We also know from experience that
getting the visitors to the party in the first place is like pulling
teeth. We have given some ideas to increase your party and really
being able to talk with your future customers in a chat room is the
best. However, for those that you'll never see in the chat room here
is a way to increase some party-like sales without having to hold an
actual party.
After you build your list of
potential customers (and if you don't have one - stop right here and
do that FIRST. YOUR list of potential customers is your most
valuable asset in business!), play a game with them via email.
Announce on a Monday or even Friday (and you can test which days get
the best responses) the start of a contest by email. Focus on a
specific type of products like you would at your party, and set up
some type of questions that can be emailed to you. Be sure to cover
some good points about your products in a casual way (you know your
subscribers want to get down to the contest part of this, so don't
overload them with ads!). You can set this up in any way you wish
really, just as long as it's something interactive you can do with
them.
At the end of the week, send out
another email with the answers (this might grab a few that didn't
participate before, or maybe got stumped and you never got an entry
from). Give the details again of the products, which the answers
were related to, and also be sure to announce the winner. You can
possibly even give a special incentive to buy the products you
featured in the contest, since many of your subscribers have been
eyeing these products all week - a special might just give them the
extra push to buy.
You can do variations of this,
such as having weekly-featured products and instead of giving away
prizes each week having a monthly drawing where those that win the
weekly contests are entered in. Just as long as you are doing
something other than just "weekly sales" you will stand out of the
crowd and increase your sales!