We’ve talked before about how e-marketing campaigns can help drive traffic to your site. But the reverse is true, too. Your website can also include a short form that collects email addresses, which can build up your email list. And when you have a strong list of email contacts, you have the potential for a lot of repeat visitors to your site - not to mention repeat business.
Of course, having a form on your website isn’t going to do much unless you can get people to enter info into the form. And, truthfully, there just aren’t a lot of people out there who spend time browsing the web and generously inserting their contact information into forms out of the goodness of their hearts. So if you want the form on your website to collect a lot of information, you have to give it a little incentive power.
People Will Do Anything for a Reward
Since people aren’t likely to volunteer their e-mail address for no reason, it helps if you give them a little reward for providing their contact information.
There’s a huge difference between asking for someone’s email address and asking for someone’s email address so that you can send him a coupon. Restaurants and department stores already use this technique to entice their patrons to fork over their email addresses, so go ahead and jump on the bandwagon. And if your form-filler-outer uses the coupon, you not only have his email address, but you’ve also actually made a sale.
Besides a discount or coupon, another “reward” is good content, packaged in the form of an e-book or secret members-only article archives. If someone has come to your site in search of information, the person might be willing to give out his or her email address as long as it opens the vault of information. Of course, there are benefits to providing free information, too, so you might not want to hide away all of your factoids under lock and key. But for businesses in some industries, reserving some information for members will get you new entries in your contact list.
Keep the Circle Spinning
Both your email list and your website are awesome tools that help the internet bring business to you. So use your website to collect email addresses. And use your email contacts to bring visitors to your site. And as this cycle continues, you’ll find your business spinning its way to more clients - and higher profits.