Always collect an email address

Posted by Nick Niesen on November 1st, 2010

The power of collecting an email address is amazing. As I mentioned in a prior article, you can expect between 1 and 10 percent of visitors to make a purchase on their initial visit to your website (conversion rate) and between 10 and 33 percent to give you their email address (signup rate). Often visitors weren?t intending to buy any product but were after more information on your subject. Studies show it often takes 7 communications before a customer will buy a product. Believe me, after selling websites, it?s very rare to get a ?yes? on the first visit. Websites can be quite complex so maybe it?s not the best example but people just need more information and confidence before they?re ready to buy.

We need to offer the customer an awesome product that they simply can?t say no to for them to give us their email. Often people have no intention of handing out their email address but a careful planned report or mini-course that is instantly delivered to them is often incentive enough for them to build that bridge.

The method of collecting email addresses is called an autoresponder. That is, a database that stores names and email addresses and can send out pre-programmed email addresses to recipients. These can be customised and sent instantly, 1 day, 5 days and anywhere up to 10 years after the initial email was collected. Very powerful and effective. Third party autoresponders that sit on a separate server are the most effective and you can generate your own signup form to place on your website.

You can also send an email to your database at any time. Let?s look at an example of the power of an email database. Let?s say you attract 200 visitors each day (easily possible) and have a signup rate of 15%, so that?s 30 email addresses a day, and after a year you have 10 950. If you mailout a promotion for a course you have created that costs $97 and just 3% of your list signs up (quite reasonable), that?s an income of $31 864.50 just from one mailout. This profit is realised over a few days and a great example of the power of a distribution list and a value-adding product. So make sure you ask for that email address. Our goal is to add value for our customers so we need to work out what information will be useful to them and make it available. The easiest way to do that is via email.