How to turn free subscribers into buyers

When people get to your website, there should be multiple ways to engage with you. They can obviously BUY from you, but what else can they do?

At the very least, they should be able to sign up for alerts or further information. (This is a pretty basic step that MANY sites miss, but that's not what this post is about).

Once they've left their email, your business is then in a position to communicate to those who've opted in to receive email from you; with the hope of converting them down the line.

But can you fast track this newsletter subscription to an immediate sale? The good news is yes!

Someone who's just subscribed for a news update is already expressed real interest in your brand. They're really a hot lead. After they sign up, subscribers should be taken to the "thank you" page. To convert some of these people to buyers, PUT AN OFFER on this thank you page. After all, these people have demonstrated they're interested in you already - so why not try dangle a carrot to get them to make that last step.

But will this work?

I've recently put this into practice with a client to test its effectiveness. It's generating an average of a 7% conversion rate every month! And this client is selling is a service that isn't geographically available to many people, so I know this would be higher for a product or service that could be bought by anyone.

This is not only a great zero budget marketing tip - there's no additional cost, you're just improving on an existing process - it just makes good general marketing sense. Anyone can offer this and get a return. So why don't you?

(Thanks for the inspiration for this tip needs to go to James Tuckerman at Australian Anthill, who wrote an article explaining how he'd done this for his own site a while ago - I now can't find the article though!)