Start a Customer Database

Posted by Michelle Harrington on Nov 24th, 2008 | 1 comment

If you aren’t capturing the names and email addresses of the people who contact you or buy from your website you are missing out on a valuable opportunity to build a customer database.  Anyone who has  expressed interest in your products or services or has purchased from your website should be added to your customer database.   

Creating a customer database is easy and it will enable you to stay in touch with your prospects/customers to advise of sales, new products or interesting and relevant information about your products and services through email.  Outlook is probably the most widely used program to store your customer database, although Excel and Access can be used as well as any other email program that has an address book.  You can also use online  online email marketing tools like VerticalResponse.com or ConstantContact.com to store your customer database.

It’s helpful to create separate categories to keep your business and personal contacts separate and  to further segregate your contacts by designating appropriate categories.  For instance, I have a “clients” category for anyone I have done business with, a “prospects” category for people who have shown interest in my service and an “Ally” category for vendors or other professionals that I create alliances with.  By segregating your contacts into categories you’ll be able to easily send targeted messages to select member categories within your contact list.

If you are collecting personal information (email address, phone number, name, etc) on your website, make sure to include a privacy policy, advising subscribers of how you intend to use their information.  Subscribers want the assurance that you will not share their information with others and will not bombard them with spam.

When planning and desiging your email communications to your customer database, it’s essential that you offer an “opt out” option on all email messages you send, to ensure that anyone not wishing to receive your correspondence can be removed from the list.  If you receive an “opt out” request, make sure you remove that person promptly as requested.

Related Posts:

• Email Marketing Options
• Email Marketing Made Easy…

Author | Michelle Harrington of Emagine Web Marketing
Michelle is a web development and internet marketing professional dedicated to helping small businesses in Hawaii achieve success online. Michelle provides free advice, tips and how to's on the Small Business Internet Marketing Blog.

One Response

1. Streetfighter says:

   April 16, 2010 at 11:18 am

   I just found this blog a while back when a good friend suggested it to me. I’ve been an avid reader ever since.