Carolyn Hasenfratz's Blog

Being "Green" is trendy. Being "Green" makes you feel like you're doing the right thing. Giving the impression of being "Green" makes you look good to your customers. Appearing to be "Green" is an effective marketing tool for products that, according to one study, are only 1% likely to really be beneficial for the environment. As a business person, you know that in a competitive environment you can't afford to fall for Greenwashing and hype when the time comes to find ways to make your operation more green - it makes sense to be skeptical. On the other hand, when you can find genuinely environmentally friendly practices that have additional benefits for your business, that's a win-win situation.

We've found that one such win-win situation in our work is the use of online forms for collecting information from customers. Using an online form instead of a paper form saves the paper and the resources that went into making it, transporting it, and printing on it. But there are many other benefits to an online form that have nothing to do with saving paper. For example, the data you receive is in a format that you can cut and paste, reducing retyping time and human errors that take time to correct and can cause delays in a project. If your customers are in the habit of leaving out important information on paper forms, you can make those fields required on an online form, and the customer will not be able to send the form without completing it. This not only eliminates the time it would have taken to contact the customer for the necessary information, but also you will be able to turn around projects more quickly, which improves customer service and your profits. Another productivity increase that comes with online forms is the ability to send the data to multiple recipients with one click, saving time that might otherwise be spent gathering the information and making it available to colleagues who need it. With online forms there is an opportunity to upsell or give your customers better service by providing links to information that you want your customers to have, either on the form itself or on a web page where they are directed after completion.

None of the benefits I've mentioned so far are new - online forms have been around for awhile. What is new are some of the added functions that you can add to forms and landing pages with products like email marketing by Exact Target and automated, on demand voice messaging by Vontoo. It is now possible to send a voice message or a text message to a customer's mobile device at their request with forms and other triggered sends. It's possible to show them a personalized image on a landing page that is generated by completing a form or by a click in an email - for an example see this Personalized Landing Pages demonstration - or wow them even more with a rich media Brainshark presentation with customized content that reflects the customer's input from the form.

Please contact us if you would like to deploy any of these exciting new techniques in your customer acquisition program.