Build A Web Page With A Form That Will Collect The Address-

Design the Promotion

You might find my description of this step confusing. How is collecting addresses a promotion? The answer to that question lies in the nature of customers’ buying behaviors. People do more than respond to an ad and buy. They analyze, compare, shop, discuss, size up the store, chat with the sales person, call to get information, drive by your store, visit your Web site, email you, and generally engage in a little "dance" before consummating the sale. Not all purchases are alike of course. Some are very short: see and buy, but others are very lengthy and involve many steps. As business people, our job is to understand all these behaviors as they relate to our own offerings and to find ways to help our customers come to accept our offers as meeting their needs so that they will buy from us and become regular customers who also recommend our products or services to their friends.

Persuading customers and prospects to give us their email addresses so that we can then send them more information as a means to helping them discover how our products and services can help to solve their problems is just one possible step in the buying process.

The trick to getting people to give you their REAL email addresses is to understand that when you ask for the address you are attempting to make a sale. You want their “payment” in the form of their email address, and so you must offer something of value IN THEIR OPINION, in return. You might think of the information you offer about your products and services as valuable in its own right, but most prospects and customers will view the information you ordinarily give them as just a sales pitch (which, after all is exactly what it is, right?). To get them to give you their valuable email addresses, you must offer them something they will value. What you can offer will depend on what you are trying to sell. Here are a couple of ideas:

Once you have the sales pitch decided, you need to consider what sort of information you want to collect. While you are asking for the email address, you might want to also get their name, address, city, state, zip code, country, phone number, etc.

You can try to collect any information you like, but in the end, your customers will “pay” you only what they decide your offer is worth. If you ask for too much information—that is, you make the “price” too high, they will either give you nothing or give incorrect data in an effort to get your stuff without “paying” with REAL information. Since neither one of these options is acceptable, I suggest that you collect just the minimum amount of information that will serve your purposes. The less you require, the better your chances of getting it.

All information does not have the same value of course. If you ask for very personal information such as name and address, you had better be offering something of great value, because that information is highly valued by your customers and prospects. By contrast, if you ask for zip code or city, such very impersonal information will “cost” you less. If you really do need more personal information than the email address, I suggest that you make providing the other information optional, or better yet, try to get the additional information after you have obtained the email address and begun sending email newsletters to a prospect. Once you have an established relationship, you can then attempt to collect the more personal information by offering additional valuable stuff to your subscribers in return for the additional information. Once you have a relationship with a customer, it becomes easier to get the more personal information, because they trust you more than they will a stranger.

For the current illustration, I am going to collect name, title, company name, address and phone number. My offer is for a free sample of my HappyMouse computer mouse cleaning tool. My ultimate goal is to sell custom imprinted tools to businesses. I will use the HappyMouse Gazette email newsletter to keep in touch and to drive interested prospects to my Web site. Notice that I am asking for a LOT of information. I know that many who visit my Web site will be unwilling to give up that much information. That is okay because it costs me real money to give them a sample and I only want real prospects in my mailing list. I figure that asking for the company name and their title will cause lots of individuals—who I would like NOT to be in my database—to opt out.

With those decisions made, I am ready to build my collection page.