For many businesses, capturing the email address of a potential client is invaluable. It enables a company to develop a truly individualized marketing campaign raising awareness of particular offerings, communicating benefits, sharing client testimonials, and then extending an offer (i.e., coupon, discount, etc.) to purchase.

The sole objective of a Squeeze Page is to capture a web visitor's email address. Unfortunately, this often comes with a tremendous hidden cost -- lost customers. By definition, a Squeeze Page affords only two options: 1) Provide your email address to continue, or 2) leave the site. A classic Squeeze Page provides no other hyperlinks to the site -- so it is often a virtual dead end.

For sites with a large number of daily new visitors (say, more than 1,000), Squeeze Pages can be effective. In this case, management decides it's better to capture 10 new emails of "highly qualified" potential customers per day (1% of the 1,000 new daily visitors) than to share information with all 1,000.

But for medium and small sites, this is certain suicide.

Consider two businesses: Macy's in New York City, and your local "Mom and Pop" clothing retailer on Main Street. Macy's has so much foot traffic they can afford to turn away potential business as they search for more qualified buyers or higher potential sales opportunities. However, Mom and Pop stores make their business by engaging walk-ins and fully vetting every sales opportunity. So, if a Mom and Pop website employed a Squeeze Page, they would lose the opportunity for 99% (or more) of all visitors to learn more about their offerings.

Furthermore, Squeeze Pages often communicate a sense of "superiority" (our content is so good you have to share your personal details to access it) or desperation (we want your email so we can e-bomb you -- or worse -- sell/rent your email to others) to site visitors. Neither of these perceptions is good.

The takeaway: medium and smaller sites should politely ask for email addresses -- but not at the expense of educating and driving away a potential customer. It is imperative that you communicate the value of your information and services when asking for email addresses -- and examples often are essential to drive conversion.

Call us to discuss ways to convert your visitors to identified potential customers. We can certainly help your business as we have done for so many others.