Weekly Web Development Tips for Web Designers
These
articles contain web development tips every web designer should know. These
articles are from womens-net.com, a resource of professional advice for today's
professional women (and men)! Come back each week for a new article.
Building an E-mail Address Database
Written by: Lauri Harpf
E-mail
marketing works, there's no denying it. Its key advantage over other Internet
marketing methods is that it enables you to contact the customer instead of
forcing the customer to contact you. This ability is especially useful when
something that your customers need to know as soon as possible has happened.
Whether you've just released a new product or decided to cut your prices by 10%,
the fastest way to spread the word is via E-mail.
However,
unless you want to give your company a bad name, you can't simply start sending
E-mails to people that haven't agreed to receive them. The only ethical and
reasonable way to advertise via E-mail is to first obtain a permission, or an
opt-in request, from the receiver. The trouble is that this can't be done via
E-mail, as it would be similar to asking someone whether you can ask them a
question. What's the point in doing that, when you've already done what you
wanted them to allow you to do?
Getting
people to opt-in:
Due to the
above reasons, creating your own opt-in E-mail database is not an easy task. In
addition, because of privacy concerns and the fear of spam, many people are
reluctant to give out their E-mail address without a good reason to do so. These
fears can be soothed by creating a strict privacy policy and sticking to it, but
it's harder to convince your visitors that it would be in their best interest to
reveal their E-mail address to you. Fortunately, there are some time-tested
solutions available for that problem as well:
-
Arrange a sweepstakes with an attractive grand
prize, for example one of the more expensive products sold on your site. Require
everyone who wants to enter the drawing to give out his E-mail address and agree
to receive occasional E-mails from you. To get the best possible results, it is
advisable to declare that the winner will be contacted via E-mail and needs to
claim the prize within 7 days in order to receive it. By doing so, you'll
eliminate the problem of people giving out bogus E-mail addresses in order to
avoid receiving advertisements.
-
Open a discussion forum on your site. By only
allowing registered users to post, you can collect E-mail addresses and deter
pranksters from writing abusive messages at the same time. However, if you
decide to use this method to build your list, be very careful. Sending
advertisements too frequently to the regulars of your forum may cause them to
move elsewhere and thus reduce the traffic to your site.
-
Start publishing a newsletter. Although it
requires quite a bit of work, an interesting newsletter quickly gathers
subscribers and increases the size of your E-mail database. An additional
advantage of having a newsletter versus a simple E-mail announcement service is
that you'll be able to submit to the multiple newsletter directories on the
Internet.
-
Continue to allow everyone to access most of the
content on your site, but also add a "Members only" area that contains articles
or other information that is valuable to your visitors. Give out free
memberships, but require members to register, reveal their E-mail addresses and
allow you to send them an E-mail advertisement every now and then. This idea is
especially suitable if you're eventually planning to charge for some of the
content you provide. The step from requiring your visitors to register to
requiring them to pay is smaller than moving from giving everything for free to
fee-based access.
-
Whenever you ask your visitors to give out their
E-mail address, remember to offer them the possibility to join your opt-in
mailing list at the same time. Do you have a form on your site that allows the
visitors to contact the webmaster or the sales department? Perhaps you have a
Tell-A-Friend script that asks for the sender's E-mail address and name? Both
are excellent opportunities to suggest subscribing to your E-mail announcement
list or newsletter to your visitors. If you want to gather a sizeable list of
E-mail addresses from your visitors, you shouldn't be afraid of trying hard to
get them. Just keep in mind that there is a fine line between being persuasive
and being annoying. Don't cross it.
Lauri
Harpf runs the A Promotion Guide website, where he offers free tips on how you
can use E-mail, search engines and other methods to promote your site. His site
can be found at
http://www.apromotionguide.com/
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TIPS AND TRICKS:
Building an email database
with opt-in mailings...
Search Engines and site
maps...
Speak your clients language...
How to sell a web design...
A great free web statistic
service...
For a Free No Obligation Consultation on your best web design ever... Click here...
Contact Information:
Telephone:
(585) 586-9661
(585) 3887290
ask for Scott Gallmeyer
Fax:
(585) 586-1407
Mailing Address:
Scott Gallmeyer
ESG Associates Corp. 18 Bramblewood Lane Penfield, NY 14526
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