Recently I launched a new promotion for my business. As I put the finishing touches on my latest promotion, I tried to decide whether or not to add it to my affiliate program, After all, it was a private listing, and I would be testing sales before releasing it to my affiliates. I realized then I had been leaving money on the table. I hadn't been adding my products to my affiliate tracking software. The problem I had was that by not integrating an autoresponder into my sales system, I had failed to build a list of my customers. This is by far the most valuable list you can build for your business because this is a warm market for you. Your customers have already bought from you. They are more likely to buy from you again. Although building a list may seem obvious, automating your list of customers may not. You may have made the same mistake. What I'm talking about here is automatically capturing the email address of your customer when you sell him a product. This is far easier than trying to compile a list of your customers manually. I've sold thousands of products during my internet marketing career. My list of customers should be several thousand people long. It's not. The reason is that I didn't put a system in place to capture customer information while automating the process. This is crucial to your business success because you are leaving money on the table if you don't remarket to your customers. They have already bought from you in the past. They are more likely to buy from you again. Whenever you create a new offer for your business, you should send them a mailing first. This can dramatically increase your sales. Let me explain. It is true that most payment processors capture the email address. After all, you need to send your customer confirmation of payment, as well as let him know when he can expect to receive the product. However, once this initial contact is made, unless you have a system in place to add your new customer to an autoresponder, you won't be able to add your new customer in the future. The reason is that most autoresponder systems now require you to have your customer's IP address to manually add him to your autoresponder. The only way to do this is to contact the customer and ask. Unfortunately, if you have a lot of customers the way I do, this isn't feasible. So how do you stop the money leak? You'll need some type of script to help you. The easiest way to do this is to add a subscription box to an autoresponder on your download page or redirect page. Explain to the customer that you offer some type of updates to the product. When the customer adds his name and email, you can follow up. You can also send an email to your customer offering him an opportunity to join your list. The main disadvantage to a system like this is getting the customer to subscribe. He may simply download his products and never return. I did try this system with my site, and it didn't work very well. Another solution is to integrate an affiliate tracking script or shopping cart script into your site. Most affiliate tracking scripts or shopping cart scripts have this option and allow you to integrate the information into your sales process. This allow you to capture this information during the customer's purchase. This is the easiest way to make sure you capture the customer's information. You can find scripts to integrate into your shopping process by visiting one of the scripts sites. If you prefer not to add another script to your site, or you can't, you can purchase shopping cart software, as well as affiliate program management software to handle these tasks for you. Make sure you shop around. These solutions can be quite expensive. You may assume that somewhere you already have the customer on your list. This may or may not be true. If the customer found you through the search engines, or another site, he may have been looking for your product and not another list to join. He may not be on any of your lists. Don't take this for granted. One of the biggest mistakes I see new small business owners make is that they don't offer a list or have lead capture on every page of their sites if they include it at all. If they don't already offer a list before the sale, chances are, they don't have list building integrated into the sales process. This is another costly mistake. When a visitor first visits your site, make sure you have a way to capture his contact information. When you sell him a product, make sure you capture his email address again. Now he is your customer. He's part of your warm market and is far more valuable to you because you have sold to him. Focus on your warm market. Take care of your customers. By simply making this one change to your business, you can easily increase your profits. |
