Chicago Cubs infielders Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance formed
most memorable double-play combination in history of baseball. In our marketing efforts, we can learn a valuable lesson from this "double-play" concept.While email is nice to use in your ads, it is not structured, and you may not get information you really need. You can have them reply to a specific email address or to an email with a special address such as: bob@adv-marketing.com?subject=BOB1234 this will allow you to act upon that email. If you use a mail reader such as Eudora, you can automatically send a response to any mail with subject BOB1234. Of course, you can have different offers with different subjects work same way. This can also work wonders for tracking purposes so you know where your leads are coming from.
Another way, is to have your contact information point to your web site where you have a form they can fill out.
The form will allow them to send you an email in a precise format. Example - When someone subscribes to one of our Newsletters, we get information in exactly same format from everyone who subscribes.
Will you lose an occasional customer who won't visit your web site? Sure, but they're probably "tire kickers" anyway. If you provide a link in your ad to precise page to fill out form, loss will be minimal, and benefits will far outweigh any potential loss.
Since information is now in an exact format when received as an email, there are things that can be done that would be extremely difficult to do with regular email. When fielded by your email system, first thing done is to immediately send a confirmation notice that it was received. This is your first contact back, and it lets them know they have made contact.
