Issue 36, September 1, 1997
Welcome to Issue 36 of Web Marketing Today, e-mailed to 27,267 subscribers around the world.
In this issue:
 Developing Sales Leads from Your Web Site
by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson
Some products can be sold directly over the Internet -- commodities, even computers. But getting a prospect to purchase certain kinds of products and services requires education, repeated contacts, gestation time, and perhaps a sales call. How can you use your website to do that?
Signing In
The first step is to get people to request information. One way, of course, is to put only part of the necessary information on the Web so they'll have to ask for the rest. Prices, for example. That's dangerous, though. Your competitors may be putting it all out there, prices included, and you'll be left out of the sales decision. After all, full information is part of the Internet culture.
Evan I. Schwartz in Webonomics: Nine Essential Principles for Growing Your Business on the World Wide Web cites Principle 3: "Customers Must Be Compensated for Disclosing Data about Themselves." Compensate with what? Their name in exchange for information. I don't know about you, but I sometimes balk when presented with that kind of choice. Maybe I need some assurance that you won't sell my name to an e-mail spam list. And if you use this sort of gateway, don't ask for too much information, only the essentials.
You might offer a discount coupon for responding, or some kind of news, entertainment, advice, prize, or membership in an online community. Perhaps there's a special report you offer to e-mail or snail-mail to them, or a free subscription to a valuable e-mail newsletter. Offer some compensation, and you'll get a higher sign-in rate.
Make the opportunity to "sign in" on multiple pages and in a variety of ways. Remember, your goal is to get them to sign in so you can work towards a sale in the future. One request is not enough. I offer subscription opportunities for Web Marketing Today on perhaps 25% of the pages in my site, and make it very easy to subscribe. In addition, I repeatedly invite people to "sign our guestbook," and many do.
Qualifying Questions
So they've signed up on your form. Now what? Are they worth spending sales time developing? Write down a profile your best prospects. Then decide which characteristics you can ascertain with some degree of accuracy from the fewest questions possible. In selling website design services I ask two qualifying questions with "radio" buttons (which allows them to give only one answer to each question):
My interest in Web marketing:
__I'm just browsing. No particular interest right now.
__Our business or organization is contemplating having Web pages.
__We are seriously planning to have Web pages within the next
six months or so.
__We want to get Web pages up ASAP.
__We already have Web pages, but aren't happy with them yet.
__Our website needs to be redesigned.
__We are quite happy with our Web pages, but can always
learn something new.
I follow the first question up with:
Would you like Wilson Internet Services to contact you about Web pages?
__Yes, contact me.
__No, don't contact me.
I use these questions along with a field for comments to give me a pretty good idea if the respondent is a good prospect for my services. Should the contact be made by telephone or e-mail? Qualifying questions will help you decide. You'll want to use questions tailored to your own business, of course, but this gives you the idea.
Database Entry
Several good forms-to-email programs are available, depending upon what operating system your Web hosting service uses. On Unix they might have available on their server already a copy of Cgiemail or FormMail. Offer to pay for help in getting these set up; they can be a bit tricky for the novice. Both of these programs take the information your prospect puts on the form, and e-mail it to you in an easily readable format. This works fine for a limited number of leads.
But what if you get dozens a week, or more? Then your secretary will shoot you after suffering from an acute case of data input frustration syndrome. This isn't worth dying over. Find a way to get the information in a database format. This is more difficult and may cost you more. But when threatened with death as well as riches from many sales leads, I know you'll make the right decision.
Your friendly website developer will write or modify a CGI program so the form fields are written to a comma- or tab-delimited database on the Web server. Each day you fire up your FTP program and download this file to your hard drive. Microsoft Access's file/get external data/import command brings the data into your desktop database. Now your secretary will spend the time printing forms to distribute to salespeople rather than cursing the keyboard and you'll all be happier.
Another approach, a bit "iffy" at this stage, is to use one of a new crop of programs which interpret the fields on your incoming e-mail and "parse" them for database import. In a few months several programs will be ready to do this with ease. (We'll tell you as they become available.)
E-Mail Nurture
You know how to do sales calls, but this is the Internet. Let's see what we can do using the tools at our disposal. With prospect names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses in your database you could use Microsoft Word's mail merging function to send out printed product information. But what about e-mail? Can you believe that Office 97 didn't think that far ahead? There are several programs, however, which do allow e-mail merging:
With one of these programs you can design an e-mail campaign with a series of timed messages personalized with your prospect's name, address, etc. This is not spam. This is follow-up to your prospect's inquiry. This is how you nurture your prospect's interest until it's ready to be harvested with a telephone or in-person sales call.
