KBID 225 Date Created: 4/27/2003 Date Modified: 7/2/2010
Getting your customers/members' email addresses is critical for establishing a digital relationship, which provides a vital complementary channel to in-person and phone channels and allows you to naturally capture consumers' and prospects' buying propensities in the highly leveragable digital format.
However, an email address is a precious and closely guarded commodity. With all the spam out there today clogging in-boxes, consumers are especially concerned with giving out their email addresses. Even organizations with ongoing and trusted relationships must overcome several hurdles before a consumer is willing to part with something as personal and important as one's email address.
Their email address will not be shared with anyone else.
They have the ability to control what gets emailed to them.
They are getting something of real value in exchange for taking the perceived risk of providing their email address.
Their email address will not be shared with anyone else: Wherever you are asking for a consumer to provide their email address, they must be able to immediately view your Privacy Policy, which states in simple and certain terms that their email address will not be shared with anyone outside of your organization under any circumstances.
They have the ability to control what gets emailed to them: Again, right there where you are asking for their email address, you must provide them with the ability to opt-out from receiving any information from you. You must also strictly adhere to your promise to not send ANY emails unless they have been previously authorized by the consumer.
They are getting something of real value in exchange for taking the perceived risk of providing their email address. And, to make things that much more challenging, the perceived value required increases in direct proportion to the consumer's perceived risk. The bottom line is that you need to provide several reasons for giving up an email address if you are to have any chance of achieving material success with your entire customer/member base.
Providing rich and dynamic information considered to be valuable by your consumer is a good way to attract them to your Web site, which is the first step to gaining their email address. In addition, by getting your customers, members and prospects to review information that identifies their buying propensities, you are able to target your marketing and cross-sell efforts more effectively.
Potential things to consider that add value to your consumers include:
Use your consumers' email address as the user-id for gaining access to your online support tools and allow them to save a cookie (file placed on PC) on their machine so that they do not need to register or log in each time they access your Web site. Cookies uniquely identify each consumer and allow you to track their usage of your site. Cookies digitally capture valuable information for providing personalized support and for use in permission-based marketing efforts.
Make it easy for your consumers to ask questions and provide feedback securely online and consistently deliver high-levels of support through your online channel so that it becomes viewed as a viable alternative to your in-person and phone support.
Offer rich and dynamic information relevant to consumers when making buying decisions relating to your products and services, allowing them to help themselves but able to escalate to staff as necessary. For some of the content, require that they register to view it.
Building the necessary protections and incentives for customers, members and prospects to give you their email address takes time, so every day you wait is putting you further behind your competition in positioning your organization for leveraging the true potential of a digital channel.