Drive Web Traffic to Your Website With Email Newsletters
After months of planning, you finally have your website just how you want it. It showcases your talents, boasts (but not too much) about your organization’s many accomplishments, and has perfectly placed Calls to Action to hook new clients and reel them in.
Now the challenge begins: how to get those potential clients to see your spectacular website. Enter your email newsletter.
Email is an excellent way to drive traffic to your website, and to get the best return for your efforts there are a few things to consider.
1. Use snippets of content from your site to lure viewers in.
Effective emails contain only a couple of short paragraphs of content before the reader finds a “read more” link taking them back to your website where they will find the material in full. This has become popular for two reasons. The first is that showing snippets allows people to quickly review your email for articles that catch their attention. The second is that people are naturally curious. Make those first few sentences truly engaging, and people will click through to read more.
2. Give it away.
People are often afraid of giving away information or tips for fear that potential clients will not “buy the cow when the milk is free,” but in reality the opposite is true. By giving a little bit away you are exhibiting yourself as an expert.
Say you’re a consultant helping cities to form public/private partnerships. You could share a short article about questions cities should ask before engaging in a contract with a private service provider. A smart City Manager will know that a few hundred words hardly contain the wisdom and knowledge gained from years of professional work, but if it’s written well, that shared information might get them to click over to your website, just to see what’s there. Then, should they decide to engage a contractor, you will definitely be on their mind as a friendly, collaborative expert.
3. Be wary of offering too many click through options.
Sheena Iyengar, a professor and psychological researcher at the Columbia Business School and the author of The Art of Choosing, tested consumer choices with her now-famous “jam test,” at an upscale supermarket.
One jam display featured 24 flavors of jam. Another showcased just 6. While more customers took samples from the larger display, only about 3% of customers actually purchased jam. By contrast, at the 6-jam display, over 30% of people made a purchase. Offering too many choices tends to lead to option paralysis.
When drafting your email, remember the jam. Offer up a few, good options (links) for people to click on and you’re likely to get more visits to your site than if you pack your email full of links.
4. Match the link to the content.
Readers are apt to get frustrated if they read a teaser snippet about a specific service and click on the link to “read more,” only to land on your home page. When faced with having to to search for the content that grabbed their attention in the first place, more often than not, visitors will click away. You will have won the battle of getting them to your site, but you will lose the war of keeping them there. So make sure your links land people where they want to be.
For more information on how to create successful email campaigns, check out our recent article: “Common Hurdles to Good Newsletters (And How To Get Over Them)”