We have banned the use of “mailto” links at Skyron. “mailto” links are costing you leads and there is absolutely no reason for their existence on your B2B website. “mailto” links give you no control:

• No control over the user experience. Your prospect arrives to your  well designed, carefully written and lovingly maintained webpage and she decides to get in touch. Great! But then she clicks on your “mailto” link and suddenly it’s all gone; gone are the branding, the messages, the effort and the consistent feel. Outlook (or whatever) comes up and she is off on a new journey dictated by Microsoft (or whoever).
• No control over data collection. So the prospect managed to send an email via Outlook. Do you remember who the listed recipient is? Sales? Support? Recruitment? What was the topic? Was it a lead or was it an existing customer expressing a concern? Will it be entered into your CRM system? Will the recipient act? If you care about such information, “mailto” links can make your life very miserable.
• No control over quality. “mailto” links are easy to use and as a result the quality and relevance of the email enquiries is likely to be low.

Stay in top form

Replace all “mailto” links with forms; well structured, written and designed and featuring a strong call to action. You will fully own the user experience (even the confirmation page can be an opportunity for further engagement), all form data will be saved in whatever way is meaningful and useful to you and the enquiries will be of much higher quality and relevance. You can have a large single form with a dropdown menu of subject options such as Recruitment, Customer Service, Media, Sales, etc. Alternatively, you can have multiple shorter forms peppered across the website, where they are most relevant.