Why Email Should be in Your Top 3 Sources of Traffic & How to Fix it

Somewhere along the way we lost respect for email marketing. It wasn’t marked by any particular occasion but it has fallen out of the limelight for many VPs and Marketing Directors. It’s time to change that. If you’re anything like me, subscribing to email updates is the new bookmark. I don’t remember the last time I added a website to my ‘favorites’. Nowadays when I want to make sure I keep up with a particular brand, product or service the first thing I do is try to subscribe to their email list. If that’s not available I’ll Like them on Facebook but I don’t even think about Favorites anymore. This is the new reality.

Take a look at your most recent Analytics report – specifically at the top sources of traffic by Source / Medium. Is Email in the top three? If not, it’s probably time to fix that. Did you know that email is 40 times more effective at adding new customers than social media? What that means is that if you’re not absolutely maxing out email as a form of traffic and new business generation you have no business bothering with social media. At least if you value time and money.

“But I don’t have an email list!”

Phooey! It’s never been easier to grow your email list. If you don’t already have email addresses for your existing customers I would first ask you why not and then I would recommend that you solve that problem. Add an opt-in on your checkout form. Not selling direct on your website? No problem – send them a good old-fashioned postcard and tell them you’d like to have their email address – but be prepared to tell them what you plan to do with it. In other words, you’re going to need to provide them with valuable information.

Need more ideas? Sure, no problem. Try Facebook Lead ads. These relatively-new ad units available to Facebook advertisers allow Facebook users to click the ad to reveal a pre-populated form, including their email address, and submit that form to join your email list. It literally takes them just two clicks and we’ve found this to be an extremely effective way of email list building.

Need another idea? Add a prompt on your website. Notice I didn’t say “pop-up” – the four letter word of internet advertising. No – a prompt is a box that appears within the browser your visitor is already using and simply asks them to sign-up for your newsletter, or something similar. I know what you’re thinking: “Those don’t work!”. Guess what, the only people who think that are people who haven’t tried it yet. On average these prompts have 1.95% opt-in rate – and that’s on traffic you’re already getting to your website. We’ve even seen as high as 8%.

If you are interested in implementing any of these strategies but aren’t sure how, contact us today, we’d be glad to help you.