7) Create Auto-responders. For most of us, email activity takes precedence over web surfing. If your clients order from you online or interact with your website, keep them engaged by delivering an automatic (but personalized) email two days later and then maybe a different message five days later. Content could be a quick “you might also like” tip or recommendation that showcases your expertise.

6) Bring Community to the Community. If you’re going to have an active blog with news and updates, invest in the programming required to alert visitors by email of new posts or add RSS for feed aggregation. Your visitors will be the first to drop conversation by not returning to your blog. It’s up to you to ensure the dialog continues.

5) Tap Into Timing. What is happening with your customers? If you are B2B, send a product or service update that relates to easing their current woes such as cutting costs or getting through the busy season with sanity. If you are B2C, pay close attention to the trends, reports and studies released that reflect your customer’s demographics. Use the information to spark conversations by sending short-paragraph emails that connect your business to trends. Be sure measurements are in place to track results.

4) Understand New Media Before You Implement It. Pay-per-click ad campaigns (i.e. Google Adwords) is not at all like a static print ad that is bought, created and left alone to do its job. PPC, text message ad campaigns or even investing in the creation of Podcasts or a video series require continual testing and measuring to ensure true effectiveness. Just like your website, hire technical and marketing experts to create, implement and measure campaigns.

3) Use Face-to-face to Jump Start Your E-teraction. If you’re attending a trade show or networking event, use that business card as a temporary pocket database. Take notes on your conversation that include trends discussed, publications mentioned, competitors or anything that will continue your conversation when you’re back at your desk. Always transfer those notes to your electronic CRM or Excel file or wherever you keep tabs on your clients.

2) Understand the Dynamics of Online and Offline. If you’re going to use direct mail (letter, postcard or other) to promote an online special, don’t dump visitors to your home page. Use a very short dedicated URL that allows customers to input a coupon code or information into a form that takes less than 30 seconds. Long URLs will be ignored and if customers have to dig for a promotion, they’ll go somewhere else.

1) Fix Bad Usability. If your analytics tool tell you that 13% of online visitors are dropping off at Step 4 of your sign-up process, find out why and fix it. That number may seem small now but will continue to climb. Set up an automatically generated email that is initiated when a drop occurs. Make sure the email is personalized with the visitor’s name, lists the correct contact in the signature and can be easily replied to. Customers that walk into a store and have a bad experience that is not resolved don’t go back. The online experience is no different.

When emailing, always adhere to legitimate practices. Require confirmation at sign-up, don’t spam, write relevant subject lines and always provide your business address. Those big brother search engines are watching your every move.

If you have other ideas for improving the e-experience, we’d love to hear them.