Regardless of how you choose to draw members into your site and organization (using a public or private community), the one thing you must do is capture their information. Otherwise you risk them being one time visitors only. There are multiple ways to capture visitor contact information including RSS/email feeds, whitepaper and article downloads or just be asking if they want to be added to your list.
How you ask is important as well. Don’t make your contact form overly cumbersome. You can get more information from them later when you get them further down the “sales” funnel and more intersted in you. For now, shoot for a name and email address. Provide them something in return, whether it’s good content or a promise to provide them with discounts in the future.
Make sure their brief introduction to you is pleasurable and you’ll see them return and respond to your future invitations.
