Imagine that you’re a single and one day you meet someone in a park on a sunny summer day. You start talking a bit, and if you’re lucky, as the relationship develops, he or she asks you out. Gradually, you start to know each other better and when there is a match, the relationship might become a steady one.

In e-mail marketing it’s the same. Someone notices your e-mail newsletter, gets interested and takes a first step in what could become a steady relationship but is merely a flirt now. 

For an e-mail marketer, a subscription form is like an invitation for a date. However, what do we still see very often?

In the subscription form, we have to tell everything about ourselves: name, e-mail, the company we work for, gender, phone number, address, the number of kids we have etc. OK, I exaggerate a bit, but you get the point.

Now, let’s go back to that park on a sunny summer day. You sit on a bench and this interesting looking man or woman comes and sits down on the same bench. You start talking a bit and all of a sudden she, or he wants to know everything about you. Quite pushy, no?  
Again, it’s the same in e-mail marketing. An e-mail marketing relationship develops gradually too. You take it gently, you ask for a minimum of data. Obviously: an e-mail address…

Build profiles and relationships progressively

You build e-mail relationships with and profiles of prospective customers progressively. Companies should only ask a few general questions when prospects first register on their web sites and ask more data as the relationship develops further.

A Harris Interactive survey showed how important progressive profile-building is but also how important it is to nurture prospects via e-mail until they become sales-ready leads. 

So, when you gather data for your e-mails, invite people to sign-up for any other online form, see it as dating and progressively ask more data as you go through the lead nurturing process.

Of course sometimes you can ask more than just an e-mail address and maybe a name in an online form, if the purpose is not simply starting an e-mail relationship.

Typical examples are forms for online surveys, competitions or white papers. But still: here as well the dating/relationship metaphor goes: you have to give (a lot) to get (some).

J-P De Clerck is a 360 degrees interactive marketing, content, conversion and social media consultant. You can connect with him on Twitter, his site or his personal blog.