An old and slightly cynical saying claims that - “It’s not what you know, but who you know”, which is important. Few of us would enjoy living in a society where the principal means of getting on is the patronage of others, however, for businesses and other organizations it is completely true. All successful businesses have two things in common – they know their customers well and then have the ability to use this knowledge to craft messages that appeal to them. 

However, as simple as this sounds it is actually incredibly difficult to do – getting to know customers is tricky and then holding their, usually short, attention spans is even harder. A website that encourages user interaction can really help you to do these two difficult things – helping you to collect information like email addresses, social media details and personal details about your customers. 

At Indy Web Designers we can help you to get more visitors to interact with your website and then design a bespoke email marketing campaign that helps you to speak directly to them.

Marketing in the digital age

The digital revolution has radically changed many things - however, few sectors have been as drastically altered as advertising and marketing. In the past, good marketing campaigns were largely the reserve of the ‘big boys’, because mass marketing only works with a massive marketing budget. Small and medium-sized companies could attempt to target small groups of consumers who they believed that their product appealed to – but this usually involved making assumptions based on stereotypes about a particular demographic, be it geographical, economic or social. 

The internet has changed this – companies can now collect data about prospective clients, allowing them to create niche advertising campaigns that appeal to the demographic that purchases their product. This combined with new ways of communicating, such as email and social media has democratized marketing – offering small and medium-sized companies the chance to compete with and beat their larger counterparts.

However, to do this you must collect data on prospective clients – providing fascinating insights into who is actually interested in your product or service and giving you the means of communicating with them. If you are not offering some kind of free resource, like a PDF, free webinar, class or other product in exchange for an email address or social media details, then you are missing out on a host of potential sales and profound insights into who is actually interested in what you do. 

At Indy Web Designers, we want to help businesses flourish, by providing a holistic web design service that maximizes their opportunities to succeed – in the remainder of the article we will examine why visitor interaction is absolutely vital to every website.

Why email marketing is so successful 

According to Statista, there are now 3.7 billion email users in the world, meaning that more than 50% of the world’s population now uses email[i]. This number dwarfs any television viewership or newspaper readership, meaning that even the most incompetent email marketing campaign is virtually guaranteed to reach more people than any other form of advertisement. However, what really sets email marketing apart is the kind of people that it reaches – most businesses only get an individual’s email address, if they are interested in what that business offers, allowing them to appeal to a target group that is receptive to the things that they are selling. 

A long email list of people who have expressed an interest in what you are selling is now almost a prerequisite for success – allowing you to generate interest in new products or services and persuade customers who were on the edge of buying something to come back and take another look. This is borne out by the statistics, with ‘Salesforce’ estimating that email marketing has a 3800% ROI or companies get an average $38 return for every $1 invested in email marketing[ii]. No business can afford to turn their backs on such a profitable activity, making email marketing a vital tool in your marketing toolbox.

You don’t get something for nothing

Humanity is generally a transactional species and most people are unwilling to do something if they don’t get something in return. Thus, if a business asks them for their email address and does not provide them with something that is worth having in return, then they are unlikely to provide it. 

This is why it is absolutely vital that you have some kind of free resource on your website that is actually worthwhile – allowing you to collect those all-important emails and begin appealing to prospective customers who are interested in what you do. Thankfully, these free resources don’t have to be expensive or complicated – a simple PDF, a free newsletter, a short class or webinar and a host of other things too numerous to list here all have the potential to give you the emails that you need.

Other ways of increasing visitor interaction 

There are also a plethora of other ways of increasing visitor interaction – quizzes, surveys, online forms, social media, the list could go on ad infinitum. Any way that you persuade prospective clients to engage with your website will undoubtedly benefit your business in the long run. For example, a survey found that 88% of marketers believe that interactive content grabs a user’s attention[iii] and the New York Time’s most read article of 2013 was actually a quiz[iv]. Anything that makes your website more interactive is likely to be more engaging for users and give you vital information that you can use to reach them more effectively. 

SEO 

Website interactivity is also great for SEO – Google was originally designed to be like the academic system of citation, thus the more links a website had, the more likely it was to be ranked high. However, this system was abused, and unscrupulous website owners included thousands of links to get their website to rank higher. Google then changed its algorithm – to try and judge the quality of the website and things like more interactivity are almost certainly part of this.

Get the attention of receptive people 

Website interactivity allows you to speak directly to people who are interested in what you offer – something that is priceless in the loud and chaotic world of the internet. Large companies can, perhaps, still afford to take a scattergun approach to marketing (although the vast majority don’t), but everyone else has to be efficient and appeal to the right people. Website interactivity and email marketing are how you do this, and you must collect data about potential customers to avoid wasting your marketing budget.

At Indy Web Designers we will help you to create resources to generate this crucial information and can help you design an intelligent email campaign that allows you to speak to the right people. Contact a member of our friendly team for some no strings attached advice and see how much of a difference it can make to your bottom line.

[i] https://www.statista.com/statistics/255080/number-of-e-mail-users-worldwide/

[ii] https://www.salesforce.com/products/marketing-cloud/best-practices/ecommerce-marketing/

[iii] https://www.klick.com/health/news/blog/insights/81-of-marketers-say-that-interactive-content-grabs-attention/

[iv] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/-em-the-new-york-times-em-most-popular-story-of-2013-was-not-an-article/283167/