‘E-Mail Capture’ or ‘Name-Grab’ forms are one of the most commonly-used devices on Web sites today.

One of the principle reasons that capturing visitors’ name/e-mail address details (list-building, as it is commonly referred to) is such a huge part of the Internet vernacular is due to the massive growth of e-mail, and e-mail-related marketing.

We have all experienced e-mail marketing - sadly too often the negative, Spam side of e-mail marketing - but done right, it can be a way of making regular, welcome sales to a loyal following of customers – much as traditional forms of direct mail have worked in decades past.

A couple of essential characteristics of successful e-mail marketing are permission and relevancy. If you are sending targeted messages to a list of willing recipients you are pretty much guaranteed to see a better response than by sending unsolicited messages to random recipients.

Another reason why list-building exercises are such an useful tool for the Internet marketer is that they are highly automated. Once set up, your mailing list will build itself on ‘auto-pilot’.

Let’s take a look at a few examples of some well-known Web sites featuring name-grab devices:

As you can see, even from this small selection, forms are perfect for any site, covering any subject matter. They can be used to build pre-qualified lists with interests in a specific niche, or a wide subject-area – it all depends on your site content.

Often, incentives are used in ‘exchange’ for the user’s personal information. Some examples of such incentives include:

And there are many more reasons, aside from these, why people would be prepared to part with their name and e-mail address. In all such circumstances a form is not simply an useful device for collecting this information – it is an essential part of a list-building process, which can have a dramatic effect on your online objectives (be they financial or otherwise).

Not only does XSitePro offer the means with which you can harvest your visitors’ e-mail addresses (with their permission) the application goes one step further still. XSitePro allows you to integrate your name-grab form with any of four leading Auto-Responder applications including:

For those users who do not already have an account with any of the above providers, then a fifth (e-mail submission) method is also provided.