If you are going to use email marketing as a method to market to customers and prospects, you’ll have to have a strategy to collect email addresses from your site visitors or acquire those addresses from other methods.

Collecting email addresses from your site visitors is one of the most qualified email address you can acquire and it is also one of the most valuable. Whoever gives you their email address is telling you “Yes, please market your products and services to me” so they are already somewhat interested in what you have to offer and just need some more persuasion to purchase.

One method of collecting email addresses on your website is through a sign up form. This form can be as simple as just an email address or it can be more thorough and ask for more information such as name, telephone number, address, interests, or other qualifications that you want to know about your visitors.

You have to remember that the more simple the sign up form is, the more submissions you will receive. If you want to know more about your website visitor, you will receive fewer email addresses, but they will be more qualified. So you have to figure out a balance on how many email addresses you want compared to how much information you can collect.

You can use an email sign up form from vendors such as aWeber, Constant Contact, or VerticalResponse. They each have slightly different offers and you’ll want to see which one best fits your businesses needs.

Smashing Magazine has a great article about where to place your sign up form on your website so you’ll receive the optimal number of email addresses.

Have an email sign up form on your website to collect emails for email marketing