Effective ways to attract clients and build a loyal customer base using your website and email marketing.

If you’re trying to sell a product or service, you know how crucial it is to build and nurture relationships with potential clients and customers.

In this article, we outline how you can build and grow your business online without using social media. Instead, we look at how a good website and email marketing can do a lot of the hard work for you.

A good website will already be attracting visitors from Google and other search engines, and we recommend you seek out backlinks from any other websites that mention you or your business i.e. a link from their website directly to yours. These might come from online directories or supplier listings, media coverage you’ve received, or online forums and communities you participate in. Once you’re getting visitors to your site, now you need to capture and nurture them!

Building an email list of potential clients from your website visitors.

Firstly, let’s look at how important it is to spend time building your email list from the visitors who land on your site:

According to Forbes (June, 2024), people are three times more likely to make a purchase from email marketing than social media, and email marketing can generate €36 for every €1 you spend growing your list.

Those stats alone are compelling reasons to focus on growing your email marketing rather than your social media. So if you’re looking for ways to grow your business online without using social media, make sure you include email marketing in your business’s communications strategy.

Strategies for building an email list:

So let's look at how you can build your email marketing list and effectively market your business without social media, and generate more revenue for your business while you’re doing it. A good website that is managed well and updated regularly with search-engine-optimised content,

Offer lead magnets via an opt-in form.

We often see websites that have a section in the footer to facilitate newsletter signup, but, usually, it’s accompanied with something as basic as ‘sign up to our newsletter so we can keep you in the loop about our business’.

Our response to this: No thanks! Because, customers don’t care about your business. What they really care about is how your business can help them; how you can satisfy their needs and wants; and how your offering can make their lives a little easier and a little bit better.

Instead, entice them to share their email info with you by offering something of real value; perhaps a discount code for your products, access to exclusive content, or a value-led, free resource that helps and guides the reader. These can work regardless of your industry. Here are some examples:

An interior design cheat sheet.
Family friendly recipes for healthier dinners.
10 ways to make your home more safe and secure.
Glass cleaning guide for windows, doors, mirrors and glass shelving.
How to protect your skin from harsh winter weather.
And, we’ll include one at the end of this article that you might be interested in downloading today: Effective ways to drive traffic to your website without using social media. Which leads me to…

2. Offer content upgrades on your blog:

This is one of our favourite ways to capture leads: offering free content upgrades on your blog.

For example, if you have a blog post on your website about caring for your skin during the changing seasons, and it’s getting great traffic to your website, capitalise on that and turn readers into leads by offering a free downloadable skincare guide as a content upgrade at the end of the article in return for their name and email address.

3. Capture sign-ups in your checkout and contact forms.

This is one you can implement on your website today! Ensure you have an opt-in checkbox to capture email sign ups in your contact forms, your checkout and anywhere else people share their information with you on your website. The added benefit of this, is that it allows you to record additional information about your subscribers as they sign up (e.g. their location, interests, goals - whether personal or for their business). This information is really valuable when it comes to segmenting your audience.

Pro tip: Capture leads as soon as they land on your website

It can be really beneficial to get visitors into your email marketing funnel as soon as they land on your website, whether that’s through a lead magnet on the landing page or a dynamic pop-up with a great offering, discount or promotion.

Pop-ups can sometimes feel a bit pushy or abrasive, but if you present them at the right time, in the right place, with the right offer, you’ll capture a lot of valuable leads while piquing visitors' curiosity about your business!

So once you’ve started capturing emails, what do you do next?

Segmentation and personalization

Regardless of how big or small your email list is, segmenting your audience and tailoring your content to your subscribers' wants and needs can drastically improve your click-through rate - where they click from that email directly into your products or services on your website, resulting in better conversions and sales.

How do you segment your audience?

1. Persona segmentation.

If they signed up via a contact form or your checkout, you instantly have valuable information about them; perhaps their location, interests, goals, previous purchases etc. This can allow you to group certain subscribers together and target them with particular offers or information that would specifically appeal to them.

2. Behavioral Segmentation.

You can also segment your subscribers based on user behavior, such as pages visited or content downloaded...

For example: If a visitor frequently reads your blog posts about skincare for acne prone skin and downloaded a free guide on skincare for acne prone skin, add them to a segment that receives more acne focused content and ultimately promotes your acne products and services.

3. Engagement-Based Segmentation.

You can also segment your subscribers based on how engaged they are with your emails. So create one promotional campaign for those who open every email and click through every link, and another re-engagement campaign for those who rarely click the links. The purpose of this is to try to win them over with more value-led content and convert them into more engaged leads.

