Building an E-mail Address Database

Written by Lauri Harpf


Continued from page 1

3. Start publishing a newsletter. Although it requires quite a bit of work, an interesting newsletter quickly gathers subscribers and increasesrepparttar 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 torepparttar 109640 multiple newsletter directories onrepparttar 109641 Internet.

4. Continue to allow everyone to access most ofrepparttar 109642 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 ofrepparttar 109643 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.

5. Whenever you ask your visitors to give out their E-mail address, remember to offer themrepparttar 109644 possibility to join your opt-in mailing list atrepparttar 109645 same time. Do you have a form on your site that allowsrepparttar 109646 visitors to contactrepparttar 109647 webmaster orrepparttar 109648 sales department? Perhaps you have a Tell-A-Friend script that asks forrepparttar 109649 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/


Email Overload

Written by Terry Johnston


Continued from page 1

THE GOLDEN RULE Help your friends and colleagues cope with their email overload by NOT contributing to it! You know how it goes: "do unto others..." It'srepparttar old cause and effect thing. Unless they've expressed an interest, perhaps you can hold back on sending those jokes, greeting cards and CCing them on every-little-bit-of-business. While we're on CCing, it's important for companies to develop a policy on what to CC and to whom. If your company doesn't have a policy in place maybe it's time for you to berepparttar 109639 Corporate Hero and...

DEAL WITH A MESSAGE ONLY ONCE How many times have you read a message, flagged it for follow-up, came back to it, read it again, perhaps left it until you have more time, came back to it, read it again... then replied. This is not a very efficient use of your valuable time, is it? A great discipline is to deal withrepparttar 109640 message once. That is to say, once you've committed to reading it, reply right away before you go on torepparttar 109641 next message.

DON'T REPLY TO 'EVERY' MESSAGE That heading was hard for me to write because one of my pet peeves is when people don't reply to me. (I'm getting over it.) The fact is that it's NOT necessary to reply to every message. Especially with those one-word replies... like: Great, Cool, Thanks, Beauty etc. Rememberrepparttar 109642 Golden Rule? Those short, sometimes meaningless, replies are often only contributing torepparttar 109643 recipient's email overload.

CREATE FOLDERS Most email clients allow you to set up folders. Although limited in scope, people, project and client specific folders can reduce a lot of stress, especially when it comes to finding a message. I know people who religiously go through their Inbox and drag and drop each and every message into a folder (including a trash folder). Time consuming and tedious yes, but inrepparttar 109644 overall scheme of things folders can make your email existence much easier.

SPAM BUSTING Don't fall prey torepparttar 109645 "oldest spamster trick inrepparttar 109646 book" - don't userepparttar 109647 unsubscribe feature in spam messages (not to be confused with Lists and Ezines). Spam marketers and list providers userepparttar 109648 unsubscribe feature to qualify email addresses! Do you seerepparttar 109649 irony?

You can consult with your ISP. More and more ISPs are providing spam filters. You can also forwardrepparttar 109650 spam you get torepparttar 109651 FTC. Send it to uce@ftc.gov

I hope these suggestions have brought you some hope. This list, of course, could extend to many more pages but I'd better let you go.... You've got tons of email to deal with!! Happy organizing!

Terry Johnston is Vice-President of Marketing with Caelo Software Inc. Caelo develops user-friendly email organizing software http://www.emailorganizer.com mailto: tjohnston@caelo.com


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