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412 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site

2008-11-30T14:04:00.000-08:00

There are a few basic ways to improve your success online:
• Generate more traffic to your Web site—that’s what this book is
all about.
• Improve your conversion rate or convert more of your Web site
visitors into paying customers.
• Your sales conversion rate is affected by:
– How well you have targeted your audience
– How good your offer is
– How convincing your copy is
– How well your audience knows you—loyalty and trust
factors
– Reducing the clicks to buy—the more clicks to the checkout,
the more abandoned shopping carts
• Get your customers to buy more. Ways to do this include:
– Cross-sell
– Up-sell
– Improve your sales copy
– Offer value-added services, such as gift wrapping and expedited
shipping.
If you don’t track, you can’t measure. If you don’t measure, you
don’t improve. It is as simple as that.
What to Measure
The digital nature of the Web makes the medium inherently measurable.
You need to know what to measure, how to measure it, and
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how to improve over time. Quite often industry benchmarks are irrelevant.
What you are concerned with is measuring your own
organization’s results and ratios and improving them month after
month. As long as you keep getting better at what you’re doing and
improving your performance and bottom line, does it really matter
that there is a benchmark out there that you’re not beating? There are
too many variables at play that can distort industry-wide or Internetwide
benchmarks.
Some of the key metrics that you want to measure include:
• Conversion ratio
• Sales per visitor
• Cost per visitor
• Net profit per sale
• Return on investment.
Conversion Ratio (CR)
A conversion ratio is the number of times a desired action is taken,
presented as a percentage of the number of opportunities for the action
to be taken. Although most people look at this ratio as the conversion
of a site visitor into a paying customer, there are many other conversion
ratios that are relevant. Conversion ratios of site visitors to sign-ups for
any permission marketing opportunity (newsletters, coupons, e-specials)
is a very important ratio.
By way of example, let’s assume you have 300 visitors to your Web
site in a day and you have 30 sales in the same time period. The sales
conversion ratio would be:
The number of people who purchase divided by the number of people
who visit the site: 30/300 = 10 percent
If you had 3,000 visitors and 30 sales, your conversion ratio would
be 1 percent: 30/3,000 = 1 percent
If you could find a way to increase your conversion ratio from 1
percent to 2 percent, you will have doubled your sales. Obviously, the
higher the conversion ratio the better.
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Sales per Visitor (SPV)
The sales per visitor is calculated by taking the gross sales or total dollar
sales amount for a period of time divided by the number of visitors
over the same period of time.
If you have $3,000 in sales for the day and 300 visitors, you have a
$10 sales per visitor ratio: $3,000 sales/300 visitors = $10 SPV.
You want to increase this number over time.
Cost per Visitor (CPV)
Your cost per visitor can be calculated two ways. You can look at your
total cost per visitor over all marketing activities, or you can choose to
measure your cost per visitor for a specific campaign. The specific-campaign
measurement is more relevant because you want to know which
Internet marketing activities are most cost-effective and yield a higher
return on investment.
To calculate your overall cost per visitor, you simply take all your
marketing expenses and divide by the number of unique visitors.
To calculate a campaign-specific cost per visitor, you take the cost
of the campaign and divide it by the number of unique visitors provided
by that campaign. Let’s run an example. Let’s say you run a banner
advertising campaign that costs you $20 CPM (cost per thousand impressions).
And let’s further assume you get a 1 percent click-through
rate. Your 1 percent click-through yields you ten visitors (1,000 × 1percent
= 10 visitors). Your cost per visitor for this campaign is $2. You
take the campaign cost (in this case, $20) and divide it by the number of
visitors (in this case, ten): $20/10 visitors = $2 cost per visitor for this
campaign.
Cost per Sale (CPS)
Your cost per sale is calculated as the cost of your campaign divided by
the number of sales it produces.
Let’s follow through on the previous example. Our campaign cost
was $20 for 1,000 banner ad impressions. We had a 1 percent clickthrough
rate, or ten visitors. Let’s assume that 10 percent of our visitors
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bought, so 10 percent is one sale. To calculate our cost per sale, we take
our campaign cost and divide it by the number of sales: $20 campaign
cost/1 sale = $20 CPS.
Net Profit per Sale (NPPS)
Let’s continue with our example. Let’s assume that each sale produces
at $45 gross profit. Gross profit is calculated by taking the selling price
and subtracting the cost of goods sold. Net profit per sale is calculated
by taking the net profit and subtracting our cost-per-sale (which is the
previous calculation we figured as $20). The net profit per sale for this
campaign is: Gross profit per sale - cost per sale: $45 - $20 = $25 NPPS.
Return on Investment (ROI)
The return on investment before non-marketing expenses is calculated
by taking the net profit per sale and dividing it by the investment or the
cost per sale. In this case, you had a $25 net profit per sale divided by
$20 cost per sale: $25/$20 = 125 percent ROI.
This campaign was profitable. But you need to do these calculations
for all of your campaigns so that you can compare them against each
other to see where you want to focus your marketing dollars and also to
improve your ratios over time on the same types of marketing activities—
in other words, get better at the game.
Web Metrics Tools
Now that you have learned how to do all the calculations and your
heart is racing thinking about this new full-time job that has just been
created, we’ll let you in on a few tools that might help.
Some of the tools available include:
• AdMinder (http://www.adminder.com). AdMinder can calculate
not only the cost per click, but also the cost per sale (or action)
and the return on investment for that particular campaign.
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AdMinder allows for easy management of multiple campaigns
by displaying ads that are scheduled to run in the near future
and ads that are about to expire. AdMinder allows for the export
of data to Excel or any other spreadsheet software.
• FutureNowInc.com (http://www.futurenowinc.com/digital
salescalculators.htm). The FutureNow Digital Sales Calculator
includes 22 metrics.
• NetAuditNow (http://netauditnow.com). NetAuditNow is a service
that logs onto your Web server, grabs your log files, and
then uses them to spit out reports. One of the reports that
NetAuditNow generates is the advertising quality and returnon-
investment report. This report compares the quantity (total
and average number) to quality (time, pages viewed, and purchases)
of visitors who came to your site from various ad banners
and links. Can report on everything from search engine
traffic to total monthly page views and unique visitors.
• Net Quantify (http://www.netquantify.com). Online reports reveal
which placements generate the most sales, registrations, and
any other activity you want to track.
• PromotionStat (http://www.promotionstat.com). PromotionStat
reports on and separates visitors from different advertising vehicles
or sources and tracks their behaviors once they’re on
your site.
Internet Resources for Chapter 28
I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding Web
metrics. For additional resources on a variety of topics, I recommend
that you visit the Resources section of my Web site at http://www.
susansweeney.com/resources.html. There you will find additional tips,
tools, techniques, and resources.
How to Interpret Web Metrics
http://www.clickz.com/sales/traffic/article.php/992351
An interesting article on how to interpret what all these numbers mean.
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Web Metrics and ROI
http://www.stepbystepwebmarketing.com/bottom.php
Another article about Web metrics from the Institute of International
Research.
Understanding Web Metrics to Improve Site Performance
http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol29/metrics.htm
Many online entrepreneurs fail to properly understand and utilize their
site’s metrics. Here’s an in-depth look on how statistics can be used to
achieve traffic, marketing, sales, and customer service goals.
Marketing Experiment
http://www.marketingexperiments.com/archives/web_metrics_pt1.cfm
Marketing Experiment tests 26 different Web metrics tools to determine
the simplest, most accurate way to capture the numbers you need.

Which Pages Are Popular and Which Pages Are Not?

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Which Pages Are Popular and Which Pages Are Not?
What pages are most popular with your visitors? Do you see traffic
spike when you have new content? Release a newsletter or news re-
Figure 27.2. This WebTrends report lets you know which versions of each
browser your visitors are using.
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lease? Do you get more traffic on the weekend or during the week? Are
your online marketing efforts having an impact? Are people clicking
through?
When you look at the log files and see where your audience is spending
most of their time on your site, you can also tell where they are not.
You can then use this information to determine what the popular pages
on your site incorporate that the less popular ones do not. Perhaps the
popular pages are similar to the less popular, but are visited by a specific
source (i.e., search engines, newsgroups). Maybe there is a content
problem on the less popular pages, or maybe they take longer to load
than the other pages and visitors do not want to wait for them to load.
Whatever the case may be, you can use this information and attempt to
fix those problems that would keep visitors from spending time on all
the pages of your site.
Find Out How Each Visitor Found Your Site
By finding out how each visitor came to your site, you can boost your
traffic tremendously. You can determine which of your banner ads is producing
the best results (see Figure 27.3). You can use this information to
Figure 27.3. This WebTrends report identifies how frequently a banner ad is
viewed.
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Figure 27.4. This WebTrends report illustrates the first-time visitor sessions
initiated by searches from each search engine.
help you with the selection of banners you use and also the allocation of
your online advertising budget. You can determine how many visitors
found your site through search engines (see Figure 27.4). You can even
determine which keyword led to the most visitors through the search
engines (see Figure 27.5). If most of your traffic is coming from the Excite
search engine (http://www.excite.com), you could consider purchasing a
banner advertisement on that page. The same theory applies if your traffic
is coming from a newsgroup, meta-indexes, and so on.
