Posted by Gareth Cutter on 29th May 2009 to
Best Practice A strong email marketing campaign thrives on high-quality data, which is why we always recommend including data capture elements on your web site. Even if it doesn’t have transactional capabilities, your site can still generate potential sales leads and help profile who’s interested in your company.
Getting people to hand over their email address can be tricky though; a subscription to an email newsletter isn't always incentive enough to create sign-ups – especially in the B2C market where things are more commoditised and tied into brand experience. You can lay out the benefits of signing-up as much as you like but to some people the thought of joining a mailing list will still feel a little dry
There are plenty of opportunities for data capture however. Step outside the web site for a moment and look at what your business offers to its customers; see how you can involve them in an experience where handing over their email address feels less like signing their inbox’s freedom away and more like a minor formality.
One sports retailer has nailed this approach on the head with its flagship store, where visitors can test their core skills in speed, strength and balance in an state of the art activity centre. By registering their details at the store and logging in to the web site, visitors can compare their performance to friends and famous sports personalities on the database.
All kinds of useful data can be collected with this strategy: whether it’s the visitor’s first time in the store or if they’re a regular customer; whether their interest is in running or football etc. By providing an opt-in or opt-out tick box on the registration form, the retailer can grow their email list organically - a tactic that generally provide bigger returns on investment than third party list rentals (we estimate the retailer will be getting hundreds of sign-ups a week through this tactic at the very least).
Maybe it’s time you gave your data capture technique a brush-down and started thinking about creating an experience for your prospects and existing customers. People won’t sign up to your email marketing for nothing; give them an incentive that taps into their desire for an experience and see your email marketing list grow.
