(Last in a series)

Our previous articles - #1 Tell Your Story Quickly and #2 Update Regularly - covered the "how" and "what" of website content. Now, we describe how you can get site visitors to gladly leave their contact information behind so you can send them marketing email – the ultimate online marketing tool.

COLLECT CONTACT INFORMATION

If your website doesn't get visitors to leave their contact information, you've wasted your money and your visitors' time. If someone makes the effort to visit your site, you should ask them to give you their email address. There's a good chance they're interested in what you have to offer.

The process is simple: give visitors an enticement to receive email from you, and give them a form to enter their email address.

First, this article covers some of the most basic enticements, then shows how to fit the contact info collection process into your website.

Tip: When people sign up to receive email from your company, they must get something of value, not just self-serving blather. Make a real effort to give worthwhile information or insights, real bargains or other timely information.

Simple Enticements

Enticement #1 - Newsletters
Free, expert information and news is a wonderful thing to receive in an in-box. If your company can write up news, trends or opinions about your industry or niche that will get your viewers' interest, you have the seeds of an online newsletter.

Offer to send viewers an email newsletter – put a form for people to enter their email address right on your homepage, and put text like this next to it: "Subscribe to Company news - Sign up to receive timely and valuable information about your industry by email."

Enticement #2 – Discounts & Specials
Discounts and specials move product, and early announcement of discounts and specials make the recipients feel that they're getting valuable information, too. This enticement can appear on your homepage, in the shopping cart or on a confirmation page.

Enticement #3 – Events & Seminars
If your company sponsors events or seminars, people want to get reminders about times and locations. Try offering discounts to events through email to increase attendance.

Tip: The human touch is not possible online, but the next best thing is writing that sounds like it comes from a real person, not a marketing department. Email written in the first person works – it feels more "real." And a little humor (appropriate humor, that is) can also help. Online communication tends to be a little less formal than print, so loosen up just a bit!

Putting It On Your Website

The links below show some of the ways marketing websites gather visitor information. They all involve different types of incentives, from timely and valuable information, to inside leads on good deals. And they all utilize an online form that gathers the information and adds it to a database.

Tip: Keeping contact information in an online database gives you the ability to export and manage the data most effectively.

Example: Nominum - www.nominum.com

At the bottom of the left navigation area, they offer an email newsletter. In their niche industry, Nominum is well respected (their people helped develop some of the basic stuff that makes the Internet work), so dozens sign up per month.

Example: AdvanceTel Direct - www.advanceteldirect.com

At the bottom of the homepage, they tell visitors to "Start Now" with their direct marketing campaign. The form lets visitors give as much information as their comfortable giving, and gets AdvanceTel Direct very solid leads.

Example: Alpine Investors - www.alpine-investors.com

This private equity firm often does deals with business intermediaries (business brokers) and business owners, as well as other investors. In the bottom right corner they offer to keep visitors apprised of new and interesting deals the company is working on. This feature has been very successful for them – around a dozen visitors leave their info behind every month. This has added up quickly.

Conclusion

This series of articles outlines the most important elements of building a successful marketing website. This final article, about collecting contact information, is where the first two come to fruition: when someone visits your site, you should have created an impressive environment that encourages visitors to give you their contact information.

Finally, once you collect contact information, you can start using the web's most effective and efficient marketing tool – email.

Thank you for visiting Workbox.com. All of us at Workbox hope you have successful and profitable online marketing campaigns.

Eric Weidner
President, Workbox, Inc.


PREVIOUS:
3 Things Your Marketing Site Must Do: #1 – Tell Your Story Quickly
(http://www.workbox.com/news.php?article_id=2)

3 Things Your Marketing Site Must Do: #2 – Update Regularly
(http://www.workbox.com/news.php?article_id=3)