You can also find out where your visitors go when they leave your
Web site. You want your viewers to stay at your site as long as possible.
If you notice that the majority of your viewers are not traveling through
your entire site and are not viewing important information that you
want them to see, you may want to manipulate the layout of your Web
site to decrease the “flight effect.” If you notice that your top exit page
is your home page, you might even decide to try a whole new approach
because people seem to be turned off from searching through your site
from the beginning.
Single-access pages are pages on your Web site that are accessed
through a link or search engine and then are immediately exited. If a
high percentage of your Web site traffic is a result of these pages, it is
very important that you convey a strong message while you have the
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visitors’ attention. If you have pages like this, you should reevaluate
what is on those pages and try to come up with content that entices
your visitor to search through the rest of your site.
Most of the Web traffic analysis software will tell you which keywords
and phrases your visitors used to find your site using a search
engine. This is extremely valuable information because you can use these
keywords to increase your popularity in the search engines. By knowing
the most popular keywords your visitors are using to visit your site, you
can make sure you use them in your meta-tags, Alt tags, and page titles,
and in the text of your page for higher placement in the search engines.
Also, by seeing which search engines are being used more by your visitors,
you can choose to purchase a banner ad or keywords for that
engine to achieve maximum visibility to your market.
Another benefit of observing who is viewing your site is that you
can see when spiders and crawlers from search engines have crawled to
your page. This means that your site most likely will be indexed on their
corresponding search engine. This is good to know, not only because it
reassures you that you are going to be indexed, but also because by
Figure 27.5. This WebTrends report identifies the specific keywords that led
the most visitors to the site through the search engines.
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knowing this, you will not resubmit your site to the search engine and
risk spamming.
Identifying Your Target Market
After you have collected data from your log files and used the Web
traffic analysis software to determine which demographic groups are
actually visiting your site, you then must determine whether these are
the groups that you want to target. If not, you must then determine how
you are going to reach your target market. For example, you might find
that you need to change your online advertising campaign. Or perhaps
you should reevaluate your Internet marketing strategy, taking into consideration
the new data that you have collected.
Find out What Forms of Online Promotion Work for Your Site
When you first launch your Web site, you are going to aggressively
implement your Internet marketing strategy by experimenting with all
of the different forms of online marketing. However, when you analyze
who is actually visiting your site and you find out where the majority of
your traffic is coming from, you can then determine where to focus the
majority of your marketing efforts. You might find that a link on a
particular Web site is resulting in a high amount of traffic to your site;
therefore, you might consider purchasing a banner advertisement on
that site. The same goes for all of the other forms of Internet marketing.
If, after a short period of time, your analysis software tells you that you
are receiving low traffic from a banner ad that you have purchased, you
should pull it off that site and allocate your investment to another site
on the Internet. This is a good way to make sure you get the most for
your investments in online marketing.
How Do You Get Web Traffic
Analysis Software for Your Site?
One option is to use a tracking service like eXTReMe Tracking (http://
www.extreme-dm.com), where the tracking software resides on the ser-
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vice provider’s server. You place the tracker code on your Web site,
which provides all the input to the tracking software, and then you have
access to all the tracking reports.
You can purchase Web traffic analysis software if you wish, but
for it to work it must be installed on the server where you host your
Web site. If you are hosting your own Web site, you definitely have
to purchase your own software; however, if you are paying an ISP to
host your Web site, the host should already be able to provide some
sort of analysis software. Most people don’t take advantage of the
tremendous marketing opportunities available from analyzing their
traffic; therefore, they do not ask their ISP about the software. It
should be available to you, for you are paying for their services. If it
is not, simply ask them to purchase the Web traffic analysis software
of your choice, for they would much rather have you as a client than
say no. In some cases they might charge you an additional fee for this
service.
Internet Resources for Chapter 27
I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding Web
traffic analysis. For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the
Resources section of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/
resources.html. There you can find additional tips, tools, and resources.
Web Traffic Analysis Services
Analog
http://www.analog.cx
“The most popular log file analyzer in the world.”
eXTReMe Tracker
http://www.extreme-dm.com/tracking
The eXTReMe Tracker is a completely free service that offers comprehensive
real-time reporting, with no limit on the amount of traffic that
you receive on your Web site. It is capable of tracking your visitors’
geographic location, their domain, e-mail address, the browser they are
using, and much more.
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Funnel Web Analyzer
http://www.quest.com/funnel_web/analyzer
Every person who visits your company’s Web site leaves behind a trail.
Your Web server logs their every action, and you can use this information
to help improve your business. Funnel Web Analyzer provides essential
Web site visitor and traffic analysis. It measures everything from server
load and referrals to visitor demographics and marketing ROI. Funnel
Web Analyzer helps you optimize your Web site, by allowing you to analyze
how users interact with your site, and helps you make informed decisions
about what changes you can make to improve their experience.
HitBox
http://www.hitbox.com
HitBox is designed for ad-supported, personal, or e-commerce sites. It’s
capable of developing user profiles, tracking which sites refer visitors to
your site, and how much traffic you receive on a daily, monthly, and
annual basis. HitBox can also track how your visitors navigate around
your Web site, which can help you in customizing your Web site to your
viewers’ needs.
IBM SurfAid Analytics
http://surfaid.dfw.ibm.com/web/home/index.html
SurfAid customers range from startups to Internet giants. Regardless of
your traffic volumes, SurfAid processes your data in hours. SurfAid has
handled the processing and analysis for some of the world’s most heavily
trafficked Web sites to date, including the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
TheCounter.com
http://www.thecounter.com
The Counter provides tracking services to its members. By placing a
small image on your Web site, you can get information such as when
your visitors came, from where, and by using what browser. If you are
just experimenting with Web traffic analysis, you can’t go wrong with
TheCounter.com.
Webalizer
http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer
The Webalizer is a fast, free Web server log file analysis program. It
produces highly detailed, easily configurable usage reports in HTML
format, for viewing with a standard Web browser.
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Web Site Traffic Reports
http://www.websitetrafficreport.com
This free service provides you with a bit of code to insert into your Web
page, and then sends you an e-mail daily with your Web traffic report.
Web-Stat Traffic Analysis
http://www.web-stat.com
For $5 per month you can use this service, which provides very detailed
Web traffic analysis reports.
Web Traffic Analysis Software
AccessWatch
http://www.accesswatch.com
AccessWatch is open source shareware. AccessWatch generates browser
statistics, referrer, page views, and other Web site traffic statistics.
Mach5 FastStats Analyzer
http://www.mach5.com/products/analyzer/analyzer.html
A powerful software application that provides detailed analysis of your
server’s log files.
NetIQ’s WebTrends Enterprise Suite
http://www.netiq.com/webtrends/products/previous/reporting_series_
enterprise.asp
The WebTrends Enterprise Suite is one of the most comprehensive Web
site analysis software packages available. It provides you with reports
on everything from the number of views your banner ads receive on
another Web page, to which keyword was used when a visitor found
your site using a search engine. You can easily target specific hits and
user sessions that include file types and names, entry pages, time and
day, user addresses, or any other medium that might have pointed a
visitor to your page. WebTrends develops detailed advertising reports,
which tell you how often banners on your Web site are viewed and how
often people click through. This assists you in selling and billing space
to your clients. This is an all-in-one piece of Web traffic analysis software
that does more than answer the question of who is actually visiting
your site.
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NetTracker eBusiness Edition
http://www.sane.com
NetTracker uses an Oracle database engine, which is great for most
companies because they don’t need a database administrator to use it.
The Business Edition can handle really large log files with the speed and
agility of an Oracle8 database. The Business Edition also lets you access
your data for additional analysis using standard reporting tools such as
Crystal Reports and products from Cognos, Information Builders, and
more. This product contains 79 standardized summaries, plus you can
create and save your own. NetTracker generates usage reports for multiple
Web sites, proxy servers, firewalls, and FTP sites.
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28
Web Metrics
Over the past few years the Internet has come a long way toward being
a sales and distribution channel for most businesses. As with any
distribution channel, there are costs involved. Where business costs are
involved, the owners want to see a return on their investment. To determine
the return on investment, businesses need to measure and analyze
a number of things.
Over the past year we have seen more and more companies allocate
significantly more of their marketing budget to Internet marketing. Businesses
are taking the Internet very seriously these days. Businesses are
beginning to measure their Web site’s effectiveness from both a marketing
and a merchandising perspective. In this chapter, we cover:
• Measuring your online success
• What to measure
• Conversion ratio
• Sales per visitor
• Cost per visitor
• Cost per sale
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Web Metrics 411
• Net profit per sale
• Return on investment
• Web metrics tools.
Measuring Your Online Success
E-commerce is a numbers game. The trick is to focus on
the right numbers so that you can make accurate decisions
about how to improve your Web site, and ultimately, your
customer conversion rate. Without e-metrics, the Web
continues to be a grand experiment, a government research
project that escaped the lab, mutated, and took
over the world. But with e-metrics you have the opportunity
to approach the Web from an objective, systematic
perspective. You can move from trial and error to trial,
measure and improve.
