First Impression, as important as it is, doesn’t always guarantee you a sale. As a matter of fact, 81% of all sales (both online and offline) take places on or after the fifth contact between a potential customer and a sales representative.
This percentage goes even higher with online businesses alone. Now you can imagine how many businesses you’re losing if you simply rely on the first contact with your visitors and never do enough follow-ups.
Nurturing a lead these days has become just as important as acquiring it in the first place.
To successfully convert visitors that resisted your initial offer you need to learn about the magic of follow-up marketing.
Why Follow-up Marketing Matters?
For many of you, it is not unusual to see a visitor come to your page, stay for some while, be very interested in your offer and make himself look like a sales opportunity for sure.
However, in most cases, things will not go the way you wish. A deal may never become a deal if no ‘push’ is made during the process, and this is where the reason why follow-up matters lies.
Follow-up is one of the strongest ‘pushes’ you can take advantage of in your sales and marketing activities. It is where all the revenue is.
The money hides in one of the several follow-up steps where you figure out a visitor’s needs and systematically build up a relationship.
Researches have revealed that it takes 7 ‘touches’ in average to build a relationship, and for ‘online touches’, the number could rocket to as high as 16 times.
Both figures are carrying a same message, that is, don’t back out too early in any attempts to convert a visitor!
Types of Follow-ups
Basically speaking, there’re three types of people that should be included in your follow-up list, and each type requires a different follow-up method and customized message:
- Suspects. These are visitors that have come to your site, but didn’t declare much interest towards a certain offer. They are within your target marketplace, however, haven’t show any trend of conversion. With these people, you need to encourage them to visit your sites more to increase chances for them to develop a desire for your products or services.
- Prospects. These are visitors that have come to your site repeatedly and made a long stay on a certain page / block. They have entered the ‘evaluating stage’ for your offers and are ready to convert as soon as they found your products or services satisfying. With these people, you’ll want to convince them that your offer is the right one and create an ‘impulse’ for them to finish their first purchase as quickly as possible.
- Existing customers. As the name suggests, these are people who have bought something from your previously. They have been proven to have the buying ability and thus should be regarded as the most potential ones. With these people, up-selling and cross-selling will be smart choices, as well as referral requests.
Tools for Follow-ups
There’re traditional follow-up tools such as telephone, direct mail and one-on-one email, which have been working pretty well for a long period of time. However, in a tech era where we now live in, you may still need some new tricks to keep up with the world:
- Live chat. A live chat box is a portal through which you exchange messages with your visitors / customers. Unlike email, live chat is a real-time communication tool which offers you an opportunity to create ‘impulses’ for a potential customer, meanwhile much less pushy than a phone call. Advanced features like visitor monitor and auto invitation in this technology have made it a lot easier to do personalized follow-ups.
- Automated email. One-on-one follow-up and email reply sounds sweet, but for many of you, it is something that is going to worn out your employees. This is where automated email comes into play. A well designed automated email can not only ensure in-time responds to your customers, but help to develop a sense of being valued for your customers.
- Ticket system. This is a simple but efficient tool to manage your customer queries through different channels. With a proper ticket software, you will be able to manage multiple email accounts, live chat transcripts, offline messages and web form messages at one place and track your communication with customers across multiple portals including phone call, email, live chat, helpdesk and web form.
In conclusion, follow-up marketing can be your magic to boost closing rate and improve customer satisfaction. With careful preparation and a pre-set process, everyone can create a successful follow-up system.
So what are you waiting for? Start to win more sales today with your own follow-up spell!
About Shelly Watson
When you want to get extra benefit in your online business then you should know all those technique which work better for you and for your business as well. So i think many newbie can get benefits after read this article.
Sam recently posted..India Trips
Thanks for sharing your comment Sam! I do hope this article is going to help someone.
I think email marketing is at boom time right now.It can make the online business better and set then at top but some, points and tactics should be used in that.
Thanks for this wonderful sharing.
Good point Bhushan! With the development of smart phone and WIFI technology, people are now checking emails everywhere, and email marketing is just one of the most cost-effective method to get your words out.
Hello There,
Yes,the technology have given some excellent invention to the people and i think we should take benefits form there.
Thanks for that words.
Bhushan recently posted..Hotel Booking Reservation Software
Great article, thanks. It is most important to look after your existing customers as they tend to be the easiest to sell to and they “have the faith” so to speak, however, any lead at all is worth pursuing!
Glad you like it Simone, and you’re right any single lead is worth pursuing. Nowadays a ‘visitor monitor’ will be quite helpful in tracking site visitors to make sure that you’re not missing anyone.
excellent pointers here, email marketing is huge these days and I can see it definately becoming bigger and bigger. Gone will be the days when many of us go to the office to work, just go downstairs to the office in your house and start work on-line.
Yeah, working from home is a nice option for many people. The problem is for the managers. They’ll need to find better ways to organize those employees.
This is a very interesting article. Thank you!
Cendrine Marrouat recently posted..Social Media News: Clipboard, Hootsuite, RebelMouse, Vokle, and WordPress
Glad you like it!
Hi Shelley,
Although following up on potential customers is a not a sure fire way of getting them to transact with you, it does have a way of getting to them at times. When it comes to marketing, I sometimes use my attitude as references. For example, no matter how much a marketer contacts me, I will not buy anything unless I really want a product being offered and that I am really getting a good deal on their offer. Simply put, get to know what the customer wants and push.
Hi Felicia,
Nice tips! These days people only pay for what they want and what they need. Getting to know your customers will always be the first step to sell. Follow-up is just a method through which you figure your customers’ needs out and plan for your next move.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
follow up, it is a very familiar word for me
as I belong to the marketing companies
but I wasn’t familiar with these qualities
Thanks for sharing
Hope it helps Saurabh~
As a consumer myself, I appreciate after sales follow ups and friendly reminders that encourage me to look into a product further before making a well-informed decision to make a purchase. Thanks for sharing!
Glad you like it Emilia, I always believe that it’s one of a business’s responsibilities to offer sufficient info. to the customers to help them make the decision.