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.

Hey,

I've been using email marketing to schedule phone calls with business owners about designing them a new website. I've been able to book those calls but my conversion rate is nowhere near where I want it to be. I'm typically getting 2 phone calls booked out of every 500 emails. I'd like that figure to be at least at 1% so im getting 5 calls per 500.

further metrics would be an open rate averaging 25 - 30% and a 1 percent response rate, so essentially 2 in 5 responses will show an interest, the other 3 are all variations of 'Not interested' with some people clearly just stating that, others giving an objection that when answered, gets no reply anyway. They're pretty strong objections but I'm still trying to overcome them.

My email headline im testing with the current one being "(company name) website" and the message starts of giving the prospect a compliment followed by a short sentence explaining that I can increase their websites conversion rate (explained in laymans terms to avoid sounding too technical) and then a strong CTA asking if the number i have for them is correct and if they'd like a phone call at a specific time on a specific day.

I'm just hoping I could somehow improve my conversion rate and get more calls booked!

that`s my results for the exact sames things (webdesign and marketing offer)

If you haven't got budget for advertising and you're starting out with SEO and social, and assuming you're not offering off shore highly discounted work through someone like Fiverr, the best way to build your business initially is to join some real world local local business communities and go to their events and start networking. Always be armed with business cards to give to people.

Then when you have some sites done, use these as a portfolio to gain more business. Also be open to forming partnerships, say with other marketing agencies or ad agencies.

Use a free CRM like Hubspot to monitor and follow up on all the leads you gain and regularly create content which is useful to your audience. In this way build your own database of contacts and leads and be sure to be compliant with GDPR, even as a small business.

How much do your services cost?

Sure it is, these are the steps that I follow:

• The first thing you should do is identify your demographic zone.
• Then your market niche.
• Then you can use the email scraping technique to send them cold emails.

I would say it depends on the quality of emails and the quality of your advertising towards them but it's certainly possible to have success marketing towards them.

Here's a tip which can multiply your results hugely . . .

SPECIALISE!

Promoting yourself as a specialist (such as "websites for authors" or whatever), gives you instant authority, and makes it WAY easier to find ideal clients and market to them.

For example, if you specialise in websites for authors, there are many author FB groups, where people are asking how to create a website . . . make a few great examples, be the first to answer such enquiries and you'll get clients.

If you want to get great long-term clients who recommend you to others, then get them the RESULTS they want. Think about it . . . most people do not really want "a website", what they want is the results which a website provides such as selling more books for an author, or getting more clients for a business. So just making them a website will not get them good results . . . you need to make them a website which CONVERTS . . . which means that everything is optimised for their goal, and SEO is done really well etc. If you really give them what they want, they will love you and recommend you to others, so you have a real, long-term business from word of mouth.

As for email marketing . . . the usual mistake is to try to tell them everything they might want to know in the first email. Best results will usually be obtained by having an initial email which is only 1 or 2 sentences . . . tell them as little as possible, just enough to get them curious enough to respond . . . that's what you want from the initial email . . . just a reply saying they are interested. Then you tell them just a little bit more, or set up a call to answer their questions and close them, etc.

Hope this helps !

Chris

thanks for question
Is email marketing a good way of getting clients for this?

of-curse it is a good way to get client.but you should to try social media marketing because social media is a big platform of whole world.If you do social media marketing I think you get your targeted client I prefer you to do both of work.

It is just one of the tools available for you. But you have many other options to consider.

Email marketing is very effective marketing technique to sell or marketing your service through email. It is use to develop potential relationship with your customer and clients. You can contact with lots of consumers in sort period of time and it is less in cost as compare to the traditional marketing.

Having a list gives you another chance to wow them and close deals.

Mock websites I would not do. Testimonials heck yea.

You can even be more creative and show people some Recently Sold Websites for large sums of money to get them in the mood for creating a new website.

Hey Kiera

Your plan is solid. I would suggest that you email the lead, then direct them to an optin page (lead capture page), something along then lines of.... your website is unresponsive.. find out why and then redirect to the mock up website and follow up as they are on your email list.

To your success

Dominic

Email marketing is the best marketing tool out there and will remain profitable all the time. People are making high returns on small investments. Targeting all niches.

You can use email to reach your target audience. I've heard email is dead several times. But it still makes marketers millions of dollars because they know how to do it perfectly well.

You definitely need to gather a list of contacts, use a tool such as Mailchimp to make emailing easier in one place and have a way for people to join the newsletter sign up. You then need to think about what you are emailing and when. Do you want to incorporate automation or triggers or are you going to handle it manually. Both of these can be done using Mailchimp. We offer ecommerce development as we are using email marketing a lot more now. You should come up with a strategy and then use reports to gather what is working best. You should then monitor open rates, link clicks and unsubscribes too. This will then determine whether email marketing is working for you across a long period of time. In terms of the last part of your question, maybe starting out with an intro to who you are and what you offer is a better approach. Diving right in with mockups can seem forced to a lot of people and with emails, you want them to be personalised and stay subscribed. After a few emails and monitoring ay interest, then maybe show them that you have found unresponsive aspects and let them know. However, they may look at this and solve it themselves so you need a method that will make them come to you!