INTRODUCTION:
We search the web for companies that we can use an an example of good email marketing practices and we make a few suggestions on how they could be better. After running 2,400 successful email marketing campaigns in 104 different industries, we’ve learned a thing or two about what works.
We share our experience here so you don’t have to learn the hard way.
This Week We Review: CrawfordThomas.com
We don’t know this company but we did a search while on our mobile phone and found this website, which led us to try and get on a list. As we went through this process we saw two simple tactics that would improve their ability to find new clients.
Here’s what we found.
Step 1: Our Search on The Mobile Phone
We were sitting in a waiting room… waiting for our next meeting. While I was doing so, I pulled out my phone and did a google search for ‘national sales recruiter’ to see if I could start some prelim research to find a good one. Like many mobile searchers I clicked on the first listing that seemed to meet my criteria. This was a paid listing.
One thing was obvious when I reached the site of the first company I looked at. Their site wasn’t optimized for mobile. What that meant in practical terms was I wasn’t able to read and scroll through all the great content on the site. In a word I reached a dead end. In the meantime, before your site is fully mobile, there is one thing you can do to turn this from a dead end into a potential lead. (more on that later)
Because I was interested, I made a note to look at their site when I got back to my desk.
Step 2: When I Went to Google Them at My Desk
Once I was back at my desk, I could take a better look at the site. As a potential client, I was looking for how this company could help out. Since I was doing preliminary research I wasn’t ready to make a phone call, I wanted to read some more.
You can see the site is nicely designed and the navigation takes me to the places I need to find.
As I scrolled down the page I didn’t really see anything that caught my attention. I scrolled and scrolled and reached the bottom of the page (this isn’t typical user behavior by the way, mostly they use the back button by now). At the very bottom of the page I did find something interesting… a video.
Step 3: One Fundamental Change to Gain More Clients
Take a look a the video on the bottom right of this page. It says Latest Video and it’s labeled “How to have a great interview”.
Here’s where we saw a chance to make a small change that will have a big impact.
That video is just sitting there. Let’s say I was the intended audience for that video. Which of these two alternatives would most appeal to you?
Option A: They are interested and click on the video. Watch it. And leave your site.
Option B: They are interested, fill in an email optin form to get access to the video. Watch it. And leave your site.
Hopefully you selected Option B. The visitor in Option B has demonstrated their interest by leaving you an email address in order to get at your good content. If it’s good and relevant, people will have no trouble leaving an email address to get at it. If it’s not good, well.
In this case the target is candidates. What if I was interested in more clients? This simple change would get me more people to communicate with and keep in touch… an potentially turn into future clients. It all starts here.
You either have a missed opportunity or the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Step 4: Wrapping it Up
Remember earlier I mentioned the mobile phone landing page was a dead end? What if I put this same offer there? A mobile visitor gets a chance to get access to a valuable and relevant video and you get a chance to create a new client opportunity.
Step back and look at your website with a critical eye. The question you want to ask yourself is “where can I create an opportunity to trade an email address for something of value to my target audience?”
This is a great example of such an opportunity. A video buried at the bottom of the page.