Your question: We have been communicating with our clients for a number of years by mail, however, with the continuing pressure on costs we have begun to email information to newer clients. We have been encountering difficulties in capturing the email addresses of our older customers have you any advice to how we can do this.

BT replies

I am not sure whether there is any real substitute for a concerted campaign to recruit your clients into the e-mail arena. This means going through the process of establishing who is or is not on e-mail by calling them to find their e-mail addresses and then demonstrating the benefits to your customers. Try some promotional activities to stimulate a response. The bottom line is that if they are not keen on e-mail or do not use it then you would be better off sticking to post. If your customers are not on e-mail, but would like to be, you could consider ways in making it easy for them to get access to e-mail. Such services are available from a number of suppliers, including BT. In fact I would advocate a one-off communication to all of your customers seeking their preference for either e-mail or post. If you do it this way you are more likely to get more success out of your communications to them, costs may be slightly higher, but customer loyalty and sales should be returned. If you have not already considered it, or implemented it, an Internet site is a good way of communicating to regular clients and a way of capturing e-mail addresses of new customers.