Bryan Eisenburg
CIO Future Now Inc.
http://futurenowinc.com
It is becoming imperative that companies track the effectiveness of
their online marketing campaigns in real time and make adjustments, if
necessary, immediately. It is also imperative that companies track the
effectiveness of the elements on their Web site and make adjustments
over time.
From a marketing perspective, organizations want to measure and
improve advertising effectiveness, click-throughs, cost of customer acquisitions,
etc.
From a Web site perspective, organizations want to improve online
sales, cross-sells, up-sells, customer retention rates, average order per
customer, number of page views per visitor, customer loyalty, newsletters,
sign-ups, and so on. They want to determine the most popular
areas of the site so the content can be improved. They want to identify
popular “exit” pages so they can modify them and make their site more
“sticky.”

Effective Offline Promotion 391

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• Envelopes
• Checks
• Fax coversheets
• Report covers
• Flyers
• Advertisements
• Direct mail pieces
• Newsletters
• Press releases
• Media kits.
URL Exposure through Promotional Items
If your company uses promotional items as giveaways at trade shows
and events, it is a good idea to incorporate your Web site marketing
with these items. Figures 26.1 and 26.2 offer examples of the different
promotional products that you can order on the Internet for your business.
Promotional items that are used in and around computer workstations
are ideal because your URL is visible when people are in a position
to actually visit your site. Some examples are:
• Mouse pads
• CD holders
• Screen cleaning kits
• Software
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Figure 26.1. Mousepads.com is a site where you can order personalized
mouse pads.
Figure 26.2. At epromos.com you can put your Web address on a multitude
of different products.
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Effective Offline Promotion 393
• Screen savers
• Pens and pencils
• Scratch pads
• Coffee mugs
• Coasters
• Letter openers
• Stress balls
• Calendars
• Sticky notes.
URL Exposure through Clothing
Articles of clothing are another great promotional item. When people
wear an article of clothing with your URL on it, they become a walking
billboard for your site. I personally have a jacket that was provided by
Webjacket.com (see Figure 26.3), and the quality is great. Your corporate
jacket provides exposure for your company and your Web site. If
you have a corporate uniform, your URL should be displayed. Put your
URL and a catchy phrase or tag line on items such as:
• Golf shirts
• T-shirts
• Sweatshirts
• Hats
• Aprons
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• Jackets.
URL Exposure on Novelty Items
Novelty items can be an effective place to print your URL. If your target
market is a younger audience, then put your URL on items that appeal
to them, such as:
• Frisbees
• Balls
• Beach towels
• Sunglasses
• Key chains
• Magnets
• Chocolate bars
Figure 26.3. eZINESearch.com provides a searchable directory of e-zines.
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• Bumper stickers.
Promotion with a Touch of Creativity
Be creative and come up with catchy slogans that have a connection
with the promotional item. For example:
• Clocks: “Take some time to visit our Web site at …”
• Rulers: “For a measurable difference, visit us at …”
• Coffee mugs: “Take a break and visit our Web site at …”
• Tape measures: “Visit our Web site at http://www.YourURL.com
and see how our site measures up.”
• Magnifying glasses: “You don’t need one of these to see that our
site is the best. Come visit us online at …”
• Watches: “Isn’t it about time you visited us at … ?”
• Bookmarks: “Take a break from reading and visit our Web
site at …”
URL Exposure on Your Products
If possible, put your URL on your products themselves. This is an innovative
idea that Joe Boxer has used. They stitch their URL into the waistband
of their underwear.
Internet Resources for Chapter 26
I have included a few resources for you to check out about offline promotion.
For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the Re-
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396 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
sources section of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/
resources.html. There you can find additional tips, tools, techniques,
and resources.
Advertising Concepts
http://www.bumperstickers.com/ad.htm
“Why Use Promotional Products?” This site gives you good promotional
ideas and explains what these promotional products can do for you.
Digital-Women.com
http://www.digital-women.com/unique.htm
This includes unique ideas for online and offline promotion.
e-Promos.com
http://www.epromos.com
This site has a huge offering of items appropriate to display your logo.
Mousepads.com
http://www.mousepads.com
Mousepads.com allows you to choose from many styles or will develop
a custom one just for you. They also allow you to sign up for their
e-specials on their site.
PC Mojo
http://www.pcmojo.com/content/techsuppwebpromoteoffline.htm
Information on why you need to promote your site off the Internet.
Promotional Webstickers
http://www.websticker.com/products.htm
Simple ideas to effectively promote your Web site offline.
Webjacket.com
http://www.webjacket.com
Webjacket.com provides a great quality jacket with your corporate logo
and Web address. You design your own right on the site. I have one!
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27
Web Traffic Analysis
Today, technology not only allows us to generate interactive Web sites
for our viewers, it allows us to learn about our viewers as well. Many
Web sites are now using Web traffic analysis software that enables them
to analyze not only what page of the Web site their visitors came to
first, but also where they came from, how long they were there, and
what they did while they stayed. Once you have this information, you
can do some calculations to see what is working for you and what is
not. In this chapter, you will learn:
• What your Web server’s log files can tell you
• How analyzing log files with Web traffic analysis software can
benefit your Web site
• How to develop a profile of your visitors
• How to optimize your Web site to accommodate your visitors
• How to get the most for your marketing dollar
• How to generate leads for your business
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• How analysis software can help you to manage your online advertising
business
• How you can get Web traffic analysis software for your Web site
• The popular brands of Web traffic analysis software.
Do You Know Who Is Visiting Your Web Site?
Retailers have always spent endless hours trying to analyze the shoppers
who visit their stores. They are constantly trying to collect data
about their markets so that they can decide what the best forms of advertising
are for their target market, what consumers really want in
order to make wiser buying decisions, what services are important to
them, what product features their target market is looking for, and so
on. The same thing is happening today on the Internet. Companies are
constantly collecting data on their target market—their needs, wants,
preferences, and desires. Most people are unaware that they are even
doing this.
Web traffic analysis software helps companies to focus on their target
market like never before. It helps them to understand the traffic on
their Web site and enables them to make the necessary changes that are
critical to producing the results that they desire from their Web site.
“But how do they do it?” you ask.
Using Log Files to Your Advantage
All Web servers log a list of all the requests for individual files that
people have requested from a Web site. These logs include the HTML
files and their embedded graphic images and any other associated files
that get transmitted through the server. These logs can be analyzed by
Web traffic analysis tools to generate the following data:
• The number of visitors to your home page
• Where the visitors came from in terms of their IP addresses
• How many times each page on your Web site was requested
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• What time, day of the week, and season people access your site
• Which browser your visitor is using
• Which keywords or phrases your visitors are using to find your
site using a search engine
• Which advertisements are viewed the most on your Web site
• Detailed information on visitors and demographics.
This might not sound like very important information; however,
there are some very amazing things you can do with this data. Like any
good experiment, you must collect the data first, complete the experiment,
and then make the recommendations.
Analyzing Log Files with Web
Traffic Analysis Software
By analyzing the data from your log files, you can generate results that
could significantly increase the popularity and success of your Web site.
By tracking the visitors on your Web site in terms of where they spend
their time, how they came to your site, and if they do what you want
them to do, you can fine-tune your Web site to fit the specific needs of
your target market.
Developing a Profile of Your Visitors
Who is visiting your site? Are most of your visitors from the United
States? Canada? Australia? Are your visitors AOL users? University students?
Government? Are your visitors primarily Mac or PC users? Which
browser are they using? Which version of the browsers are they using?
By analyzing the log files, you can learn a great deal about your
audience. You can see how the majority of your audience came to your
site and what they like to do while they are there—meaning whether
they request information or not, if they download products, or if they
are interested in free giveaways. You can use this information to find
out if your site needs to be changed to accommodate the needs of your
visitors. For example, if you find that many of your visitors are spend-
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ing much of their time on your What’s New page, maybe it would be in
your best interest to start a monthly mail list to inform your audience
about new additions to your Web site.
The log files can tell you when your audience is entering your site.
For example, if the log files indicate that your traffic is mostly at night,
you could predict that most people visit your site from home. Because
many homes do not have high-speed access, you might want to check
your graphic sizes to make sure that they are not taking too long for
your site to load. If your analysis tells you that not many people visit
your site on Saturday, you could select this day as your maintenance
day. You don’t want to make changes to your site on days when you
receive high traffic because it is very discouraging to your visitors to
receive HTTP 404 errors because your site is temporarily down.
You can also see your visitor’s IP address, which the software translates
into his or her geographical location; some of the software is even
capable of narrowing the data down to the city (see Figure 27.1). From
a marketing perspective, this can benefit you in planning your marketing
efforts in other media. If you are planning a television campaign for
Figure 27.1. WebTrends can tell you what cities are bringing you the most
online traffic.