Why don't you design your website -- and your back office system -- to generate and process sales leads? You'll wonder why you didn't do this sooner.
Web Commerce Today Targets Direct Online Sales
Two weeks ago you received the inaugural issue of Web Commerce Today, a sister publication which focuses on direct online sales. Many of you responded by subscribing, for which we are grateful. Those of you who responded immediately took advantage of a 15% savings, but that opportunity is past. Our Web Marketing Today friends who subscribe by September 12 will receive a special 10% savings off the regular price.
The next issue of Web Commerce Today will be e-mailed on September 15. We'll be featuring:
- "How to Get Shoppers to Look at Your Wares," design techniques for increasing online sales. What you learn here is likely to pay for the cost of a subscription many times over.
- "Review of ShopSite Manager 3.1" looks at the strengths and weaknesses of this popular online sales software tool.
- "How to Take Payment in Various International Currencies."
In addition we'll be listing links to new articles on all aspects of electronic commerce, e-mail to the editor, related sidebars, as well as a look at the current trends in online sales. You can learn more about Web Commerce Today, and scan headlines the most recent issue at
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wct/
Subscribers also receive a username and password giving them access to the hundreds of article links within our exclusive Electronic Commerce Research Room. If you're trying to sell products directly over the Web -- or want to design sites for customers who do -- you can't afford to be without Web Commerce Today and the Research Room.
New Website Update Service
Outsource your Website maintenance to experienced professionals.
Is your site getting stale? Information out of date? Through an association with Wilson Online Communications, we are pleased to offer the Webmaster Service Plan to a limited number of select businesses. The plan includes:
- Updates to Web pages, usually within 2 business days
- Scanning, sizing, and placement of printed photos or digitized graphics
- Construction of new Web pages conforming to your existing site design
- Consultation by e-mail or telephone
- Setting up password protected directories, adding e-mail aliases, etc. (where your Web Hosting Service provides access to these functions)
With the Webmaster Service Plan, you’ll be able to control your Web site maintenance costs, free your in-house staff to work on other projects, and get the kind of fast turn-around you need to keep your Web presence in sync with changes in your business. For more information, see http://www.wilsoninet.com/woc/serviceplan/
E-Mail to the Editor
In Issue 35 we wrote, "secretaries a year or two from now
will be asked about their Web page design skills." Patrick Baird replied:
"It's already happening. A few years back, when I was pursuing a career as a Desktop Publisher, I ran into the phenomenon of competing with secretaries for DTP jobs. Last year, I considered pursing a career as a Webmaster. I found the same deal, companies hoping to hire web design on the cheap by using secretaries (primarily women, primarily non-college educated). This is part of a management delusion: just buy the software and anyone can do it. I have decided to remain a generalist, where I can add new skills, and exploit old ones." -- Patrick Baird
Last Chance for Nominations for the 1997 WilsonWeb Retail Commerce Awards for Excellence
Please nominate your favorite online store for the 1997 WilsonWeb Retail Commerce Awards for Excellence. We want to help the online community analyze what really makes a great store. There is a modest financial gain for the nominators of winning stores. Our distinguished judges will be using your nominations as the basis of pointing out points of excellence all of us can learn from.
Odds 'n' Ends
We were privileged to be Entrepreneur Magazine's Small Business Square Link of the Week for August 11, 1997.
We were also the NETrageous SITEing of the week for August 20th.
They called the Web Marketing Info Center "one of the best collections of articles on Web marketing available anywhere. Expect to spend
hours exploring this site -- you won't be sorry."
We are offering targeted banner advertising for your business on various parts of our Web sites, including Web Marketing Today issues, the Web Marketing Info Center, Web marketing articles, and the WilsonWeb Retail Commerce Center. Why don't you try a few thousand "page views" and see how an ad might work for your company. For more information see http://www.wilsonweb.com/ads/
If you're in the Middle East, perhaps we can meet in Tel Aviv later this month where we'll be conducting an Internet seminar.
Many of you took time to respond to our questionnaire last month to answer the question "Is Web Marketing Today Too Long?" Thanks so much for your ideas, encouragement, and critique. Web Marketing Today will be the better for it.
Brief Survey: Which is your favorite e-mail format? Text or HTML?
Wilson Internet Services
http://www.wilsonweb.com
Copyright © 1996-2003 by Ralph F. Wilson, all rights reserved. Text, graphics, and HTML code are protected by US and International Copyright Laws, and may not be copied, reprinted, published, translated, hosted, or otherwise distributed by any means without explicit permission. Trademarks and terms of use.
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