Are you a traffic waster?

If you are like most marketers you spend a lot of time "driving traffic" with your online marketing, you review your ad words regularly, talk to your agency about SEO, put your URL on every bit of literature that your company produces, and you may have even considered company tattoos in a bid to increase your exposure.

You manage to increase traffic by the required 20% what next?

In most cases you want people to convert as soon as possible, be it making a purchase or picking up the phone to your sales team, but as we know life is rarely that easy.

Aim for the conversion - hit the email address

Instead of focusing 100% on the conversions why not take a look at the second best option? Getting their email address is an excellent way of gaining a return on your overall online marketing spend. After all once you have their email you can market to them efficiently and cost effectively for ever more. This means that each penny you spend on getting people to your site is expanded to include all those conversions you get from any future email marketing campaigns.

Many sites provide a newsletter service, but signup forms are generally hidden on contact pages. Marketers are resistant to giving up prime home page real estate for web forms but it doesn't have to be this way.

Mydeco are a leading example. Their use of a flash based button to allow for dynamic and unobtrusive use of the site header space draws attention and provides an interesting feature.

The sharper ones amongst you may cry "What? Just one field? How am I going to send segmented relevant messages?" Submitting your address triggers events to encourage the entry of additional information.

By splitting this data capture into two steps means the email is always banked before you ask for more.

Another good tip for capturing additional data in the second step is to avoid having too many rows. Instead spread your questions over several columns. Research has shown that more people will fill out forms which are laid out this manner.

There is an inverse relationship between the amount of questions asked and the number of people who fill it out. That is why it is so important to follow this two stage sign-up. Get the email then go for broke on the second section.

Best before date on emails?

Once an email is captured it can end up languishing on a database until the next scheduled newsletter send. This could well be after the prospect has made their purchasing decision.

It doesn't matter how good your newsletter is if they have bought a competitor's product.

Sales cycles vary from product to product, industry to industry, but they all have one thing in common. Everybody wants them to be shorter. By setting up a sequence of mailings starting from the day they sign up you can shorten the sales cycle considerably.

Sending out a welcome email thanking them for signing up and providing a sample of what is to come sets the wheels in motion. You should use any personalisation that you have captured; after all you only get to make a first impression once.

For example, if they signed up on your widescreen TV page then talk about TV's. If they came from an affiliate site reference it.

The next email can be educational. If you are in the business of selling holidays you could give some advice on how to snag an upgrade or perhaps an insider's guide to their preferred destination.

From here on your messages can become more and more sales focused. Start talking about the benefits of your particular offerings.

Use click triggers to action a follow up call from your sales teams, perhaps send an SMS text message as well?

Once you have a sequence that works you can leave it running delivering consistent returns from all your sign ups without you lifting a finger.

What do I do with all this free time?

Collecting at least the email address from as many of your visitors as possible and then option additional marketing metrics through optional subscription pages, guarantees a foothold.

With an email address at hand use it straight away, this will improve conversions and shorten your sales cycles.

Best of all, none of this is expensive or complicated to implement. Get those capture forms up and running then plan what to do with all the spare time you'll have!