The big question for all site owners is “How do you make you visitors keep returning to your site or, even better, spend money there?” Phil Hollows, the founder of popular email and social media marketing automation service, Feedblitz has the answer – and it’s amazingly simple.
The answer is all in email addresses and taking simple steps to optimize your pages.
I had the honor of meeting Phil at the BlogWorld Expo in L.A. this year and what I learned from him really opened my eyes to the opportunities I’m wasting and how easy it is to fix them.
The biggest resource we have for bringing people back to our blogs and marketing to them is their email addresses, so why don’t we spend more time trying to collect them?
Collecting email addresses gives you the ability to communicate with your readers even if they are not returning to your site.
Phil taught me two very simple rules:
Always have an email signup form on every page, easily and clearly visible above the fold.
Every page on your site and every email you send is an opportunity to call your readers to action.
Even confirmation emails and 404 error pages are prime real-estate just begging to have something in them exhorting your readers to do something.
Take Custom-Socks.com for example.To be able to see their prices, you have to add yourself to their mailing list, their argument being that they can then keep you up to date with their pricing.
They then want you to spread the word about them and so they give you the opportunity to get free shipping if you just tweet or post a Facebook update about them.
Brilliant!
They’re giving you something you want but making sure they get something in return. It’s as easy and painless as that.
Here are some steps you can take to immediately start to collect and use email addresses:
Have an email signup form on every page, clearly visible above the fold.
Go through your site clicking on every link and looking at every page. Is there spare space anywhere that you could be using to call your readers to action? Even confirmation emails can be used to promote your stuff. Make sure you utilize them well. Once you’ve collected email addresses, send out one or two automated emails thanking them for signing up and offering ways they can get involved or giving discounts / promotions on your products. Use those email addresses! Don’t abuse them by bombarding them with emails but also don’t neglect to use them. Irregular email sending can be as bad as sending too many.
Remember, it’s all about making the reader happy whilst getting what you want.
It’s a two-way relationship and if you try to stack the deck in your favor, it will simply turn people off.