Relationship Marketing Web Sites
For most businesses, relationship-oriented Web sites represent the best investment. Relationship-oriented Web sites take a long-term view of customer and prospect development. Relationship-oriented sites are based on setting up a continuing dialog between visitor and Web site. This dialog typically involves forms and e-mail. Visitors submit forms that explain their interests and information needs along with their e-mail address. In return, the business renews the relationship at appropriate and/or periodic intervals by sending e-mail to the visitor.
Relationship-oriented Web sites combine the best of information-oriented and transaction-oriented Web sites, yet operate from a longer-range perspective. Characteristics you’ll immediately notice include:
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- The home page often focuses on a particular product or service, yet contains links to pages containing helpful information. Benefits other than price may be the key incentive to learn more about the featured product or service.
- Incentives to register are based on forms that request information about the visitor’s opinion of the Web site, the visitor’s e-mail and postal addresses, plus attempts to qualify the buyer’s areas of interest.
- Relationship-oriented Web sites often contain an educational component with “How to buy” information.
Characteristics of relationship-oriented Web sites
The same criteria used to identify the previous types of Web sites can be used to identify relationship-oriented Web sites.
Information flow
Relationship-oriented Web sites involve a two-way flow of information. At their highest levels, relationship-oriented Web sites involve the same level of give-and-take that occurs in face-to-face meetings and telephone conversations. Visitors describe their unique needs and, in return, receive specialized content.
Information density
Relationship-oriented Web sites display a high degree of information density. Relationship-oriented Web sites differ from transaction-based Web sites, however, in that the information is usually more business oriented rather than product oriented. On a transaction-oriented Web site, for example—to return to the hardware
store example—the Web site would provide detailed information about each of the makes and models of mops or pails it stocked. On a relationship-oriented Web site, however, the emphasis would be on how competently the firm could deliver the mops and pails and the firm’s after-sale mop and pail maintenance program and exchange policy.
Urgency
Relationship-oriented Web sites are in it for the long haul. The goal is to create long-term relationships with their prospects and customers. Thus, there is less “Buy Now!” emphasis. Time and resources are available to invest in helping prospects make the right choice, maintaining customer enthusiasm, and creating customer loyalty.
Dialog
Dialog is a key characteristic of relationship-oriented Web sites. Long-term success involves identifying Web site visitors and learning as much as possible about their needs as well as their after-sale experiences with the firm’s products and services. Dialog can be as simple as offering first-time visitors a premium for filling out a registration form or as sophisticated as inviting Web site visitors to submit questions and concerns.
Follow-up
Dialog leads to follow-up. At minimum, registration should receive acknowledgement of their submission and the promised premium should be sent as soon as possible. Professionalism is the key to successful relationships; promises must be quickly fulfilled.
Relationship-oriented sites also involve ongoing follow-up. The goal is to always remain visible so that the next time the customer wants to make a purchase, the relationship-oriented firm will be the first Web site the customer thinks of. Likewise, when the customer is asked for a recommendation by a firm, the first URL that comes to mind should be the relationship-oriented Web site. The best way to do this is to send frequent e-mail messages announcing updated Web content or new products and services.
Search capability
Search capability is less important with relationship-oriented Web sites than transaction-oriented Web sites because the sites are likely to be smaller. In addition, because the relationship between business and customer/prospect will be based on personalization, the firm sponsoring the Web site can take the initiative in helping visitors locate desired information.
Qualification
Qualification is an important to part of successful relationship Web sites. Relationship-oriented Web sites are based on not only knowing who their visitors are but on knowing their customer’s and prospect’s specific needs. Today’s computer technology makes this increasingly easy.
The key, of course, is to encourage visitors to qualify themselves on the home page at the first visit. The Web site should be constructed in a way that will enable the creation of a database that will classify visitors into whatever categories are most appropriate: geographic area, type of employment, area of concern (i.e. problem to be solved), or income. Form-based incentives must be offered to encourage visitors to share their qualifications with the Web site.
Surveys offer yet another tool you can employ when creating a relationship-driven Web site. Surveys go beyond involvement in that they permit you to fine-tune your Web site and improve it on the basis of visitor information. Surveys also allow you to determine who is visiting your Web site and qualify them on the basis of the profit opportunities they offer you.
Customized content
Customized content can be the least expensive and most effective tool used to build long-term relationships with Web site visitors. Information can be both inexpensive and valuable: it can be inexpensive to create and valuable to both sender and recipient.
You can also involve visitors and fine-tune the information
you provide by offering content at different levels of sophistication. A Web site for a ski resort, for example, could offer different content for beginning, intermediate, and advanced skiers. Likewise, a site
for a tool company could have separate areas for home handymen and professional contractors. In each case, after qualification, the visitors would encounter different Web pages. But, unless they communicate this information to you, you won’t be able to follow-up on
the information.
Consider an example related to my own Meaningful Content Web site (http://www.meaningfulcontent.com). I could create a form that permits visitors to prequalify themselves on their areas of interest. I could include a form that asks questions like:
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- Are you the owner of a small business?
- Do you publish a newsletter?
- Do you give frequent presentations?
- Do you hire freelance copywriters?
There would likely be little response to these questions because they’re invasive and there is little incentive for visitors to respond to those open-ended questions.
Instead of asking visitors questions, I could offer those who registered their choice of valuable twenty-page articles, not available elsewhere. These could be sent either by return e-mail (as attached computer files) upon receipt of their request or by e-mailing those who registered their choice the URL, or address, of an unlinked page on my Web site. This would permit me to enjoy a much higher and much better response rate.
I could do a better job of qualifying my Web site visitors by offering visitors my choice of one of the following upon registration:
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- FREE REPORT! Twenty-Five Ways to Use E-Mail to Increase Sales to Existing Customers
- FREE! The Ten Most Common Newsletter Design and Editing Errors
- FREE! Twenty Presentation Tips I Learned the Hard Way—So You Don’t Have To!
- FREE! How to Get Your Freelance Copywriters to Deliver Excellence on Time—or Ahead of Time
Notice that, instead of acting “nosy,” I’m setting up a win-win situation. I’m finding out the information I desire and, in return, the visitor is receiving valuable information that will help him or her do a better job. Also, notice that in each case there are no printing or postage costs involved and visitors receive immediate access to their customized information.
Updates
Relationship-oriented Web sites must be continuously
updated. New, helpful content must be presented in order for visitors to return.
Whereas transaction-oriented Web sites only have to be updated in order to accommodate changing products and prices, relationship-oriented Web sites must be constantly updated with new information in order to maintain enthusiasm and enhance the Web site’s credibility—and, hence, the credibility of the firm sponsoring it.
Out-of-site, out-of-mind. That’s the trap that most Web sites
and their sponsoring firms fall into unless they commit to constant updates.
Size
Relationship-oriented Web sites don’t have to be large to succeed. Since their goal is to serve as a customer creation machine advancing customers from position to position along the customer relationship cycle, they only have to be as large as necessary to provide the necessary information. They don’t have to be encyclopedias or catalogs offering information for every conceivable need; they can be far more focused. The emphasis can be on the business and reasons to buy from the firm, rather than the products.
* Source - Streetwise Relationship Marketing On The Internet
Create one on one bonds with prospects
and customers and keep them forever
