How To Build Customer Relationships Online

By Cheryl Rickman
Posted Monday, November 29, 2004

Marketing is not just about getting an order, it's about getting a customer and keeping them. Nurture your customer relationships with regular e-mails. Marketing is not just about getting an order, it's about getting a customer and keeping them. Nurture your customer relationships with regular e-mails.

With regular e-mails you can build relationships and gather market intelligence. Send regular e-mails to your online prospect list containing special offers, useful information, resources and links, product or service updates, new offers or free reports and surveys.

You can also establish yourself as an expert, as a resource for invaluable information. At the same time, you can find out what offers your audience responds to best, and what they want to gain or achieve.

Build Your Own Prospect List On your Web site, build an opt-in e-mail prospect list by capturing your visitors' e-mail addresses and asking them to "opt-in" to receive more information. They are giving you permission to send information; keep them updated; announce special offers and so on. They want your information, so they are good prospects. You can sufficiently build your list by offering a free e-zine, articles or reports. (For those who don't have good writing skills, some companies (such as (http://www.webcritique.co.uk)) write an article or report for you with your byline and ad at the bottom.

Opt-in e-mail allows you to qualify your online prospects, and ensure they are interested in the topic your site covers, your products and your services. Only those interested will opt-in or register. And, once they've permitted you to send them regular e-mails, you can use e-mail as a tool for getting your message across, gaining credibility, and building your relationships with them.

For example, your opt-in box text might say: "Enter your name and e-mail address below and we'll keep you posted about the latest ideas on Internet marketing." The Web site visitor simply enters his or her details and clicks a button. They've then opted-in to receive further information from you.

Another way to build your prospect list is to establish your credibility and get involved in relevant online discussions. You can position yourself as an expert in your field by visiting forums and discussion boards and answering questions on hot topics. By advising and offering help you can build trust, confidence and loyalty, and attract people to your site, therefore building your prospect list.

Gather Market Research Information Send out online questionnaires to your e-mail list to find out how they learn and what they read. Find out what magazines and e-zines they subscribe to, what their favorite Web sites are and which sites they have bookmarked. You can then use this information to amend your promotional campaign accordingly.

You can also ask prospects and customers what they like or dislike about your product, service, Web site or offer. Get feedback. Find out what they want or need to gain, learn or achieve. If you know exactly who your market is, where they go and what they want or buy the most, you can position and structure your e-mails, marketing messages and Web site offers, to appeal to those wants.

Limit online surveys to 10 questions. Yes/no and multiple choice answers are the easiest to analyze, but you might also want to leave space for people to elaborate with comments. Always make the survey quick and easy to complete. You might even reward those who complete your survey by offering a free booklet or report. You might also use a guestbook on your site, which invites visitors to make comments. Reward those who enter their details with a gift certificate or discounted product.

Once you've researched your target audience, and know as much as you can about your online customers, you can prepare a profile. This will help you aim your online marketing at an accurately defined group of people, and appeal directly to their primary wants and needs. Remember, the secret to success online and offline, is to find out what people want and give it to them.

Getting your website right

(www.applythis.com/browsersizer) Check how your web pages appear on various screen resolutions.

(http://www.webcritique.co.uk) Have your website professionally appraised by an expert. You get a 40+ page in-depth report with recommendations to improve navigation, usability, copy, content, appearance and search engine readiness, with revamped copy, site layout suggestions, analysis of your site's key strengths and weaknesses and content idea generator and accessibility guidelines. A quick and easy way to improve your website without spending a fortune, and attract/retain more visitors.

(http://www.webdesignclinic.com) This site offers information on colour theory and how to get your website design right.

(http://www.webtrends.com) This site offers one of the most popular analysis products available. Provides info on site visitor numbers, how they find you, where they go and where they exit. This allows you to get a better idea of your target audience and tweak your site and content accordingly.

(http://www.siteconfidence.co.uk) Site Confidence offers a free trial of the website monitoring package. This reports any site downtime, and is a great way to monitor when your site goes down - it may happen more often than you are aware of.

Cheryl Rickman is author of 111 winning ways to promote your website successfully and runs (http://www.webcritique.co.uk) where she offers in-depth website appraisals and personalized web marketing plans, plus web copywriting services, a free e-bulletin on web promotion and links to useful resources.

About the Author
Cheryl Rickman is author of '111 winning ways to promote your website successfully' and contributes regularly to Better Business magazine, Digitrends.com and Internet.com. She offers website appraisals, copywriting and marketing via (http://www.webcritique.co.uk)