Website
Don’t assume that, because someone visits your store’s website, he or she is already on your mailing list. People come to your website from a variety of sources, including links from manufacturer and training agency websites, search engines (if you’ve set up your website correctly), your store’s ads and printed materials, and referrals from friends.
So that you don’t risk having these visitors remain anonymous, provide a means for them to sign up for your mailing list directly on your website. You can do this in one of two ways:
- Ask only for customers’ e-mail addresses.
- Ask for complete contact information, including name, mailing address, e-mail and, possibly, phone number.
There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach.
E-Mail Address Only If you ask only for e-mail addresses, you will get a substantially higher response rate, as this take less of the customer’s time, and enables him or her to remain more anonymous. It may also enable you to put a mailing list sign-up box on every page of your website (this will result in the highest possible response rate).
On the other hand, you will not be able to use the information you gather to send out direct mail ("snail mail,” i.e., newsletters and flyers sent via the Post Office) or update existing customer records. Depending on your POS software, you may also not be able to find a customer record simply by looking for an e-mail address, should a customer later want to be removed from your mailing list.
Asking for More Complete Contact Info This will result in a lower response rate, as it takes more customer time, asks visitors to reveal more about themselves and may require they go to a separate sign-up page. The up side is you will get information that you can use for both direct- and e-mail promotions, and which is easier to update and maintain. (See sample; opens in a new window.)
Which approach is best for you? That is a difficult question to answer, and the answer may be different for your store than it is for others. You may want to experiment, seeing which of these approaches works best for you.
If you follow the steps outlined thus far, you will not only continue to build and better maintain your customer contact database, you will also acquire the e-mail addresses needed to mount an effective e-mail marketing campaign. How to do so is something we will examine in Part II of this series.
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