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Web Traffic Analysis 401
your business, you might want to start in a city that frequently visits
your site, thus increasing the chance of a successful campaign.
It is very common for Web traffic analysis software to indicate which
browser your visitors are using when visiting your Web site (see Figure
27.2). Although you want to have a Web site that is designed to be
compatible with both older and newer browsers, this data can be used
to your advantage. Older browsers that cannot read Java scripting properly
and that do not have the proper plug-ins for a Flash introduction
might still be in use by your viewers. However, if a majority of your
viewers are using the latest browsers, you could incorporate more of
the latest technology into your site. Remember that you should always
offer a “Skip Flash” option on your site and the latest Java plug-ins for
people with older browsers.

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The Technology Changes Too Often
Webcasting is a relatively new medium. Of course, new standards are
being introduced every few months. The key here is to watch what technologies
the major Internet sites are using. If you see some of the major
players in the Internet starting to use a particular Webcasting technology,
you should investigate it. Generally, the learning curve for new technologies
is not very steep because they are based on previous technologies.
Uses of Webcasting
Despite the existence of a few barriers to using Webcasting as a promotional
vehicle, you should investigate it if you think your target market
is ready for it. Some important uses of providing rich media content to
the general public include:
• Live continuous broadcasts of radio stations and networks
• Broadcasts of cable networks and television stations
• Coverage of sporting events (both streaming and nonstreaming
footage)
• Live music including concerts and club performances (both
streaming and nonstreaming footage)
• On demand shows, corporate events, CDs, audiobooks, video
titles, and so on.
As bandwidth increases and more people have access to higher-end
technology, Webcasting will become a regular part of our lives and be
more accepted as an advertising medium. The transition to Webcasting
has already begun, as is evidenced by the large number of prominent
players already entrenched in the field.
Today we are seeing that many major corporations are providing
live Webcasts of their corporate annual meetings. This is a great idea for
a number of reasons. If there are company shareholders who are unable
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to attend the annual meeting in person, they are able to observe the
meeting remotely via the Internet and Webcasting. Similarly, potential
investors can view your annual meeting on-line and gain valuable insight
into your organization, which might result in the individuals making
an investment in your organization. If potential investors or
shareholders miss the live Webcast of the annual meeting, they can visit
your site and download the event to watch at their convenience. This is
just one example of how Webcasting can add value to your Web site,
and ultimately your organization.
Many travel and tourism sites are providing virtual tours of their
locations. A picture is worth a thousand words, and this is certainly the
case when it comes to marketing hotels, bed and breakfasts, resorts,
golf courses, theme parks, attractions, and other travel destinations.
We are also seeing an increase in the number of professional training
organizations providing online training modules, or “virtual seminars,”
from their Web sites. The growing popularity of online training
is a result of the flexibility and cost efficiency offered by these organizations.
In order for your clients to attend your seminars in person,
they would be inconvenienced by the need to schedule time for it. This
inconvenience incorporates travel expenses, the seminar fee, and the
opportunity costs of being absent from their office. Virtual seminars
enable your clients to usually pay a much smaller fee to view the same
seminar from the comfort of their desk. Business professionals are
also finding online training useful because it allows them to decide
when to view the seminar, as some of the online training sessions can
be viewed at their convenience. Others are “live” and available only
at a specific time and date.
Many professional speakers are now offering live Webcasts,
downloadable training modules, and streaming video clips from their
Web sites in an effort to increase their online bookings. For example,
meeting planners and organizers who are looking for speakers for their
upcoming conference can visit my Web site, SusanSweeney.com (http://
www.susansweeney.com), to download streaming video clips of samples
of my speaking. This enables visitors to gain a feel for my presentation
style and the quality of content that I deliver. I also offer live “Webinars”
every couple of weeks on various topics related to Internet marketing
(http://www.susansweeney.com/tele_seminars.html). While I’m on a roll
I’ll also give a plug for The Recognized Expert Marketing Show
(http://www.recognizedexpert.com), an online radio program where I’ve
been interviewed.
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Internet Resources for Chapter 24
I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding Webcasting
and rich media. For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the
Resources section of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/
resources.html. There you will find additional tips, tools, and techniques.
Yahoo! Platinum
http://platinum.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Platinum offers a wide variety of on-demand audio and video
content, from space shuttle launches to full-length movies.
Internet Pictures Corp
http://www.ipix.com
This company is known for its 360-degree virtual tours.
The Media CHANNEL
http://www.mediachannel.com
A guide to video on the Internet.
RealNetworks
http://www.real.com
Innovators in the field of streaming media, RealNetworks has several
popular Webcasting software applications, including RealPlayer,
RealJukebox, and RealSlideshow.
Streaming Media World
http://www.streamingmediaworld.com
Streaming Media World offers media player reviews, news, tools, tutorials,
discussion forums, and cool links devoted to streaming video, audio,
MP3, multimedia, and GIF animation.
VideoDome.Com Networks Inc.
http://www.videodome.com
Offers a variety of Internet On Demand video solutions to meet your
online video needs.
Virtual Kingdom Interactive Inc.
http://www.virtualkingdom.ca/vkingdom/
A company that provides virtual tour technology for your Web site.
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VirtualTuner.com
http://www.virtualtuner.com
Directory of live and on-demand radio links for the Internet.
Web-Radio
http://www.web-radio.com
A comprehensive directory of radio stations broadcasting on the Web.
WebReference.com
http://www.webreference.com/multimedia/video.html
A directory of multimedia tools including Windows Media Player, Real,
Emblaze, and Macromedia.
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25
Grand Opening Tips for Your Web
Site Virtual Launch
Just as you would have a book or software launch, you can have a Web
site launch. In preparation, you must develop a launch strategy. In this
chapter, we cover:
• Development of your Web site launch strategy
• Web site announcement mailing lists
• Direct e-mail postcards to your customers or prospective clients.
Launching and Announcing Your Web Site
A new Web site or your new location in cyberspace
can be launched in many of the same ways that you
would launch a new physical store location. This
might involve both online and offline activities. Just
as you would prepare a book launch strategy or a
new software product launch strategy, you can de-
Cyberspace
Virtual location where
Web sites live.
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velop an appropriate launch strategy for your new Web site. Sometimes a
launch strategy could be more work than the benefit that would be gained.
On the other hand, if you are opening the next Amazon, it is imperative.
Your Web Site Virtual Launch
Let’s take a look at a traditional retail store grand opening. For the
grand opening, which usually lasts for an evening or a day, there are
invitations to the media, press releases distributed to the media, invited
guests, opening ceremonies, advertising, and possibly gift giveaways.
A Web site virtual location launch occurs in cyberspace, and the
“grand opening” can last for a day, a week, or a month. Many of the
activities you would include in your traditional grand opening can also
be included in your Internet grand opening. The effectiveness of your
launch can be increased with the following tips:
• Media attention can be generated through the distribution of
press releases on-line and off-line. (See Chapter 21 for press release
distribution information.)
• Guests can be invited to your online opening through postings
in newsgroups, newsletters, “What’s New” sites, banner advertising,
direct e-mail, and signature files, as well as through offline
direct mail and advertising.
• Opening ceremonies can be just as exciting on-line as off-line.
They can last for a month rather than a day. The opening must
be designed to appeal to your target market.
• You can feature special guests in chat areas for your grand opening
or several special guests over the duration. Again, relate your
guests and the topics to be discussed to the needs and wants of
your target market.
• You can run contests that require visitors to visit various parts
of your site to compete for prizes. Perhaps they have to complete
a multiple-choice quiz whose answers are found throughout
your site. This way you encourage your guests to visit all
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Grand Opening Tips for Your Web Site Virtual Launch 387
those pages you want them to. You can also ask if they would
like to be notified via e-mail of the winner. This gives you an
opportunity to send them e-mail with their permission.
• You can have audio and video greetings from your site.
• You can have press releases regarding your opening available
for download by the media. Make your press release interactive.
(See Chapter 21 for details on how to do this.)
• Special free gifts can be provided to the first 20 or 50 visitors to
your site. You can also provide prizes to the first 100 to link to
your site.
• Do some offline advertising for your new URL (see Chapter 26
for innovative offline opportunities), or take advantage of online
advertising via announcement sites.
There are many other innovative “grand opening” attention grabbers
that can be brainstormed with marketing and public relations individuals.
Whatever you decide to do, make it memorable, make it appropriate
for your target market, and provide reasons for them to return.
Internet Resources for Chapter 25
I have included a few resources for you to check out for your Web site
virtual launch. For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the
Resources section of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/
resources.html. There you can find additional tips, tools, and techniques.
Best-Web-Sites Announcement List
You can join this mailing list by e-mailing the message “sub BESTWEB
[your name]” to listserv@vm3090.ege.edu.tr.
Nerd World What’s New
http://www.nerdworld.com/whatsnew.html
The newest links added to Nerd World, and a place to show off your
site. Not just for nerds.
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WhatsNu
http://www.whatsnu.com
The WhatsNu search engine filters Web site listings by date/category
and offers the Internet community a free weekly notification of new
Web sites launching on the Internet.
