Many marketers see e-mail as a means of driving traffic to their Web sites. But that’s wrong, says Maria Veloso, the author of “Web Copy that Sells” (Amacom).
“Chances are, less than 1% of visitors to your site will ever buy your product or service,” Veloso writes. “Even the best marketers with the most successful Web sites seldom convert more than 5% of their Web visitors into customers when their Web site is their only marketing vehicle.”
The answer, she continues, is an opt-in mechanism that enables you to both inform—and get information from—your customers. That can include e-mail newsletters, she adds.
Veloso makes the following points:
Virtually every person who is online sends and receives e-mail, but not everyone surfs the Web. E-mail is a far better vehicle for distributing and collecting information, Veloso adds.
Relationship marketing is at the very heart of all e-commerce. Veloso notes that “you simply can’t build a relationship solely through your Web site, no matter how many interactive bells and whistles it has.”
That being said, e-zines and other forms of e-mail are useful in getting people to your Web site.
“There are thousands of ways to generate traffic,” Veloso writes. “When you write marketing communications such as free reports, promotional articles, online ads, newsletters or e-zines, SIG files and search engine listings, you assume the secondary role of traffic generator.”
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