Once you have built your website or spent some time redesigning an existing site, it’s time to start thinking about how you are going to drive traffic to it – and convert traffic from it. You could have the greatest website, but if people don’t know about it or can’t find it, it won’t matter.
It is critical to take a proactive approach to your outreach in introducing your brand to them. One of the most effective ways to do that is with direct mail.
Direct mail is the activation point for the online experience. Here are three quick ways to use it to drive (and convert) website traffic:
- Take a targeted approach to prospecting. Use techniques like predictive or Look-A-Like modeling* to identify your most qualified prospects. These methods use current customer data to determine who your “best” and “worst” customers are, and find people with similar buying behaviors that may be interested in your product.
- Use a strong CTA. Make it very clear what you want them to do next, whether it’s to learn more information about a product or service or take advantage of a discount or sale. (Keep in mind that the offer needs to be generous to motivate people to make the decision to act.) Use a unique landing page that allows you to easily track the results of your campaign. You can do this by adding a new page to your website or by purchasing a “vanity URL” or setting up a landing page in your marketing automation software and redirecting it to a new page on your website.
- Make the journey easy. If your direct mail piece drove them to your website because you offered 30% off a product or service, it needs to be very easy for them to figure out where they can cash in on that offer. Human beings have an attention span of 7 seconds (officially less than a goldfish) so if they are not able to immediately figure out where to act, they probably never will. Mirror the mail piece as closely as possible so users can easily recall the message or offer that originally directed them there.
Because attention spans are short, there is a good chance that the visitor will leave your website without taking any action regardless of how strong the offer was or how easy it was to find where to cash in on the offer. 90% of people will visit your website first before calling or visiting your store, and 96% of visitors will leave your website without taking any action. (See more stats like this)
There are a number of reasons a visitor may have left your website without converting. The good news is that no matter what, once you have them on your site, there are several strategies that allow you to continue to follow-up. A well-crafted direct mail campaign is just the push they need to get there.