Get Ready for Grand Re-Openings
http://www.clickz.com/experts/media/media_buy/article.php/1579801
A great article about site reopening and buying media.
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26
Effective Offline Promotion
There are many benefits to cross-promoting your Web site using traditional
media and print materials. Your Web site can answer many questions
and provide more information than you can print in a magazine
or newspaper ad. Your site can be kept up to date with the latest information
available. People can request additional information or order
online. In this chapter, we cover:
• Tips for offline promotion of your Web site
• Offline promotion opportunities.
Offline Promotion Objectives
Because visitors can be directed from offline promotion to request additional
information or order online, you should promote your URL on
every piece of promotional material you produce! The more exposure
your URL receives, the more likely it is that people will remember it
when they go online.
Be creative with your offline promotion campaign. Brainstorm with
innovative thinkers to come up with a number of good places to pro-
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390 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
mote your URL; for example, try displaying your URL in your TV and
radio commercials, magazine and newspaper ads, and billboards. The
more places your URL appears, the more it will get noticed. Some businesses
even incorporate their URL into their building and vehicle signage.
Answer your telephone “YourCompanyName.com, Good Morning.”
This is quite effective in letting people know that you want them to visit
your Web site and providing them with your URL at the same time.
Next time they have a question or want to place an order, they can go
directly to the Web site.
Displaying your URL in traditional media encourages people to visit
your site for more information about your company. Another benefit is
that people usually can order from your Web site. Naturally, your site
should be up to date, with all of the latest information on products,
prices, and sales promotions. If a 6-month-old advertisement is seen in
a magazine, as long as the URL is displayed in the ad, readers can go to
your site and get current information. Your Web site is your most effective
advertisement, but it is an advertisement that people have to know
about before they can view it.
If you have a bricks-and-mortar location you can consider having
posters or promotional material on display letting people know about
your Web site or encouraging them to join your e-club.
URL Exposure through Corporate
Literature and Material
It is important that your corporate image be consistent in both your
online and offline promotional campaigns. Businesses should use the
same colors, style, fonts, logo, and tag lines on all of their marketing
materials. As a rule of thumb, try to place your URL on everything you
put your logo on—which means just about every piece of corporate
literature. Make sure to include your URL on the following:
• Letterhead
• Business cards
• Corporate brochures
TEAM

Other Marketing Opportunities Provided by Web Rings

2008-11-30T13:57:00.000-08:00

When you have found a Web ring that attracts your target market, you
can participate and enjoy the increase in visitors to your site. The Massage
and Bodywork Web ring shown in Figure 23.2 is an example of a
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Web Rings as a Promotion Tool 371
professional type of Web ring. It is a Web ring devoted to massage schools
and educators and other support services for massage professionals.
Web rings provide an array of other opportunities as well.
You can search through the list of participants in a Web ring to
arrange reciprocal links. You can also search a Web ring for banneradvertising
purposes. You can either exchange banners or purchase advertising
on these sites. You can find sites that may be appropriate for
cooperative advertising purposes. You can exchange coupons with another
site you are linked to, which works especially well when you sell
noncompeting products to the same target market.
Internet Resources for Chapter 23
I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding public
Web rings. For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the Resources
section of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/
resources.html. There you will find additional tips, tools, and techniques.
Figure 23.2. The Massage and Bodywork Web ring is an example of a
professional Web ring; it is exclusively for massage schools, educators, and other
services supportive of massage professionals.
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RingSurf
http://www.ringsurf.com
Sites of a particular subject together in a ring. A visitor to any site in the
ring can easily move forward or backward through the ring and visit
other sites within that subject area. This drives targeted qualified traffic
to all the ring sites. Surfers don’t want to deal with mounds of irrelevant
search engine results. They want to visit sites on topics they love. RingSurf
is a free service that lets users quickly, easily, and reliably navigate thousands
of related Web sites organized by areas of interest.
WebRing
http://dir.webring.com/rw
Web rings are one of the fastest and most exciting ways to navigate the
World Wide Web. In each of its tens of thousands of rings, member Web
sites have banded together to form their sites into linked circles. Their
purpose is to allow more visitors to reach them quickly and easily.
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24
Webcasting and Rich Media
Webcasting is defined by Netlingo (http://www.netlingo.com) as: “Using
the Internet, and the World Wide Web in particular, to broadcast
information. Unlike typical surfing, which relies on a pull method of
transferring Web pages, Webcasting uses push technologies.”
According to a study conducted by Arbitron New Media and
Northstar Interactive, 70 percent of the Webcast audience clicks for
content information, and while listening to or viewing streaming media,
nearly 60 percent click through for advertising information. The
study also states that approximately half of the Webcast audience buys
online-advertised products and 44 percent click online ads. The majority
of Webcast users tune in from home (63 percent), followed by atwork
users (37 percent). In this chapter, we cover:
• Streaming versus nonstreaming media (also known as rich media)
• Advertising with rich media
• Barriers to acceptance of Webcasting
• Uses of Webcasting
• Prominent Webcasters.
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Streaming versus Nonstreaming Media
Before we explain the marketing implications of Webcasting, or rich
media, it is important to explain some of the terms and what the end
user requires to view them. Webcasting consists primarily of video and
audio. Whatis.com defines rich media as:
Rich media is an Internet advertising term for a Web page ad that
uses advanced technology such as streaming video, downloaded
applets (programs) that interact instantly with the user, and ads
that change when the user’s mouse passes over it. For example:
• An ad for a Hollywood movie that includes a streaming video
sample of a scene from the movie
• A mouse cursor that changes to an image on a particular Web
site if the user requests it
• A standard-size banner ad that includes an inquiry form about
ISDN installation, capturing the user’s filled-in personal information
and telling the user he or she will be contacted by a
company representative—all simply by interacting with an ad
on an online publisher’s Web page.
This section talks about streaming and nonstreaming content, with
most emphasis placed on streaming because it has the highest promotional
potential. What is the difference between streaming and
nonstreaming? To put it simply, streaming is presented as it arrives.
RealAudio files are an example of streaming media. Meanwhile,
nonstreaming requires you to download the entire clip or file before
you can listen to it or view it. AVI, MP3, and MOV file formats are
nonstreaming file formats.
• Video. This category includes both streaming formats (Real
Audio, G2, and Windows Media Player) and nonstreaming video
formats (such as AVI and MOV files). Streaming video is often
sent from prepared files but is usually distributed as a live broadcast
feed. Examples of this include news clips, movie clips, and
online movie presentations.
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Webcasting and Rich Media 375
• Audio. Audio also includes streaming and nonstreaming formats.
Leading providers of streaming audio are RealNetwork’s
RealAudio, Macromedia’s Shockwave, and Microsoft’s Windows
Media Player.
Obviously, streaming video file formats contain an audio element as
well. After all, a movie clip is much more interesting when there is sound
associated with it.
Other popular Webcasting or push technology formats include:
• ASF (Advanced Streaming Format). Designed to store synchronized
multimedia data and deliver it over a large variety of networks
and protocols.
• CDF (Channel Definition Format). Permits Web developers to
push information to users through the use of channels.
Push technologies involve sending information to your target market
across the Internet. Internet users install software on their system
that receives content from the Webcaster. For example, they might receive
the latest sports scores, current weather conditions in 20 cities
around the world, or current headlines. The information is “pushed” to
the client’s system. This is different from “pull” marketing, in which the
client specifically requests content from a Web site by loading it into the
browser.
Technically speaking, e-mail is one of the earliest forms of push technology.
Internet marketers send e-mail messages to individuals in their
target market without permission to do so from each of the recipients.
However, we all know that this is spam. Savvy Internet marketers can
still use e-mail to push their message to potential clients, but they must
have the potential clients’ permission beforehand.
Webcasters can use push technologies much as Internet marketers do
with e-mail marketing campaigns. RealNetworks (http://www.real.com)
has been involved in the Webcasting field for several years. Their RealPlayer
software is a prime example of how to use push technology. The basic
version of the player can be downloaded for free from the RealNetworks
Web site. Active channels have been incorporated into the RealPlayer
application. Clicking on one of the active channels in the “Channels”
menu automatically connects the user to a streaming audio/video presen-
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376 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
tation from the site of one of RealNetworks’ partners. In this way,
RealNetworks assists its partners (ESPN, Fox, ZDNet, etc.) to brand themselves
through the RealPlayer Webcasting software, and RealNetworks
likely receives a healthy sum of money in exchange for this advertising.
The RealPlayer software permits you to subscribe to other channels as
well. Thus, RealNetworks gives users a free application, but the company
profits from RealPlayer by selling advertising space. RealNetworks is the
perfect example of how Webcasting can be used to quickly achieve brand
recognition and earn additional revenue.
Aside from RealNetworks, the following companies also provide
software to allow for the distribution of channels:
• Apple’s QuickTime (http://www.apple.com/quicktime)
• Microsoft Active Channels software (http://www.microsoft.com).
