Learning to Build Relationships Online – Part 2

As an offline business owner with a web site, I know that you are spending a lot of time worrying about getting traffic to your web site… and you should be. But what are you doing with your site visitors… once they get to your site?

No matter what kind of web site you have – retail or otherwise – you should be focused on BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS with your web visitors!

Relationship building related to your online presence can take place in a number of different ways – active, as well as passive, and they all work together…

The 2 main relationship building vehicles available to you online are your web site (and / or blog) and email – both business email and marketing email.

Here in Part 2, we will discuss BUSINESS EMAIL issues.

BUSINESS EMAIL messages are those which happen as a result of doing business. Depending on what your business may be, these are often inquiries.

These emails can be the result of customer action, such as asking a question before making a purchase.

They may also include email sent messages during the purchase process – I made an online purchase last night and received 2-3 emails from the company as a direct result of that purchase.

This type of email is often reactive in that it is created as a reaction to the process of doing business.

For most Business, especially Online Retailers, BUSINESS EMAIL falls into two categories:

1) Email that is a communication between a Business and its Customer or potential Customer. (This is independent from email regarding a transaction.)

Examples of this would be a Customer contacting a Business with a question, such as asking about business hours, requesting directions to the business offices/location, asking whether you carry a particular product (BTW, these inquiries are great for putting together a Business FAQ or providing topics for your email marketing campaigns)

2) Email that is exchanged between a Business and a Customer during the course of a transaction.

The emails that are sent during the transaction, telling the customer details of the purchase would fall into this category.

There are generally several emails that are created automatically as part of the transaction process. In a retail sale, these emails would be sent by the Shopping Cart Software as part of its function. You, as the business owner, are usually able to edit and personalize the contents of these emails, but the system sends them automatically during the completion of the transaction process. It is hands off for you, once you have edited them for your purposes.

The third type of email for a Business, especially a Retail Business, is MARKETING EMAIL and will be covered in Part 3

BUSINESS EMAIL STRATEGIES:

EMAIL ADDRESSES

• Avoid generic email addresses (such as info@whatever.com). Consider using first names. If you are concerned about keeping the different email addresses straight, so that you can easily know which one is used for what, simply adjust the names.

EXAMPLE: The business owner is Jane.
Use Jane @ YourSite.com for the main email address.
Use JaneS @ YourSite.com for Sales questions
Use JaneI @ YourSite.com for Info questions

EMAIL SALUTATIONS

• Consider personalizing the email messages that are sent as part of a business transaction, so that the email greets the customer by name.   NOTE: This can often be set up to happen automatically

EMAIL SIGNATURES

• Sign ALL business emails with a person’s name
• Tailor each Email Signature to that specific email message and its purpose
• NOTE: An email signature can be extremely valuable real estate
• Write your own versions of the thank you messages (and any other messages) sent during a transaction

FOR EXAMPLE: Issue an informal invitation for the recipient to stop by and visit in person, if they are ever in your city, as part of the transaction Thank You message

• Schedule an automatic follow up message to ask about the quality for the transaction and to ascertain that the recipient was satisfied.

EMAIL CONTENT

• Write in an informal and personable style
• Consider adding PSs to messages. As a general rule, a PS has a better chance of being read, even if the main body of the message is ignored. Go figure!

BUSINESS EMAIL is one of your most powerful communications tools. Take the time and make the effort to maximize its effectiveness!

Sharing the Road to Success,

Tink