How Much is TMI on Your Website?
The following post is the latest installment by Janine Popick for the Inc. com Girl Power: Female CEOs blog.
Yep, I did the unthinkable. I put my e-mail address on my company’s website. Most people say I’m crazy, I know it. But I thought it was important. At first I thought I would get a flood of e-mails from vendors, customers, random people, but frankly, the e-mails that I get are pretty relevant and nine times out of 10 it’s a customer commenting on something or asking a legitimate question. So why did I put my own e-mail address on the site?
- It’s transparent. I’m not “one of those” who hide behind his or her people or company. I try to answer all e-mails as quickly as possible so that people know we’re a real company, not just a robotic e-mail marketing website.
- It has helped build business. I’ve had people e-mail me with partnership ideas as well as prospects reaching out to ask me questions.
- It has helped get new employees. Someone that our HR department might not have thought would work well with current positions might be good for a future one.
- It has helped with potential financing. I’ve had numerous people requesting meetings to help with financing the company.
I do put a slightly different e-mail address as a link on the website, so that I can see where people are seeing it and e-mailing me from. If you’re skittish about including a link because of spiders or spam, you can use an image that links to your e-mail. Either way, it’s something you can do to put a personal “face” – and an e-mail address – behind your business.
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Agreed this is an important aspect, people want to deal with real people. What’s so scary about being available to your customers, isn’t that what business is about, customer service? I met someone who said they want to grow their business but didn’t want to do customer service and put their contact information on their website. So, I guess they wont grow their business.
This is a really useful tip. So many tips focus on how to outreach to your customers, but this is about letting customers come to you. I work at StepByStepMarketing.com, and we have made it a priority to make our contact information easy to find, and we encourage our readers to ask us any questions by phone or email. We have seen huge returns since implementing this “talk to us!” strategy. Great tip.