Electronic Mail aka Email, was first invented and launched in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson. He made use of the “@” symbol to ensure the correct message was delivered to the right recepient. Fast forward a few decades, it is now almost a universal symbol and everyone knows that an email address is a unique electronic mail identifier for a user.
Email has significantly enhanced the form of communication between the general population, in a way that it is fast, secure and free, the only caveat being that one has to be “connected” to the internet.
Why then is listing your email address on your website a bad idea? Simply put, if it is readily available, you are bound to be bombarded by communication attempts, from uninvited senders, including marketers, spammers and more.
You may then ask, how do your business leads that are visiting your website contact you without seeing your email address on the Contact Us section of your website?
The answer is, the safest way for your leads to contact you is through a secure contact form located on the Contact Us section of your website.
Ideally, your contact form filters out real leads versus potential spammers. Preliminary information based on what you need is collected from your contact form. Your contact form may have very generic fields such as First Name, Last Name, Phone Number, Email Address, Message. It may also have specific fields that need to be filled by your leads such as a group of checkboxes, dropdown menus, allowing them to select whatever applies to them, example: your lead could select 3 out of the 5 services they need from you, example: Banking, Accouting, Taxes etc. This simply keeps the communication between your lead and you focused and on point. And makes it easier for you to understand what they need.
Another advantage of using the contact form as a means to letting your leads contact you is, the level of security enhanced by extra captcha fields. A captcha field may involve clicking on certian specified images, or solving a mathematical problem, to prove that your leads are indeed humans, and not machines, or bots.
All submitted information on the contact form safely lands into your email mailbox. You can then determine which leads are valid, and repond to them by simply replying to the email. The communication is then continued over email.
A final advantage of using a contact form as a means of initiating a conversation with a potential lead is, all the information you receive via the contact form can be collected and compiled into a database. You could potentially use the leads database you built for further marketing purposes.
Do you know of any other advantages of using a contact form over displaying emails on website? Let us know what you think by commenting below.