Private Contact Information – Ask Just Once

What? . . . Do they think I’m stupid or something?”

When you do business online, you have to get a little personal with your prospects, subscribers, and customers. There’s no way around it.

Being personal is fine with most of us, if we like and trust the person that’s moving into our space. But online, being personal is a real challenge and, at times, a very sensitive issue for some business owners.

From the very beginning, you’d like to know how to reach your prospects individually. So, you go after a first name, last name, and an email address at the very least.  You ask for permission to make future contact with that person interested in your business.

You want to open a line of communication with your site visitors and that requires a willingness on their part to give you their name and email. That’s being personal and it takes place on their very first visit.

That’s asking a lot from some people.

Later, on a subsequent visit, you (the business owner) might like to give your followers a gift, a free download, a template, report, or an ebook. So, you ask Mr. Customer for his personal information again.

Even later, you approach your customer about buying one of your products. If he consents, you’ll probably ask again for his personal information; but this time, you need his full name, credit card number, expiration date, security code, address, city, state, zip code, phone number and who knows what else.

After awhile, to certain customers it may begin to seem like all you’re after is my personal and confidential information.

It goes without saying that you need to keep all customer personal information private, secure, and confidential.

Beyond that, I would suggest you build systems into your business and web site that will allow you to gather all this relevant information once and then never bother the customer with another info request.  It can be done with business tools and list segmentation but many business owners don’t feel that asking for contact information over and over again creates any kind of a problem.

Why can’t you ask for, and collect, all the pertinent personal information once and then pre-populate boxes on your site with his information stored digitally so that the customer never has to waste time filling out your request for a name or email again?

There is ample technology available at reasonable cost for you to do this.  I always feel “used” or taken advantage of when I’m continually asked for the same information over and over again at the same site.  Not to mention the fact that my name now appears on the email list of this company six times!

There is no need to do business in this way.

If you’re planning, or already have an online business, make sure you do everything you can to make dealing with your business a snap!

You will be seen as a friend, a business expert, and a business owner that really caters to the needs of his customers.

To your online business success,

Steve Browne

www.SteveBrowneDirect.com