The main purpose of your website is to capture email addresses. This is often more important than selling a product since a person on your email list can be marketed to repeatedly. A typical way to get a sign up is to offer some kind of giveaway. A visitor can download a free report or a recorded webinar or something similar if they enter their email address. This is known as the “lead capture mechanism” and it is an essential way to stay in touch with your customers.

Once a customer has given you their email address it will be handled by an auto-responder. This is a program that is set up to send a pre-written reply to the email address that your customer enters. Typically, this will be a message that thanks them for joining and often contains a link to the giveaway item they were promised. The lead capture mechanism is, perhaps, the most important part of website marketing because you can set your auto-responder to send regular emails to everyone in your database. You can send notifications of upcoming sales, new products or special offers. You can also send reminders to customers who haven’t made a purchase from your site for a while, perhaps offering an incentive to return. The best thing about an auto-responder is that all of these tasks can be automated, making your website virtually a “hands off” business.

Automation is a key part of internet marketing and the thing that makes running a website so important. A well set-up website will run itself most of the time. The more tasks you can automate in a business the more time you have to focus on your business goals.

Another key area that can be automated is social media integration. Social media is one of the main ways that people will find your website and be driven to sign up. A good auto-responder can be set up to make regular social media posts as well as sending email. By placing “like” and “share” buttons on the pages and articles within your site you encourage people to share your content, creating potential traffic back to your site.

Social media marketing can also be handled by third parties. There are specialist services that make regular posts on hundreds of social media services, creating massive amounts of back-links to business websites. For larger businesses, this is a vital part of their internet marketing activities.To put all this into perspective, with the correct system in place, your online sales will require very little managing. Your site will post regular messages on social media, generating new leads by encouraging people to sign up at your website. Sign-ups will then receive regular emails encouraging them to buy from you. Finally, they will be encouraged to share your content driving even more traffic to your site.