A company must earn and keep trust or sales don`t happen. Imagine that last Sunday, while you were reading the paper, you saw an ad for a great deal on a digital camera. You`d been considering buying one for a while, and this ad sealed the deal. You went to buy the camera, and the sales person told you they were sold out. They didn`t offer you a rain check and instead substituted a different model for a "similar" price.

In this classic case of "bait and switch," and you felt like you`d been had.

After that, do you trust these people? Will you return to buy from them? Were you aggravated at the paper for running a less than honest ad?

In a similar fashion, maintaining a customer`s trust through e-newsletters requires honesty, along with a commmitment to providing readers with a positive experience.

Valued visitors return

If people don`t regularly click through to your Web site a newsletter may help build the relationship to the point where the readers will visit the site. However, the Web site and your newsletter must work in tandem to help readers make the transition from reader to prospect.

If a visitor comes to the site from the newsletter and doesn`t like it, all credibility is lost and a return visit is unlikely. And vice versa. No matter how good a newsletter is, visitors arriving at a Web site and receiving a lousy first impression won`t sign up for any more issues. The product may be fabulous or unique, but that doesn`t do any good if the site promoting it doesn`t give the needed support.

Customers buy only when they can VIZibly:

• see value in a product or service;
• feel trust;
• believe in the stability of the company.