The scenario is a familiar one, a business owner knows what he has to do. With the average person spending the majority of their day away from their home, the smart business owner knows that many of his customers and prospects are best reached by email. There’s just one problem..his staff.They know they should be collecting email addresses. They know that many people are hard to reach because they’re on the go…or they’re busy juggling family and work. The business owner’s staff also best email database provider understands that they’re supposed to be collecting email addresses. They’ve been told more than once to get email addresses from every customer and prospect they work with. And yet…they don’t. Why? They’re uncomfortable asking for email addresses because they don’t want to annoy their clients or intrude on their privacy.
When email was in its infancy, many people saw their email addresses as something private and were hesitant about sharing it with everyone they did business with. But as email has grown into one of the most common forms of communication, people have realized that sharing their email address allows them to communicate in a fashion that puts them in the driver’s seat – meaning that they can delete any email they don’t want to read, and respond whenever they deem fit.
Staff people will be most apt to help the business owner in the building of an email database if they realize that they are actually helping their customers by opening up a form of communication that benefits the customer.
Email communication benefits your customers…
They can delete any emails that they don’t wish to receive, put any emails from unknown sources into their junk mail, and opt out of email correspondence when it gets too overwhelming.
They can reply to emails when the time best suits them
They can save the email correspondence in their files for later reference
Email communication benefits the business owner…
Email allows for immediate follow-up in a personal and nonintrusive manner
It allows the business to have a paper trail for customer follow-up and later reference
Clients can be notified of any pertinent information or any updates in products and services at a moment’s notice
Email provides the business an additional outlet for reaching customers and prospects who may be difficult to reach by phone or in another fashion