Nurturing your audience through email campaigns.

We hear the term ‘nurturing your audience’ in relation to social media all the time. And while the focus of this article is how to build and grow a business without the need for social media, the fundamentals of nurturing your email marketing audience are the same. Thankfully though, with email marketing, it doesn’t require keeping up with algorithm changes, trending audio, tik tok dances or knowing what hashtags to use.

So, once you’re capturing subscribers and you know how to segment them, what’s next?

Creating Valuable Email Content

Once you have your leads, focus on providing consistent, valuable content that establishes you as a trustworthy expert in your industry. Marketers and business owners who use email marketing consistently, will often tell you that it is their most powerful marketing tool. So here are some key strategies to ensure your emails are as effective:

1. Newsletters.

Newsletters that keep your subscribers up to date on what's going on in your industry and business can be really engaging if they’re packed with value.

For example, consider sending a monthly email that updates your audience on industry insights relevant to them, share some tips they can implement in their own business and include a case study to show off a project you’ve just worked on, which can both inform and inspire the reader.

2. Blog updates.

If you don’t yet have a blog on your website, make that a priority, then share a teaser from your blog posts in your email marketing to drive traffic back to your website. Blogging is not just great for SEO, it showcases your knowledge and experience establishing you as an expert and thought-leader, AND it gives you instant content to use to get your email marketing up and running.

3. Exclusive tips and resources.

Make your newsletter exclusive. Yes, share content from your blog posts and promote your products and services, but take it up a level and offer exclusive content that your subscribers can't find anywhere else - not on your website, not on social media. This could be special discounts or early access to sales, exclusive eBooks, additional resources or insider tips: whatever makes your subscribers feel like they’ve got the inside scoop.

And our biggest tip of all, regardless of what content you choose to share in your email marketing…

4. Keep it short, friendly, and relevant.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice that business owners and marketers feel comfortable sharing detailed anecdotes about their lives and their work, but in my experience, recipients want your emails to be concise and to the point.

In fact, I have found that personalised emails - including their first name in the email - with as little as 50-150 words have a really high engagement rate. Get in there, say what you have to say, add value, include your call to action and sign off. We’re all busy, so the quicker we can open our emails and get to the golden nuggets in them, the better!

Pro Tip: Automate your email sequences.

Whether it is Mailchimp, Flodesk, Klaviyo, or the built-in email marketing tools in your Squarespace website, set up automated email sequences to nurture your leads. (These can often result in higher engagement rates than ad-hoc marketing emails too!).

You could choose a welcome series to introduce new subscribers to your brand and provide them with resources to build trust. You could create an educational series about a specific topic in your industry, or educate your subscribers about the benefits of a new line of products or services.

By implementing these strategies, you can ensure that your email marketing efforts are more targeted and effective, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates, and more sales for your business, all without needing to use social media!

Understanding visitor interests and priming them for your email marketing

Understanding visitor interests.

To effectively nurture your leads, it's really important to understand what your visitors and subscribers are interested in.

When we’re working with our clients on this, as soon as we start diving into what their customers really want and need, and catering our content marketing to those interests, we start to see results: significant engagement and revenue growth. To get to know what your visitors and subscribers are interested in, you can use Google Analytics or the built-in analytics tool in your website. You can track engagement from previous email marketing, or do some direct market research with your audience e.g. send a questionnaire for them to complete. Once you know what they’re interested in and you start catering for that, your conversion rates will grow.

Example: If you notice that your website visitors are loving your blog posts about healthy lunches for toddlers, it indicates a strong interest in that topic, so it could be well worth your while creating an email series focused on creating healthy lunches for toddlers. Share recipes, verified nutritional information, tips to encourage trying new foods etc.

Priming leads with relevant content.

Ultimately, for most of us, the purpose of email marketing is to promote our business, foster brand trust and advocacy, and increase sales. So while I encourage you to get out there and offer up your knowledge and expertise and share free resources, really, its purpose is to prime your subscribers to buy your products and services. With this in mind, it’s worth playing around with what works specifically for your business and your subscribers.

Pro tip: We find that a 3:1 ratio works really well: sending 3 value-led emails, then 1 nicely positioned sales email with a clear call to action for the reader to buy what you’re selling.

The main thing to remember is, once you understand your subscribers interests, you can tailor your content to nurture your leads more effectively and keep your brand top of mind for when they’re ready to make a purchase… and you can do all of this without having to use social media!