Atomic Email Marketing Blog ePochta.ru

There’s one word that can carry quite a bit of power when used as part of your marketing message:

“Free”.

Admittedly, “free” doesn’t carry the weight it used to. With everyone reaching the point of becoming over-saturated with marketing messages, something that has the word “free” attached to it has almost become a turn-off…especially online.

But it can still be a very effective tool, when used correctly; for example, as an inducement to opt-in to your newsletter or email list.
In many people’s minds, a successful marketing message has lots of exclamation points, underlines and flashing messages. These things were all adopted to make the message stand out; the tables have now turned, however. The messages that stand out are the ones that don’t scream at the reader, but instead offer value in return for their time or business.

Giving someone a free gift for signing up for your newsletter can still be an effective tool, as long as the free gift is relevant to the reason they wound up at your business site to begin with. If your business is financial advice, don’t offer a free report on advertising tips to your visitors. That’s not why they came to your site, and it won’t entice them to sign up.

However, if they came to your site to find information on financial advice, an offer of a free report on basic investment tips would be useful to them, and a much more effective enticement.

“But Dave,” I can hear you say, “I’m trying to sell them financial advice…why would I give it to them?”

For the same reason anyone offers free samples…to earn the customers’ trust in your product or service. If they like the free information and find it useful, they are becoming sold on you.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be a free report. You can offer a free trial of your software, a free ebook…anything that will help build your image as a business your customers can trust to help them with their needs.

The internet provides some of the most exciting sales and marketing opportunities in the world today. However, even this long after the advent of internet sales, there are still those that spend quite a lot of time on their product or service and forget one of the simplest rules of sales when it comes time to sell it. When putting together your marketing message (any kind of sales, whether it be online or off), this rule always applies.

You have to ask for the sale.

It doesn’t matter how well-written your sales message is, how wonderful your product or service is, or how your price point compares to competing products or services, those that clearly ask for the sale and make it easy for the customer to say yes will always see a higher conversion rate than those that don’t. It’s called the “call to action”, and it can make or break you.

• “Order before midnight tonight!”
• “Supplies are limited, order today!”
• “Click here to download your package.”
• “Visit our website at (your website here) and place your order now!”

These are all examples of calls to action, and your sales message needs a call to action to be effective, and you should make it as simple as possible for the customer to take that action. If you’re marketing on the internet, give your customers an easy, straightforward, internet-based way to make their purchase from the email or webpage your call to action is located on, whether it be an order form, a link to a purchase page, or an email address “for more information or to place your order”.

There are people that want to buy your product or service…they’re just waiting to be asked to, so make sure you do ask.