E-Mail Marketing for a Local Business

Posted on July 10, 2010 by Greg

An often under-utilized tactic for increasing sales to your local business is the use of an e-mail list. Many SEO companies and other online marketers often forego the use of e-mail marketing because they think it’s not as useful for local businesses. I think this is a BIG mistake, because it’s an easy dependable way of increasing your customer conversions and upselling them.

Once you have established your website and are getting decent traffic numbers, you’ll have quite a few people popping in and out of your website. It’s naive to think that most of them will buy something immediately or even at all. This is where an e-mail capturing system comes into play. By collecting the e-mails of people visiting your site, you get a second chance at selling your products/services by e-mailing them in the future. You can also offer discounts to your e-mail list that will have customers and non-customers alike re-visiting your website to see if they should take advantage of this. It’s also a great way to keep in touch with your buyers/customers, offer them a bit of information, news, or discounts, and eventually upsell them with any new products.

Here’s a few tips you should keep in mind if you want to use e-mail marketing:

• To capture e-mails, offer some sort of incentive, like a free PDF download of tips customers should know related to your business; or a newsletter if you have one.
• Don’t ask for too much information, it’ll discourage visitors. An e-mail and a name is more than enough.
• Have the incentive and e-mail capture prominent.
• Capture e-mails at the purchase point if you sell through your website.
• Offer a customer support section where you can exchange your customer support for their e-mail. This one is particularly effective because most will assume it’s necessary to give their e-mail for customer support.
• Don’t e-mail your list too often, or not often enough. Too often will put you in the junk folder, and not enough will as well because they won’t recognize your company or remember giving their e-mail.
• Don’t try and sell something every e-mail you send. It’s good to mix it up with valuable information, discounts, news and upcoming events, etc.
• Put some space in front of your subject line. Many people have a “trash” email they use for things like this. However, they will check this email sometimes and this tactic will allow you to pop-out from all of the other spammy emails.

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