Email is currently the preferred method of communication amongst most business professionals and advertisers. It's faster, less expensive and more effective in getting your message out than other forms of communication and advertising.

Email can be used in many ways to market your products and services. Perhaps the single most important aspect of email marketing is getting your site visitors to willingly give you their email address to receive future communications from you about your site.

So there are two aspects for you to consider:

If you are currently not using email in a proactive fashion, consider the following options:

Until your web site attracts enough traffic to warrant the use of more sophisticated tools, you should set up an online form to gather email addresses of your visitors, and stay in touch with them regularly with brief emails which mention items such as site updates, industry news, etc. 

Ask people to refer your site to friends or peers. In exchange for their contact information, offer a free screensaver, a white paper, an ebook, or access to a private area of your web site. If you can get five email addresses from each visitor, you will be able to build a mailing list fairly rapidly. If building this type of form is beyond you, you can use a free service from a well known site called www.letemknow.com.

Autoresponders provide 24 x 7 access to information. To use an autoresponder, you register with an email service company specializing in autoresponse systems. Once registered, you create an advertising message or informational message for distribution. You then post your special autoresponder email address such as marketingassistance@sendfree.com in your signature file, in newsletters, etc. In our example, when people click on this email address, they receive an automatic response telling them about MarketingAssistance.com and we receive a copy of your email address. Try it right now or click on the banner at the top of this page to learn more about their 100% free service.

Performing market intelligence on a regular basis is critical to your survival. By using online surveys you can kill two birds with one stone: online surveys facilitate the gathering of pertinent market data and user demographics and they capture email addresses of respondents. For more information about surveys, visit SurveyAssistance.com.

Just as you can purchase databases of mailing addresses for direct mail campaigns, so can you purchase email addresses for bulk email campaigns.

While there are many services to choose from we believe you need to look for a company with a good track record, reliable data, and for someone who is committed to helping you achieve your desired results. We suggest Postmaster Direct, and you can click on their banner at the bottom of this page for more information.

A list server is a system which facilitates the central management of email addresses and messages. Most list servers are niche driven around special interest groups. People who share common interests can register with a list server to receive pertinent emails and to communicate with peers with common interests.

Collateral Distribution

As more and more advertising and promotion goes electronic, companies are learning the economical benefits of developing collateral in electronic format using software such as Adobe Acrobat.

After creating their collateral in a standard desktop package, they can convert their files into a stand-alone, graphically rich, file which can be viewed with a free viewer.

In this manner, a company can email their collateral to virtually anyone on the Internet at no cost: zero dollars for collateral reprinting, and zero dollars for postage.

We are always on the lookout for new and exciting ways to market our services. For a long time, we'd been reading about Rick Beneteau and his success with ezine marketing.

We visited his site and were impressed by his credentials. One look at the testimonials from the most prominent Net gurus in existence told us this guy might have something, so we invested $29.95 and downloaded his ebook and free bonuses.

Excellent by all accounts. We've implemented his techniques (one of our free ezine ads might have even brought you to our site!), and our traffic and sales are definitely on the rise! Highly recommended.

If you need assistance in developing collateral, writing an ezine, or other email-oriented projects, please contact us.

  Copyright 2003, Steven Schneiderman and Schneiderman & Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.
Click here to read our Privacy Policy. Your information is safe with us.