Q: I’d love to know who visits my Web site because I could contact them afterwards to try to make a sale. How can I tell who has visited my site?

In addition to making a promise in trade for their personal information, you’ll also need to make assurances that address security and control issues.

Privacy and Security Promises

The fear of identity theft or a hijacked credit card number is very understandable, and you’ll want your site visitors to feel confident that you will carefully guard their personal information. Privacy/security statements can be very simple or quite complex, depending on the kinds of information you’ve asked your site visitor to share.

If you’ve asked them only for an e-mail address or phone number, then the simplest statement will do. More complex statements are required when either your business is based on personal information, such as a CPA or an attorney, or you’ve asked for more in-depth information from your visitor, such as a credit card or social security number. In those cases, you’ll also need to make sure the pages of your Web site which collect that extremely personal information reside on a secure server. Ask your Webmaster about using secure servers.

It is imperative that once you’ve made a privacy/security statement, you stick by it. Do not jeopardize your organization’s reputation by allowing anyone’s personal information to become public. Put the controls in place to allow only those who will use the information for further contact, to have access to it.

“No Spam” Promises

We’ve all experienced “spam” (junk e-mail). It can run the gamut from mildly annoying to a major imposition. Your site visitors need to be clearly informed that you will contact them only for whatever your promise has been and no more.

Assure them that they will never be spammed by your organization. Clearly make that statement in the location on your Web site where they provide personal information to you.

Opting In and Out

Finally, you’ll want to assure your site visitors that they will maintain control over how often they will receive information from you. You may have heard the terms “opt-in” and “opt-out”. When visitors provide their information to you directly, they are opting-in. They are asking you to fulfill the outreach promise you have made.

If your promise to them involves some sort of regular e-mail contact such as sending an informative tip each month, then you also need to provide them with a way to let you know they want to be removed from your outreach list. Provide a statement on your Web site that promises they will be given the opportunity to opt-out at anytime, and make sure that statement is repeated in every subsequent outreach to them.

How can you manage the process of opting-in and opting-out? A simple method is to provide a link to an opt-out Web page, or to let them simply return the e-mail they’ve received from you with “remove” in the subject line of the e-mail.

To manage lists of more than 200 people, you’ll want to use e-mail contact management software. This type of software is not expensive, and helps you maintain excellent control over the information you send and who you send it to.

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