Track down 'drive-by' website visitors

Austin Bliss

Capturing valuable data about potential customers who have shown enough interest to visit your website is crucial to succeed in today's industry.

Many marketing and e-commerce companies rely on traditional methods, such as providing information to ignite future sales and recommending other like-minded buyers, to entice “drive-by” visitors to return and purchase products. However, these methods don't always lead to ideal results.

The ability to identify these drive-by visitors who haven't registered or left any identification enables marketers to message them immediately after they leave the site or target visitors with ads while they are on the site. According to a lead-response management survey from MIT and InsideSales.com, the odds are 21 times greater of qualifying a Web-based lead if it's responded to in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes.

Critical missing data about visitors can be attained with real-time e-mail and real-time postal appending. A real-time e-mail append allows marketers to retrieve an e-mail address for any matched name and postal record as provided by website visitors. It converts single channel to multichannel marketing and reduces marketing costs by reaching customers via e-mail rather than postal mail. It also can be used as a validation tool for fraud prevention and prevent shopping cart abandonment.

The real-time postal append helps marketers instantly obtain the full name and postal information for any matched record through the visitor's e-mail address or IP address. It enables companies to merge the records and transaction histories of their e-mail and postal files, as well as target Web advertising and online offers to customers and prospects.

Austin Bliss is the president and cofounder of FreshAddress, which specializes in building and updating e-mail address lists.