Build Awareness Through Email Without Spamming!Written by Michele Haapamaki
Most web marketers have seen usual promotion strategies dozens of times. Search engines, newsletters, email ads and like. Yet it can seem like a painfully slow process to build up from a trickle of visitors per day. Slow and steady marketing programs will pay off, but sometimes slow is just too discouraging! Unfortunately many web business owners will give up because of psychological toll of a slow start.To boost your site (and your confidence), you need to focus on bringing traffic to your site NOW to build an awareness of your site’s existence, even if it does not immediately translate into sales. You also need to let big guns in your industry know that you are online, and that you intend to be a player. You need a promotion strategy, not an advertising program. If there is one concept to keep in mind throughout your web marketing career, it is this… You can promote without advertising. In fact, promotion is often a much more powerful way to succeed. We tend to think of these two concepts as one and same, but you are severely limiting your results if you concentrate only on "advertising." For one thing, there are rules about advertising (i.e. spam). In addition, we are all growing more impervious to ads; we see and hear so many per day that we unconsciously filter them out. Advertising is geared towards sale. Promotion, on other hand, is geared towards building awareness. Promotion focuses first on person you are communicating with, and then subtly returns focus to you. You can advertise your site without emitting those bad vibes that "advertising" usually produces. How do you accomplish this? There are several ways, only one of which we will discuss in this article. Email. Not email newsletters, or email ads, or email discussion groups but person-to-person email. Yes, you can send free email to people you don’t know, provided that you are offering something of value (or potential value) for recipient. A blatant ad is simply spam, which will win you no friends at all.
| | What Does your "John Hancock" Look Like?Written by Merle
If you have a website and simply sign your e-mails with just your name, STOP right there! If you're not taking advantage of using a good signature line, you're missing out on promoting your business every time you send mail.So you ask, what exactly does a good signature line look like? It should read like a mini bio with "Four W's:" Who, What, When, Where. The length is usually 4 o 6 lines (at no more then 65 characters per line). You should include your company name, URL, a business slogan, and a link to subscribe to your ezine or a freebie you may be offering. For example: ******************************************* Sally Smith- Smith's Hardware Store http://www.smithhardware.com/ "The Finest in Hardware Since 1910" Subscribe to "Smiths Hardware Post" send mailto:subscribe@smithhardware.com. "All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy" ******************************************** Take note of special characters encasing signature. This is optional but helps add a flair of creativity to your signature. Some people like to add a quote as in example above. There are two excellent sites online for finding quotes you can use in your sig line: http://www.coolsigs.com http://www.siglets.com It's best to make a few different signature lines and switch them every so often so you don't get bored. If your site runs special sales or promotions you can make a signature line just for that occasion. In your email client make sure you set "add signature to all outgoing emails by default" so every time you send a new message signature line will be included automatically.
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