As a direct response medium, the Web gives marketers across a variety of consumer and business-to-business sectors a broad-based method for interacting with customers and prospects.

For list marketers, it provides a tremendous opportunity for hotline name generation, which is vital for fueling internal marketing programs as well as external list rental activities.

There are several key points regarding the collection and use of customer data collected from the Web.

In terms of direct response, it is important to understand and use the Web as a transactional client-server system, which is a significant shift from publishing static pages that give little or no scope for gathering information from the user. Consider each visitor to your site as a customer or prospect who is initiating an interactive session with your organization, either by clicking on a paid banner, looking up a keyword via a search engine or typing a Web site address into a browser.

Maintaining an interactive, client-server mind-set lets you quantify your site as a marketing tool that is far more powerful than an "electronic brochure." For direct marketers, the ability to conduct and control one-to-one interactions offers a prime opportunity for collecting information about customers and prospects. So what should you be collecting?

Consider warehousing U.S. name and address information first. Collected data can be merge-purged against your house file to determine whether a name represents a customer or a prospect.

The data then can be integrated into your customer and prospect mailing campaigns. Results can be grouped using a key code on the label that identifies the Web as their source.

Thus, you can set up a "multichannel" direct response effort, creating relationships with users via the Web and traditional direct mail channels.

To maintain the continuity between both channels, you should include Web addresses in all your direct mail,

providing users with multiple methods of responding to your offer. Not only will you have boosted your internal marketing programs, but the controlled one-time rental to noncompetitive firms of the data collected from your Web site also can generate revenue.

A professional list manager can devise a rental program for these names, which are already in high demand by other marketers.

The native demographics of PC users, communicating and transacting business online via the Internet, combined with the regular monthly volume of new names would make the data worthy of testing by mailers in the consumer, home office and BTB markets. Collecting email address data also is important, since they provide a fast and inexpensive way of maintaining continuity with customers and prospects through personalized email messaging.

Consider asking users to "opt in" to an email rental program. This could be used in the same way as the U.S. name and address data to generate revenue via controlled, one-time rental.

Although you may be inclined to ask a long list of demographic and psychographic questions, remember that the overall response rate to your questionnaire will be inversely proportional to the number of questions asked.

Keep it simple. Ask only marketing-critical questions that yield unique data that cannot be obtained from an external overlay.

If you are a software publisher, consider data collection as a precursor to a free download of a beta-version or a trial edition of your product. If it's free, many users are more willing to provide information about themselves in exchange for even a trial version of your product.

The Web presents direct marketers with a tremendous potential to collect and warehouse a bonanza of hotline names that can be used for both internal marketing and external list rental activities.

Take a thorough look at your site and see if you are truly using its client-server capabilities to interact with users and collect information that will pay dividends down the road.