Advertising with Rich Media
Companies can use rich media by purchasing a “commercial” that precedes
an online presentation or audio event, or a company can develop
and use rich media on its own Web site to provide a greater sense of
interactivity, which results in more repeat traffic. For an example of
this, go to Yahoo! Platinum (http://platinum.yahoo.com). Yahoo! Platinum
provides current streaming audio and video footage of almost any
event you could imagine. For instance, you can listen to the commentary
of an entire NBA basketball game. However, just before the game
gets under way, you will be greeted by a 25-second audio advertisement.
Why is this good advertising?
• Rich media advertising leaves a deeper impression on customers
than does a static banner ad.
• Rich media averages higher recall.
• Higher customer recall of rich media makes it easier to brand a
company name or product.
• Rich media has higher click-through rates.
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Webcasting and Rich Media 377
• Rich media is more “likeable.”
Higher Recall
A recent usage study among consumers who had recently switched from
dial-up to high-speed Internet access revealed the following results:
• 93 percent of users download more MP3s than they did when
using a dial-up connection.
• 90 percent download more music and videos.
• 89 percent watch more streaming video.
• 86 percent listen to more streaming audio.
• 79 percent transfer a greater number of large files.
• 78 percent share more photos on-line.
This means that more and more people are likely to remember your
company’s streaming media presentation than a static banner ad, as
they are more apt to view rich media.
Better Branding
It goes without saying that better customer recall leads to better branding.
Creating brand awareness with banner ads is difficult because banner
ads are not very interactive. The combination of sight and sound
possible with rich media advertising makes it much more effective than
a static image or looping animated GIF.
More Click-Throughs
A banner ad incorporating Java or Flash Media will have more than
twice the number of click-throughs than a static banner ad. Static banner
ads average less than one click-through per hundred impressions. If
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378 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
you have a banner ad that actively engages your customer, you can
achieve higher click-through rates and generate more sales leads.
More Likeable
Intel concluded that a nonstreaming interactive banner ad offers a 20
percent potential increase in likeability. People are more likely to interact
with a banner ad that has some sort of game built into it as opposed
to a static image. Therefore, an interactive banner ad has the potential
to attract many people who are not usually inclined to click on banner
ads of any sort. Likewise, a 30-second spot in a streaming multimedia
presentation (e.g., watching the Superbowl on-line) is going to be more
acceptable to a user than is a pop-up banner ad.
The bottom line is that if people like you, they will probably buy
from you. Both steaming and nonstreaming broadband media advertising
increase your chances of making a positive impression on customers.
More Reasons to Use Rich Media Advertising
Given the high recall rates, the cost per branding impression (i.e., the
number of times a customer must view the ad before becoming familiar
with your brand) decreases. This increases your ROI (return on investment)
because you do not have to invest as much in rich media advertising
to get your message across as you would with traditional advertising.
For instance, to brand your company’s name or product using television
advertising could require a substantial financial investment. People
change the channel during commercial breaks, so it is harder to reach
television viewers.
However, when people intentionally subscribe to an Internet channel,
they are viewing and listening to information they are interested in.
Plus, it is more of an effort to switch channels on the Net than while
watching television. Therefore, the user’s tendency to remain “tuned
in” is higher.
Also, the Internet is a worldwide network. Television, magazines,
and other traditional marketing vehicles are more regionalized. Therefore,
a rich media advertisement streaming across the Internet has the
potential to reach a much larger audience.
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Webcasting and Rich Media 379
The Barriers of Webcasting (Rich Media) Acceptance
With every new medium, there are bound to be barriers to its public
acceptance. Webcasting, both streaming and nonstreaming, is no different.
There are six primary obstacles that Webcasting must overcome
before it becomes a publicly acceptable advertising medium.
Cost
The possibilities are there, but so are the costs, and you must be aware
of this. Although the cost is coming down, the cost of developing streaming
media and nonstreaming media still can be considered expensive for
some budgets. Moreover, if you’re looking to advertise on a site that
applies video and audio content, then you must be made aware that
most of the sites that apply this technology are high-budget, high-volume,
and high-bandwidth sites and will likely ask for quite a fee to
advertise.
You must also consider the potential return on investment. We described
earlier how rich media advertising has a higher recall rate than
standard Web advertising. Also, rich media is more cost-effective and
efficient for branding purposes. Therefore, although the initial expense
of producing a rich media advertisement might be quite high, it could
quickly be recovered by the interest and sales the ad generates.
Rich Media Advertising Is Not Accepted by All Sites
Although many sites do not have the resources to offer Webcast advertising
opportunities, a lot of major sites do. Content sites such as
Launch.Yahoo.com and RollingStone.com place ads in front of some
of the videos you can view on their site. These streaming media sites
offer tremendous exposure opportunities for companies that advertise
with them.
There are also sites such as MP3.com (http://www.mp3.com) that
offer free Webcast advertising. On MP3.com, unsigned music artists
can post MP3 versions of their songs for the world to hear. MP3.com is
a high-traffic site as a result of the community of artists they have created,
and the artists themselves benefit from the increased exposure.
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Bandwidth Constraints
Both streaming and nonstreaming media require that users have high
connection speeds in order to experience a Webcast as it is intended. To
view streaming content, you need a plug-in or player of some sort. Popular
applications used to view or hear streaming content include:
• Windows Media Player
• Quicktime
• RealPlayer
• Macromedia Shockwave Player.
It is important to note that the higher the connection speed, the
more convenient the use of streaming content is. If you’re still using a
14.4 Kbps modem, you’re simply not going to get the performance
needed to make it worthwhile. This presents an obstacle to people
with slower Internet connection rates. Also, some people simply do
not wish to download and install the plug-ins necessary to play rich
media files. You will not be able to target your Webcasting advertising
campaign toward these users.
Irritates User
Does Webcasting annoy users? Sure it does. But this is the case only for
people with low bandwidth or less robust machines. Also, some people
despise advertising in any form, so you probably won’t win over any of
these individuals either.
Too Complicated
The software to create rich media content exists and, with a little initiative,
can be learned by anyone. You first should determine if your target
market is likely to be a user of rich media. Learning to create rich media
just requires a little bit of initiative and patience.

Internet Resources for Chapter 22

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I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding e-zines.
For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the Resources section
of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/resources.html.
There you will find additional tips, tools, and techniques.
BestEzines
http://www.bestezines.com/ezines/master.shtml
Directory of e-zines organized by category. A great site to find e-zines to
reach your target market.
The Book of Zines
http://www.zinebook.com
Dynamite site with tons of links to e-zines, advice on developing your
e-zine, reviews, interviews, how-to section, newly noted, and zine tips.
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Ecola Newsstand
http://www.ecola.com
Ecola Newsstand has more than 8,400 magazines, newspapers, and
publications. There are more than 100 categories of magazines from
which to choose.
Ezine-Universe
http://ezine-universe.com
Ezine-Universe is a great directory of e-mail-based e-zines.
InfoJump
http://www.infojump.com
Browse a huge directory of e-zines by category.
List City’s Book of E-zines
http://www.list-city.com/ezines.htm
A list of e-zines organized by category that accept paid advertising as
well as all the details and contact information for each e-zine.
MediaFinder
http://www.mediafinder.com
A national directory of magazines with details on target audience, publisher,
contact, telephone numbers, Web addresses, e-mail addresses,
editorial descriptions, issue frequency, and subscription price. In many
cases, an information request form is attached should you want further
details. Great resource!
Ezine Directory
http://www.ezine-dir.com
The Ezine Directory lists over 2,400 of the best e-mail newsletters available
on the Internet today. Search, browse, or add your e-zine for free!
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23
Web Rings as a Promotion Tool
Web rings provide a different way to organize sites. They are a free
service offered to the Internet community. Web rings arrange sites with
similar content by linking them together in a circle, or a ring. Each link
in the ring is directed to a CGI script on the Web ring’s server that sends
the viewer on to the next site in the ring. There are literally thousands of
rings with subjects such as communications, games, art, real estate, and
so on. If there isn’t a ring suitable for your site, you can create your
own. The types of visitors you receive from participating in the Web
ring will be potential customers who are responsive to the content of
your site and curious about your products or services. In this chapter,
we cover:
• What are Web rings and how do they work?
• What promotion possibilities are available with Web rings?
• How do I participate and what will it cost?
• Where will I find Web rings that work for my company?
• What Web ring resources are available on the Net?
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An Effective Alternative to Search
Engines and Directories
Web rings are a fast-growing service on the Internet, providing one of
the easiest ways for visitors to navigate the Internet. In each of its tens
of thousands of topic-specific rings, member Web sites have linked their
sites together, thus permitting more targeted visitors to reach the joined
sites quickly and easily.
People increasingly are becoming dissatisfied with search engines
and directories as tools to identify specific topic-related sites. Searches
on a specific keyword sometimes yield results that include totally unrelated
sites. For instance, if you were planning a vacation to Mexico and
you wanted to search for resorts in Mexico, the search engine results
would likely include sites only vaguely related to what you were looking
for. The results might include book titles at Amazon.com related to
Mexican travel, personal pages with other people’s experiences traveling
in Mexico complete with pictures from their family vacation, travel
agencies, and tour company sites. The Web ring provides an alternative
to these tools.
