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Any tips?

by Alex212
5 replies
Hey guys,

Long time lurker here I recieve alot of e-mails from clients from another company. This company does not exist anymore but still writes off yearly amounts of money from those clients. Alot of these clients never got an update about the sudden stop of activities of the company they were in business with.

Alot of the e-mails I recieve contain questions about problems with their databases, file permissions and especially about money withdrawals.

People get confused because the company they are trying to contact does not exist anymore and the name is only 1 letter different than the name of my company .

I recently came across the idea to try and profit from this. I could respond to those people offering my (web) services, but was wondering if you guys maybe have any innovative ideas to profit from this in an ethical way.

Thanks!

Alex
#tips
  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    You are actually in a very interesting and quite lucrative position.

    While you obviously do not have any legal obligations to these people, they think you do.

    The best thing you can do is to set up an e-mail collection process.

    You have to send out a stock e-mail that basically explains what happened and if they need help with a particular type of information, they can then clink on a link.

    The link then gives them some of the information, but for more information they have to join your mailing list.

    I suggest you build a mailing list because this can help you filter people based on their actual interests.

    Also, a mailing list is a very powerful conversion platform because it can help you push people from the know stage of the buying process all the way to the trust and buy stages.
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve B
    Originally Posted by Alex212 View Post

    . . . ideas to profit from this in an ethical way.

    Alex,

    A word of caution. You need to be very careful about trying to profit from someone elses website. It doesn't matter that the other site appears "dead." Someone owns the domain, and actively in business or not, you could be seen as taking advantage of customer confusion if you purposefully try to trick or deceive consumers into coming to your site when their intent was to go to the competitor's site.

    I'm not saying that you shouldn't try to help dissatisfied customers of the competitor's business if they contact you and understand that your business is separate and apart from the competitor's business.

    Just don't confuse the public into thinking you are your competitor.

    Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author DWaters
    Yes as Steve B suggests above you need to proceed ethically. Perhaps a disclaimer on you site and every email you ever send to make sure that it is understood that you are not the other, old company. You may also want to invest in legal guidance to safeguard yourself.
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  • Profile picture of the author hichamaziz
    me also as Steve B suggests above you need to proceed ethically .
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  • Profile picture of the author Alex212
    Hey all,

    Thanks for your replies!

    I never had any intention to tricking people into thinking I'm my competitor. However the competitor I was talking about quit the website industry, I really want to try to get people to switch over to my services.

    I will try setting up an email collection process, sounds like quite a good idea! I really need to make clear to the potential clients that their original service provider quit though!

    Alex
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