March 2008

Bad News and Good News About Customer List Building

Bad news…there are a many small to medium size businesses
who are getting great traffic, meaning a lot of unique visitors,
but and this is a big BUT, they are letting thousands and
thousands of potential customers wander about their site
without talking to them, offering them guided direction
or a reason to come back. If you have the traffic, you need
to capture their attention. Sounds simple but less than 50%
of businesses know how to do this well.

I like to think of a website as a funnel to help my customers
get what they are looking for. It’s like a grocery store that has
isles to direct you to the foods you want to buy. But until you
get to know your customers, you don’t always know what they
are looking for, right? Is it fresh veggies and fish or microwave
dinners and cakes? How do you find out? Ask them!

The Good news is you can have what are called opt-in forms
on any of your web pages that can be easily set up so people
could ask you questions. I talk about this in depth in my course.
It is important how you create your opt-in box to get the
maximum number of people to sign up and then knowing how
to handle & manage their information to maximize the business
relationship you create with them. Which is another way of saying
how successful you will be in generating profits from your customer
list…

And just in case anyone is unfamiliar with an opt-in box, this is
the box that can be placed on any of your web pages to collect
important information from your web visitors like email addresses
and so on. People will generally give you their email address in
return for something that they value whether that is information,
a savings offer or a secret revealed.

I like to collect very targeted information from the people who
visit my website. So, I want to talk potato chips to the people
who want potato chips and veggies to the veggie people. So I
might have different opt-in forms depending on what their
interests are. Make sense?

Now, to take it a step further, it makes sense that I would talk
steak sauces to my steak people but I wouldn’t think about talking
cup cakes to my low fat yogurt crowd. The crossover would be
minimal and I might lose customer interest that way.

I think one of the biggest reasons companies fail to gather
customer information is that they

a) don’t know how to do this effectively on their websites
b) they don’t know what to do with their customer list once
they have developed it
c) they don’ t have a dedicated staff person who is knowledgeable
about how to nurture the list and generate substantial profits
from it.

Stay tuned because we will not only show you how to create
highly effetive opt-in forms on your website, how to develop a
loyal relationship with your customer list but how to turn that
bond into lasting profits.