Digital Minds Forum

So you want to data capture the email addresses of as many visitors to your website as possible. How do you achieve this?

The interruption marketing way is to have a nasty pop-up appear as soon as someone clicks through to the site. Not a good idea – will instantly cause people to bounce away and cause immediate suspicion of your brand.

The permission way is to woo the customer with a nice reward. A white paper, a freebie, a competition. You give them something useful and in return they give you their email address. Permission equates to win:win.

So having persuaded the customer to click through for the reward, what hoops do you then demand before they claim their prize? The temptation is to capture all vital statistics possible – full demographics, source of referral plus at least the name of the family cat, their insurance renewal date, child’s middle name and more beside. Research, however, shows that the more complex the sign-up form, the less likely someone is to complete it. What is the real “need to know” data at this stage? Probably just their name and email address. Once you’ve begun to build a relationship later you can begin to learn more about them as they reward your wonderful communications with increased permission.

So keep it simple. Capture the need to know, reward the customer with something worthwhile and then begin the business of building a relationship. Don’t reward with spammy eblasts. Dance with them, woo them and show them you care.

Marie Page runs an international e-business selling instructional DVDs teaching contemporary musical instruments. She blogs at http://musicademy.com/blog

In my last blog post I asked some questions that hopefully got you thinking about content for your newsletter. Now you’ve done the hard work, here are some easy ideas to give you a bit more inspiration:

1. Guest/celebrity articles
2. Ask the expert (this is always the most popular of the articles I write)
3. How to articles
4. Interviews – an expert, a staff member, a customer
5. Stories about how your products have impacted someone’s life
6. Veteran input
7. Inspirational client stories
8. Lists of Top 10 websites/blogs/resources relevant to your market
9. Top 10s, 5 tips, 10 idea etc
10. Do’s and Don’ts
11. Statistics
12. FAQs
13. Competitions
14. Surveys/survey results
15. Reader feedback
16. Spotlight
17. Day in the life
18. Comment on news stories relevant to your industry
19. Review other people’s products
20. Write articles about your keywords
21. Get ideas from competitor news or newsletters from other industries
22. Browse article directories
23. YouTube clips relevant to your industry
24. Podcasts or vodcasts you have created
25. Look at industry blogs and steal (sorry – source), ideas from

Now think of 10 more!

Marie Page runs an international e-business selling instructional DVDs teaching contemporary musical instruments. She blogs at http://musicademy.com/blog

1. Put everyone’s email address in the “To” field
2. Don’t give your reader a way to unsubscribe, or ignore them when they ask that you stop contacting them.
3. When you meet someone new and chat with them about your business (or the weather), or if they contact you about something unrelated to your business, be sure and immediately add them to your mailing list (don’t get explicit permission or let them know you’ve done it).
4. Be sure not to check your links in your newsletter – that way people will be annoyed AND frustrated when they click and wind up at an error page.
5. Dress up your promotion as a newsletter

Marie Page runs an international e-business selling instructional DVDs teaching contemporary musical instruments. She blogs at http://musicademy.com/blog