The most important aspect of your business is your customer and prospect database.  Treat it like gold!  You should be collecting as many names and email addresses as you can because these will be your hottest prospects for future sales.  It is much easier to sell something to somebody that has already been to your site at least once.  You should really have two databases.  One database will be your customers or those that have bought from you already.  The second database will be your prospects or those that haven’t bought anything yet.  You will of course market to these lists differently. 

So how do you start building your databases?  There are many ways to get somebody’s name and email address.  One of the best ways is to give them something of value for FREE.  It must be something that doesn’t really cost you anything but has a high perceived value in the eyes of your visitor.  For example you could give them a FREE report like this one with valuable information in it.   Or you could offer a FREE informative newsletter for your visitors.  This works as long as you demonstrate that the newsletter will contain valuable information for them and isn’t just a blatant sales pitch.

Once you have decided on how you’re going to get your visitors to give you their name and email address, there are many choices for the software you’ll need to collect, manage, and mail to this list.