Site owners typically trade links with other Web sites to help promote
each other’s sites. The Web ring was developed to enlarge the scope of
link trading. A Web ring joins together many sites with a common topic.
Two of the major Web ring sites are:
• WebRing (http://dir.webring.com/rw)
• RingSurf (http://www.ringsurf.com)
What Are Web Rings?
A Web ring is made up of a number of topic-specific sites that are grouped
together. There are country inn Web rings, Star Trek Web rings, prenatal
care Web rings, BMW Web rings, and remote-sensing Web rings in
the huge list of Web rings that exists today. At WebRing there are several
major categories:
• Business and Finance
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• Computers and Internet
• Cultures and Community
• Entertainment and Arts
• Family and Home
• Games
• Government and Politics
• Health and Wellness
• Hobbies and Crafts
• Music
• Recreation and Sports
• Regional
• Religion and Beliefs
• Relationships and Romance
• Schools and Education
• Science
RingSurf also has many categories:
• Arts
• Automotive
• Business
• Computers
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• Dating
• Food
• Games
• Health
• Home
• Home Pages
• Kids and Teens
• Miscellaneous
• News
• Pets
• Recreation
• Reference
• Regional
• Religion
• Science
• Shopping
• Society
• Sports
• Travel
• United States.
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Each of these major categories has a number of subcategories, and
each of the subcategories has a number of individual rings.
Rings can contain any number of sites. There must be at least three
before the ring is listed in the directories. Generally, the rings contain
between 20 and 200 sites. Some rings are smaller and some are substantially
higher, with close to a thousand sites included.
Each ring was started and is maintained by an individual Web site
owner. Through navigation links found most often at the bottom of member
pages, visitors can travel to all or any of the sites in a ring. They can
move through a ring in either direction, going to the next or previous site,
or listing the next five sites in the ring. Visitors can also jump to a random
site in the ring or survey all the sites that make up the ring.
An extraordinary system, Web rings are entirely open and free of
charge to both visitors and members. As more and more people discover
Web rings, we will see phenomenal growth in this as a preferred
method to surf the net. At the time this edition was written, RingSurf
had 36,964 Web rings with 312,246 member sites.
How Do Web Rings Work?
To surf a ring, all you have to do is use the links at the bottom of the
page in the Web ring block. At the bottom of a Web ring participant’s
pages, you find the Web ring navigation aid. A common Web ring graphic
includes links to the “Next” site in the ring, the “Previous” site in the
ring, or a “Random” site in the ring. You also have the option, in many
cases, to see a list of the “Next 5” sites in the ring or to view the entire
“Index” of the ring’s sites. Once you begin surfing a ring, there is no
clear beginning or end, just a circle of related material. The Web ring
program compensates for sites that are unreachable because they no
longer exist or have server problems. You will always be able to navigate
the ring.
When using a search engine, you are provided with a list of sites,
only some of which are relevant. You visit the sites listed and then,
depending on which browser you are using, you may use your “Back”
button to return to the Results page to make another selection. With a
Web ring this backing out is unnecessary. Once you’ve finished reviewing
a site in the ring, you proceed to the next site that is of interest or
simply surf through the connected sites one by one.
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How to Participate in Web Rings
The first thing to do is find Web rings that are right for your product or
service—those that cater to your target market. You can review the directories
at the WebRing site http://dir.webring.com/rw and also at the
RingSurf site http://www.ringsurf.com.
Once you have found a promising Web ring, you contact the owner
to ask permission to join. See Figure 23.1 for an example of this. The
owner reviews your site to determine your “fit” with the theme. Once
you are accepted, the owner provides you with the required code and
accompanying graphics, which you insert on your page. The ring owner
provides all the required material; you slip it into your HTML file, and
that’s that.
Once the code is on your site, WebRing or RingSurf monitors the
traffic and collects the statistics for your site, as they do for all Web ring
sites. This is beneficial to you because you can see how much traffic you
are getting through the Web ring.
Any Web site owner who feels no existing ring is suitable can apply
to create a new ring. If the application is approved, WebRing or RingSurf
Figure 23.1. This inclusion request was taken from the Foreign Travel Web
Ring to show how easy it is to join a Web ring.
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will provide all the necessary code and instructions. New Web rings are
listed in the directory once they contain at least five sites.
Web Ring Participation Costs
The cost to participate in these Web rings is absolutely nil. No application
fees, no charge for the approval, no charge for the code to be inserted
on your pages, no charge for the increased traffic a Web ring brings.
The Benefits of Web Rings
There are many benefits to both the users of Web rings and the participating
Web sites. Benefits to the user include:
• Web rings provide a great navigation tool when looking for more
information on a specific topic.
• Web rings are easy to use. They provide one of the most efficient
ways to find specific content on the Internet.
• Web rings avoid the duplication found in search engines, where
a site may appear several times in one search. Each site is linked
only once in each Web ring.
• Web rings speed up search time.
• Web rings eliminate sifting through mounds of search engine
results for appropriate sites.
Benefits to participating Web sites include:
• Web ring participation increases the number of targeted visitors
to your Web site.
• The organizers of the Web rings make it easy to monitor how
successful your ring is. Traffic reports and “top rings” statistics
are made available to participants.
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• Web rings drive traffic to your site.
Business Reluctance to Participate in Web Rings
One of the biggest hurdles Web rings face in being adopted by the business
sector is that when you join a ring, you are linking to the competition.
It is likely that this mentality explains why Web rings have been so
popular for personal sites and special-interest groups, but have failed to
catch on in today’s business community. But, again, small businesses
and retail-oriented sites have not shied away from rings. For example,
rings and banner programs are hot marketing strategies for stores that
sell collectibles. This is particularly true for hard-to-find collectibles.
Take the Pez phenomenon: Not being on a Pez Web ring could be a
crucial mistake for vendors. After all, if a customer hits a site and it
doesn’t have a specific Pez, the quest isn’t over—it’s on to the next site.
What better way to get there than via a ring? Your site might just be the
next one.
Lately we have seen growth in the commercial application of Web
rings. There are a few reasons for this:
• A number of articles have appeared in Internet marketing magazines
related to the high volume of traffic through these Web
rings. Businesses have sometimes found that the bulk of the traffic
to their site is coming through the Web ring.
• Other articles talk about the benefits of being conveniently located
near your competition, bringing more traffic for everyone.
Several have likened it to what happens in the real world in
the fast-food industry. When a McDonald’s opens, you quickly
see a Burger King, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, KFC, and Taco Bell all
open up close by. This means more business for everyone.

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all accessible via the Internet. Some of these provide the full version of
their traditional magazine; others are selective about the articles they provide;
and still others provide the previous month’s edition.
Web-Based E-zines
There are Web-based e-zines that have only an online presence (Figure
22.2). These e-zines are accessed through their Web sites by browsing
from page to page. They have the look and feel of a traditional magazine.
They include lots of glossy pictures and advertisements. Usually
there is no charge to view the Web-based e-zines, but some do charge a
subscription fee. These Web-based e-zines tend to be as graphically pleasing
as offline magazines.
E-mail E-zines
Although e-mail e-zines can come as text or HTML, these days we are
seeing more and more HTML as they get a much higher readership and
Figure 22.2. Vermont Living is a Web-based e-zine.
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most e-mail viewers have no problem displaying HTML e-mails, which
look like a Web page. Today we are seeing a blur between newsletters
and e-mail e-zines as most newsletters now are sent as HTML and most
are content-rich on a specific subject.
E-mail-based e-zines tend to be very content-rich and, as such, tend
to be more of a target-marketing mechanism. E-mail e-zines tend to be
several screens in length with one main or several short articles and,
sometimes, classified advertising. The benchmark is that these e-zines
should be able to be read in about five minutes. Circulation is often in
the thousands. Most run weekly or biweekly editions. Most e-zines are
free to subscribers.
People interested in the subject have taken the time to subscribe and
ask to receive the information directly in their e-mail box. Once you
have found an e-zine that caters to your target market, the e-zine could
be a valuable marketing vehicle.
Every subscriber to an e-mail-based e-zine has access to the Internet.
These people regularly receive and send e-mail and quite likely surf the
Net. If you advertise in this type of medium and place your Internet
address in the ad, your prospective customer is not more than a couple
of clicks away from your site.
People subscribe because they are interested. Even if they don’t read
it immediately when it is received, they usually read it eventually. Otherwise,
they would not have subscribed. Subscribers will see your URL
and product advertisements. For this reason, e-mail e-zines are a great
marketing tool.
Using E-zines as Marketing Tools
Online publications are superior marketing tools for a number of reasons.
They can be used in a number of ways to increase the traffic to
your Web site. You can:
• Advertise directly
• Be a sponsor
• Submit articles
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• Send press releases
• Start your own.
Finding Appropriate E-zines for Your Marketing Effort
There are many locations on-line to find lists and links to both Webbased
and e-mail e-zines. A number of these resources are listed in the
Internet Resources section at the end of this chapter.
