Growing Your Customer List
How much money are you losing by not capturing information from visitors to your websites? If you’re not currently using at least one method for acquiring your visitors’ permission to contact them with information and offers, you’re ignoring one of the most important elements of doing business online.
You may not be aware of a bit of knowledge acquired through multiple tests done in the online marketing world – actually, the marketing world in general. The fact is that you will generally need to approach a specific customer between five and seven times before they decide to purchase from you. That means that your website is acting as the first contact with a visitor, but that simply isn’t enough to make a sale. Due to any number of factors, a potential customer may not be ready to purchase during that initial contact with your product or service.
Through several follow-ups you will establish a relationship with the visitor to assist in the sales process. The visitor will become more familiar with you and your business, and you will establish your credibility. These things are very important for an ongoing relationship with your customers.
There are a couple of ways you may capture your visitors’ names and email addresses to allow you to follow-up with them in the future. If your site is built within the framework of a content management system, such as Joomla, PostNuke, or DotNetNuke, you should be able to use the features of the system to capture users’ information and send group emails.
Be careful when using this method because you must comply with federal CAN-SPAM laws. You must provide visitors with the ability to choose to receive your emails and to also choose to remove their addresses from your email list at any time in the future. To protect yourself, you’ll also need a way to demonstrate that the user actually did choose to receive emails from you. The burden of proof is yours. Site visitors can complain that you are “spamming” them at any time. They may simply forget that they chose to receive your emails.
A safer, and often simpler, method for managing your customer list does exist - Autoresponders. Most autoresponder services provide the following features.
- Ability to capture email addresses through forms on your site. You may use simple forms on your site pages, pop-ups, pop-unders, etc. The better services make it very easy to generate code for you to insert into your pages.
- CAN-SPAM compliance. To comply with federal laws, these services provide simple methods for allowing users to subscribe and unsubscribe from your email campaigns.
- SPAM content filtering. You will be notified if the content of your emails is likely to get filtered by spam blockers. This will help to ensure that your subscribers will actually receive your emails.
- List maintenance. The better autoresponders provide the ability to set up any number of lists. This allows you to maintain separate lists for different marketing campaigns. You may also move customers between lists, and identify customers subscribed to multiple lists.
- Email campaign maintenance. The better autoresponders also provide the ability to create and store as many future emails as you wish to maintain. This allows you to set up emails for weeks, months, or even years, in the future. You can schedule these emails to be sent to your subscribers at any time in the future. This allows you to maintain contact with your subscribers even if you’re away from the office for extended periods.
There may be other ways to capture your visitors’ information and to maintain contact, but the use of an autoresponder system is probably the best all-around solution. To encourage visitors to sign up to receive your emails, you may choose to provide a free downloadable ebook or report. You may also provide your subscribers with a series of instructional emails that will be of interest to them. You will need to test various methods to determine the most effective way to obtain subscribers.
To find a good autoresponder service, simply enter the keyword “autoresponder” in your favorite search engine. Research several services to find the one that provides the features you will need. The choice is up to you, but this is definitely a service that will pay for itself rather quickly. If you’re not currently maintaining a visitor list, you owe it to yourself and the future of your business to look into this service.
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