Do you want to enjoy a growing number of friends, vocation prospects and benefactors?
Then keep adding the names of like-minded Catholics to your email list. By like-minded I mean those who appreciate your charism and find a personal connection with your community.
Sure, you have a signup form on your website, and maybe on your Facebook page. But how many new names do you really get? Don’t you want more?
Face it, you must reach outside your normal circles to get new people. The best and quickest way to do that is with paid advertising. And to make it work, you must follow these three “musts”:
This is the kind of compelling and easy-to-understand landing page that you need to have as part of your ad campaign.
1. Make your offer compelling
What will people get when they sign up for your newsletter? It should be news as well as reflections about the Church and about your community — all wrapped in the mantle of the charism of your community. Then tell them this in your newsletter pitch.
2. Know your audience, and find them
Do you want single Catholic women age 18 – 35? Devout and practicing Catholics? Families with children? Those connected with colleges like Franciscan University of Steubenville, Christendom College, and the like? These demographics can be found with internet marketing.
3. Write compelling ads that click to a simple and elegant landing page
Write good headlines and choose a good image for your ad. Make a variety of ads and rotate them — people get bored quickly. Your ad will click to a landing page on your Facebook page or website. There, you must have more than just an empty signup box. You want a sales pitch that informs and inspires, a few graphics, and a clearly-displayed signup form.
Only about 5% of marketers use a full-featured marketing solution, according to Jeff Ernst of Forrester Research.
And when promotion programs get these names and emails, 79% of them never convert into sales, according to Marketing Sherpa. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance. That means you’ve got to have enough newsletters and other points of contacts.
What’s the use of social media?
You have a Facebook page, and you post furiously. But are you getting the results you want?
It’s been said that the only purpose of Facebook is to grow your email list. And you thought email was dead? As a matter of fact, Entrepreneur magazine recently ran an article, “Survey: Email Is 40 Times More Effective Than Facebook and Twitter.” The article quotes a couple of experts who say,
Customized landing pages — which send the user directly to the item or offer featured in the e-mail — can increase conversion rates by more than 25 percent.
Here’s something to ponder about newsletters: although we hate spam, everyone reads the letters of their favorite groups. Yes, email is still a strongman in the marketing world.
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Think you might qualify for our Newsletter Signup Program? Take the survey below and Kevin Banet (708-393-4098) will give you a personal evaluation, at no cost.
