appreciate the occasional how to guide. How to get the best out of
your equipment, top tips, etc.
Frequency of emails
I wouldnt advise emailing your customers any more than once a week,
and leave it more than a month between communications and they are
likely to be forgetting about you.
There we have it. Loads of ideas on how to keep in touch with your
customers, and make sure you stay at the forefront of their minds.
The cost is virtually zero, and the potential returns are
massive.
Whats the cost if you dont? Well, undoubtedly one of your
competitors will make the effort and end up seducing your customers
away from you . . possibly for good.
Robin Porter is CEO ofArpey Internet : Uk Ecommerce website designers and advises ecommerce store owners on marketing atwww.e-businessdoctor.co.uk
Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com