Generating Leads From Your Website

by Bill Mee

One of the single most important things a website must do is to get prospects to identify themselves. It is unusual for prospects to buy on their first visit to your site. It usually takes multiple contacts with a prospect before the decision to buy is made. Therefore, it is absolutely vital to keep in contact with prospects and get them to keep coming back to your website. The only way this can be done is if you have the prospects e-mail address or other contact information.

People don't just give out their email addresses, they must be attracted to do so by a magnetic or compelling offer. Such a "magnetic" offer usually involves offering something to the prospect for free in return for their email address. This can be any one of the following "magnets":

The offer can be in a sidebar or in a pop-up or pop-under window. Pop-up windows have been shown to be fairly effective because they get the visitor's attention, but they also can rapidly become annoying if they pop-up every time a visitor returns to your website.

Whenever possible you should attempt to get the name of the visitor, although care should be exercised in the amount of personal information you request. Privacy and anonymity are hallmarks of the Internet and people do not always want to provide their real names until you have built up a sufficient level of trust. If you make a good enough offer you should be able to harvest names and other contact information.

Once you have the prospect's e-mail address you are now in a position to send them a newsletter or information, on a regular basis, pertaining to special offers. Managing your e-mail marketing list becomes the next challenge. A detailed explanation of how to effectively manage a marketing list is contained in the article "Managing you Marketing List".

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