Selling web design services via email?

If you can find email lists that are pre-approved to get the emails you want to send, it seems like a good idea.



This is not much different than buying so-called "hot" leads.



I had tried doing specific searches on craigslist, such as





• need "One page" website site:craigslist.org



• "wordpress" website site:craigslist.org



• "experienced" "wordpress" website site:craigslist.org



They were only barely responsive. Then again, I am not a salesman.



Good luck.

Email marketing is one of the best strategies available to market your company - the cost is low and the return is high

Email marketing is one of the cheapest and most powerful ways to market online. Hands down.

If you care about ROI, email leaves pretty much all other marketing options in the dust...

The key is for you to run a paid ad campaign giving away a FREEBIE that targets website owners. The freebie SCARES the reader and promotes a FREE CONSULTATION

You can use the tried and proven FB page marketing > LOOKALIKE AUDIENCE method for this so you can LOWER your ad costs

Add emails to an autoresponder and start sending emails to persons who are interested to your service.

I am definitely following this. Will bookmark this thread aswell!

Sure, It is still the most economical yet effective way to find new clients. I am sending you a step by step guide. Check your PM.

Why not specializing in websites for a specific niche, lets say lawers or plumbers? Will give you a portfolio few can ressist and help you find yoru audience, as there are reddit or facebook groups specifically for plumbers or laywers where you could find your clients easily.

I don't think email marketing will work well. I receive several emails every day from different IT related services providing companies and all I do is "mark them as spam". Maybe hot traffic will behave differently.

Meet in person to introduce your service will work better.

My experience is better with the approaching local business personally then contacting them by email. every market is different if you have a targetted list you might try sending email and see if it works for you.

I am not sure about the conversion rate of trying this with your product, but I know people that have managed to do so successfully. Perhaps do an initial test. And even if it works, consider using more than one channel of marketing to reach your potential users.

Maybe the mock websites aren't the best idea - although I have gotten traction with them. But just now I've had a lead respond to my script (that asks if they want a mock) saying 'Good morning, just give me a price' I guess not everybody wants to delay things.

• I will give you a secret of mine. You can use the webmaster tools (just hit F12 on the keyboard with Firefox open on a website). You can change the wording on the page with a little work.



• You can change the wording of the menu as well. Do a "mockup" of the site you are trying to sell to a business, using the method above. That is, change the wording around to something they would like. After changing it, make a screenshot of the changes. Send it to them and ask them if they like it.

Just an update - I've changed my tactic. I will no longer be offering mock-ups, they're a good idea BUT the tactic seems like a huge time drainer. Especially since I was super personalising the mocks, even changing the colour scheme and adding content from their current website. I had compliments for the mocks but no sales, so it seems a lot of people are saying yes to them out of curiosity rather than seriously wanting a new website.

If there's a way to filter out those people and only do mocks for people seriously interested, that would be great but I don't see how.

My tactic now is to include samples of my work in the email and to get straight to the point. I'll of course get a much lower response rate, but hopefully those responses are serious buyers.

The new email literally points out their website is unresponsive followed by one short sentence quickly explaining the problems that come with that. Then just a link to my previous work followed by another short sentence stating that a website like this will fix the problems I've just mentioned and then a short and sweet CTA.

The email is probably half the size of my previous one.

I'll let you all know how it goes.

Cold calling seems like a good idea but I'm very introverted. Maybe a few warm calls gotten from cold emailing will prepare me for cold calls, we'll have to see .


UPDATE --

I will also be targeting people who have responsive websites but could do with a few design improvements, basically if I feel like I could make a better website - I'll target them.

The thinking is - businesses with unresponsive sites may have left their websites unresponsive and outdated because they do not care about them at all. Therefore, a lot of what I say may not bother them in the slightest. I read this somewhere else and it makes sense, so I'll keep doing what I'm doing and also do this as a test. Here is the script I've come up with:

Hi (Name)

I am (my name) and I was just browsing your website and saw it's mobile friendly and easy to navigate which is excellent.

However, I noticed some improvements that could be made which would better reflect the quality of your services and convert more of your visitors into paying customers.

I respect that you are busy - so is there an appropriate time in your schedule for us to jump on a quick phone call so I can share some ideas with you?


As you can see, I'm going for the soft apprach here. I've not sent it out yet, as I'll probably spend a few more hours just thinking of ideas on how to make it better and more personalised.