Psy Web Design Online Business Console- CMS, CRM, E-commerce and website analytics

Garnering awareness and acquiring customers is one of the great challenges of building a business. It is so important that there is an entire business discipline dedicated to this -  known as marketing!

It would be fair to say that any customers that find your business or website should be highly valuable to you - you want to capture their details so you can keep in touch with them about any products, services or offers that may be of interest to them.

That's where the idea of a database comes in. A customer database is simply a list of contact information for customers that you have dealt with in the past, whether this be by selling them something or allowing them to sign up to free advice or latest news through newsletters.

Why keep a list of them? Because they are your best source for future revenue and spreading news of your business by word of mouth to their friends, family and colleagues.

Who better to announce your latest products to than the people who loved your last product? Who better to spread the word about your new service than those who've used it previously?

But how do you go about capturing the details of visitors to your website?

Here are 4 simple strategies.

• Give something away. Give every customer who fills in an online form something valuable in exchange for their email address. It could be a discount voucher, or an ebook that you have written, or exclusive VIP content.
• Add a simple "Contact Us" web form to your site.  You'll be suprised by how many of your visitors will take the time to ask a question about your business - they will provide you with an email address so you can reply to them...
• Run an online discussion forum. People love to chat and share their knowledge and opinions. You can empower your customers to do the same, and as part of the process, ask them to give their email address to use as a username.
• Sell something! When people buy from your online shop, ask them for an email address to send the receipt/confirmation to.

Once you have developed a customer base, you have everything you need to start marketing to them and increase your sales and revenue!

I would not recommend emailing everybody, every day,  with every product or service you have! People will soon get annoyed by the influx of emails from you, instead take the time to segment your data into clear groups and identify the reason you ended up with their details, you can then send them targeted email campaigns that they will appreciate recieving.

Psy-Web's Online Business Console has a central customer database that automatically captures and stores the data collected using the 4 strategies above, it can simplify the process and reduce the cost of adding the forms, shops, forums, etc required to encourage people to give their email address to you - and to top it off, it has a built in email marketing suite that links directly to the customer database making sending those targeted emails that bit easier!

For further information, please contact us.