Web to Print

Checkout http://www.mklink.com/getstarted/ for more internet marketing tips

What is it?
As you'll know by now, it is important to "touch" your customers and prospects regularly.
Whilst that statement might sound almost lewd, it carries a lot of weight.

Online, the obvious choice is email because it's fast, free and extremely efficient. Yet it is important to remember that there are many ways to directly communicate with your market including faxes, telephone calls, letters and mailshots.

I have tried this myself and and confirm the countless studies that show that contacting people in multiple ways really does help your ramp up your conversion rate, customer retention and brand awareness.

For a site generating leads, a typical combination might be :

Step 1 Capture contact details via a contact form on the website.
Step 2 (Immediately after Step1): Email a Free Ebook, download, Quote etc.
Step 3 (Immediately After Step 2) : Post out a Welcome Pack.
Step 4 (3 Days After Step 3) : Send a Follow Up Email, offering a bonus.
Step 5 (4 Days after Step 4) : Follow up with a Phone Call
Step 6 Repeat sending emails & follow ups.

This is just an example and the variations of faxes, letters, calls, emails, mailings are almost infinite. Yet so many people simply have a website and a contact form and virtually no follow up system, which is crazy because that' just leaving money on the table.

A lot of this you will know already because I keep harping on about how important it is to follow up. However, you might not realise how important it is to PERSONALISE your follow-ups or indeed how easy it is to do so OFFLINE as well as ONLINE.

How many more sales could you make if you sent your prospects a "Thank You" card with a personalised message inside it thanking them for their enquiry, perhaps with an offer or a coupon inside it?

I think that a lot of people don't do this because they think it will be a lot of hassle but they don't realise that it can all be automated. MKLINK offers this as a service ;-)

So you can have CD's. DVD's, flyers, mailshots, catalogues, samples, letters, cards and mailers of all descriptions posted automatically so you don't even have to lift a finger. And each one can be personalised as much as you like.

By the way, personalised mailings out-strip non-personalised ones typically by 40%, often much more.

Obviously, what you send out is dictated by the profitability of the prospect or client. Someone interested in placing an order for a light aircraft would probably warrant more frequent and expensive mailings than someone considering buying stationery. (That said, don't forget the LIFETIME value if the prospect or client)

How does this Link to The Internet?
The next dimension to personalising mailings is to link them in with personalised URL's, or "PURLs" for short. So, if I sent a mailing to JohnSmith then I could ask John Smith in the mailing to have a look at www.mklink.com/JohnSmith for example.

All of a sudden, my conversion rate increases even higher and of course I can then track his activity online and personalise his experience even further and build a profile of him.

So the upshot of all this is that if you are not sending personalised mailings to your prospects and customers then you will most likely be missing a great opportunity.

It can be automated so that all you do it test the results and see the increase in conversion without any extra effort once the system is set up.

If you would like more information about this, just go to http://www.mklink.com/getstarted and start the ball rolling.

'till next time,

Mike Knight. MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips