Loaded questions!! Your company should strive to develop relationship based marketing. Unless you are going to develop a free newsletter for them which people will sign up for, it is unlikely they will be able to garner email addresses that way.... Emails are usually gathered by asking people if they'd like follow up product information, etc.
I'm sure your company has a host of customers already, but that doesn't mean they have permission to email them.... so don't build a database from those names just yet!
Many companies need and develop a web presence to maintain and enforce a level of brand recognition. Some companies don't even sell on line!
Before developing a site for them, determine exactly what their goal is for having a site...
-- Will they have online ordering?
-- FAQs for customers?
-- Tech support?
-- Customer service support?
-- Product and industry articles and information
There are two basic types of sites: a shopping cart site (Amazone) and an info site (an ISP home such as MSN).
Is it their idea to develop a web site - or yours? Get a plan together and go from there.
Marie
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