Is your website collecting identities and putting them into a database?
Any master of sales will tell you that having a database of subscribers, buyers, prospects or any other type of identities is a vital resource for making continued sales.
In the case of keeping a database of buyers, this is proven by the fact that it is always easier to sell someone you have sold before. They are already familiar with your brand, they know about your product, chances are they liked your product and you stand out more in their mind than the competition since they have had an actual experience with you. Therefore, creating a list of current customers is vital to increasing revenue. Monthly mailings to them or weekly emails to them can help you maximize your profits.
Additionally, creating a list of prospects or leads (those who have not bought from you yet) is also vital, as it enables you to turn interested/curious prospects into buyers, who can then be put into your buyer database, that we mentioned above.
How do I do this?
Making a database of buyers is pretty easy, if you have been keeping records of all your transactions. All it requires from you is to dig up your old records and start importing the names, phone numbers and emails into a spreadsheet, which can then be imported into an Email Marketing Platform such as Mail Chimp or AWeber.
Making a database of prospects/leads is a little different. In this case you want people who visit your website who are curious to give you their contact info.
But people won’t just give you their contact info for no reason. All that is needed is a name and an email. Phone, address, city all comes later, when they are a buyer. For leads we just want a name and email.
Also, you don’t want them to just give you their ‘spam’ email address which, they give to anyone. You want the email that they use regularly.
How do I get their email?
You need to have an offer. There has to be an exchange for the contact info. And this does not mean a ‘free consultation’ or simply a contact form.
You need to give them some kind of valuable product in exchange.
It has to be something they can download or use. It is NOT just simply a page of text on your website.
This offer is called a ‘lead magnet’.
Definition: A lead magnet (a.k.a. “opt-in bribe”) is an incentive that marketers offer to potential buyers in exchange for their email address, or other contact information. Lead magnets usually offer a piece of digital, downloadable content, such as a free PDF checklist, report, eBook, whitepaper, video, etc.
There are a myriad of different types and variations of lead magnets, here is a useful article which lists out many of them:
http://optinmonster.com/9-lead-magnets-to-increase-subscribers/
What’s next?
After you have taken the time to create your lead magnet (be it an e-book, quiz, etc), you then need an efficient way to:
- Receive their download request from your website (Mailchimp has forms you can embed to do this)
- Auto-respond with an email with a link for them to download the lead magnet (Mailchimp can do this)
- Collect the email and name and put it in a database, to be used in future mailings (Mailchimp can do this too)
- Do mass emailing to your database of newly captured emails (Mailchimp’s specialty)
It is recommended that you start off with Mail Chimp for this. It is free and relatively simple to configure.
Here is a guide from Mail Chimp on how to get started with them:
https://mailchimp.com/resources/guides/getting-started-with-mailchimp/html/
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