You evaluate an e-zine’s marketing potential by its audience, reach,
and effectiveness. The most important element of choosing an e-zine is
to find one that reaches your target market. E-zine ads are effective
because there is a high correlation between the target customer and the
magazine’s subscribers. If you advertise in an e-zine simply because it
has the largest subscriber rate, you will probably be disappointed unless
your products or services have mass-market appeal.
You should review a number of the e-zine-listing sites, such as the
one shown in Figure 22.3. Some of these sites have keyword search
Figure 22.3. eZINESearch.com provides a searchable directory of e-zines.
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capabilities. Others have their e-zines listed by category. Once you have
a list of e-zines you feel fit well with your marketing objectives, you
should subscribe and begin reviewing these e-zines.
The Multiple Advantages of E-zine Advertising
One of the major advantages of e-zine advertising is the lifespan of your
ads. E-zines that are delivered to e-mail addresses are read by the recipient
and sometimes saved for future reference. Many e-zines archive their
issues with the ads intact. Advertisers have received responses to ads
that are several months old!
When you place an ad in an e-zine, you see it in a relatively short
period of time, perhaps the next day or the next week depending on
how often the e-zine is published. Most traditional magazines close out
their ad space months before the issue is available on the newsstand.
Your ad in an e-zine is also much more likely to be noticed because
there are so few of them. In a traditional magazine every second page is
an ad, whereas e-zines have a much greater focus on content and far
fewer ads.
When your ad appears in an e-zine, your customer is just a click
away because your ad is usually hyperlinked to your Web site. This
brings your customer that much closer to being able to purchase your
products or services.
Another advantage of e-zine advertising is that e-zines are often shared
with friends and associates. Most e-zines use viral marketing effectively,
encouraging readers to send a copy to a friend. Your ad might be passed
around a number of times after it first enters the mailbox of the subscriber.
You are being charged for the ad based on the number of e-mail
subscribers. Therefore, the extra viewers of your ad cost you nothing.
One of the most tangible advantages of e-zine advertising is the relatively
low cost due, in part, to the low overhead for development, production,
and delivery. E-zines need to fill all of their available space. If
an e-zine advertising section has empty spaces, the publisher might be
willing to negotiate. Some will even barter with you—advertising space
at a discounted price in exchange for their e-zine promotion on your
Web site.
E-zines provide a very targeted advertising medium. People subscribe
to various e-zines because they have a genuine interest in the topics
covered. This provides a major advantage over other advertising medi-
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ums. E-zine ads have been shown to have very high response rates due
to their targeted nature.
Because they are distributed via the Internet, e-zines reach a far wider
audience geographically than most traditional magazines. It is not uncommon
for an e-zine to have subscribers from all around the world.
There are thousands of e-zines out there related to every topic imaginable.
Most e-zines have thousands of subscribers. When you couple
the low cost to advertise in these e-zines and the many e-zines that might
reach your target market, it is no wonder many companies are allocating
more and more of their advertising budgets to online activities.
Guidelines for Your Advertising
Once you have found e-zines that reach your target market, you should
consider a number of other factors before you make a final decision on
placing your ad.
• Check the ads displayed in the e-zine for repetition. If advertisers
have not advertised more than once, then they probably did
not see very positive results.
• Respond to some of the ads and ask the advertisers what their
experiences were with advertising in that particular e-zine. Be sure
to tell them who you are and why you are contacting them. If you
are up front, they will probably be receptive to your inquiry.
• Talk to the e-zine publisher and ask questions (e.g., how many
subscribers there are). Ask what other advertisers have had to
say about their results. Find out what types of ads they accept
and if there are any restrictions. Check to see if the publisher
has a policy of never running competing ads. Maybe the e-zine
has a set of advertising policies that you can receive via e-mail.
• Find out if the publisher provides tracking information and, if
so, what specific reports you will have access to.
• Find out if your ad can have a hyperlink to your Web site. If the
e-zine allows hyperlinks, make sure you link to an effective
page—one that is a continuation of the advertisement or a page
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that provides details on the item you were advertising. Provide a
link to the order form from this page to assist the transaction.
• In some cases e-zines have an editorial calendar available to assist
you with the timing of your ad. The editorial calendar will
tell you what articles will be included in upcoming issues. If an
upcoming issue will have an article relating to your type of product
or service, you could choose to advertise in that issue. You
might contact the editor regarding a product review or submit
an article relevant to the issue topics.
• Make sure that the advertising rates are reasonable based on the
number of subscribers, and ask yourself if you can afford it.
Find out the “open” rate, or the rate charged for advertising
once in the e-zine. Ask what the rate is for multiple placements.
If you are not in a position to pay for the advertising now, ask if
there are other arrangements that could be made. For example,
the publisher might accept a link on your Web site in exchange
for the ad.
• Develop your ads with your target customer in mind. They should
attract your best prospects. Wherever possible, you should link
to your site or provide an e-mail link to the right individual
within your organization.
• Develop a mechanism to track advertising responses. You could
use different e-mail accounts for different ads to determine which
ads are bringing you the responses. You can also use different
URLs to point viewers to different pages within your site. If you
have a good traffic-analysis package, you can track the increase
in visitors as a result of your ad.
• Make sure you are versed in the publication’s advertising deadlines
and ad format preferences.
Providing Articles and News Releases to E-zines
Besides advertising, a number of other marketing opportunities can be
explored with e-zines. Once you have found the e-zines that cater to
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Increasing Traffic through Online Publications 357
your target market, these e-zines could be fruitful recipients for your
news releases. Refer to Chapter 21 for recommendations on news release
development and distribution. The editors might also accept articles
of interest to their readers. You might be able to incorporate
information on your products and services in an interesting article that
would fit the editor’s guidelines.
There are many e-zines looking for great content. If you can write
articles for them that provide great content for their readers and at the
same time provide a little exposure for you, it’s a real win–win situation.
You’ll want to target those e-zines that have the same target market
you do and have a broad subscriber base. You’ll want to make sure
the e-zine includes a resource box at the end of the article crediting you
as the author and providing a hyperlink to your Web site or your e-mail
address. Having articles published enhances your reputation as an expert,
and people like to buy products and services from people who are
experts in their field. You might see if you can be a contributing editor
or have a regular column or feature in their e-zine.
Besides sending your articles directly to targeted e-zines, you can
also submit them to “article banks” on-line. Article banks are online
resource sites for e-zine publishers. E-zine publishers search through
these banks for appropriate articles for their e-zine and, if they use one,
they include the resource box of the author.
Reasons You Might Start Your Own E-zine
You can start your own e-zine. Today, this is relatively easy. There are lots
of resources on-line regarding e-zine development and administration.
Don’t make this decision without much thought, though, as you can damage
your reputation if you don’t deliver consistent, valuable content.
There are a multitude of reasons that you should consider developing
and distributing your own e-zine. E-zines can be an extremely effective
online marketing tool for the following reasons:
• You become established as an “expert.” By providing your readers
with valuable articles related to your area of expertise, you
become, in their eyes, a valued and trusted expert.
• You establish trust. The first time someone visits your Web site,
he or she has no idea who you are, how capable you are, or how
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professional you are. Sure, visitors get an impression from the
look and feel and content of your site, but are they ready to do
business with you? By providing them with free, valuable content
over a period of time, you earn your visitors’ trust, and they
are more likely to turn to you when they need the type of product
or service you provide.
• You generate significant traffic to your Web site. Your e-zine
should always reference and provide a hyperlink to something
available from your Web site. Once your visitor links through,
there should be elements that encourage him to stay awhile and
visit a number of pages on your site. The more often people visit
your site, the more likely they are to do business with you.
• You build loyalty. Relationship marketing is what it’s all about
on the Web. You build relationships over time, and your e-zine
will help you do just that. Your subscribers receive something
free from you every month. Whom are they going to do business
with when they have a need for your product or service?
People prefer to spend their money with businesses they know
and trust.
• You stay current with your customers and potential customers.
When you are in front of your subscribers every month, you’re
not too easy to forget. You can keep them up to date on what’s
new with your company and your products and services, or
what’s new in your area of expertise.
• You grow your database. See Chapter 14 for tips on how to
build your database.
Developing Your Own E-zine
If you do start your own e-zine, you should spend sufficient time planning
and testing before you publish to ensure that you do it right. You
don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, and you want
your readers to subscribe and tell others about the great e-zine they
found. You want them to be excited to read your e-zine every time it is
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delivered to their e-mail box. The following tips will help you in your
e-mail-based e-zine planning and preparation:
• Provide great content. This goes without saying. If you have
content that people want to read, they will remain subscribers.
Don’t think that shameless self-promotion is great content; your
target audience certainly won’t. As a rough guide, make sure
your e-zine is 80 percent rich content and no more than 20 percent
promotion and ads. Your e-zine should be full of what your
target market considers useful information.
• You should keep length a consideration because you want your
e-zine to be read and not put aside for later because it is always
too long to read quickly. In this case, less is more. Subscribers
should be able to read your e-zine in five minutes or less. If you
do have a lengthy article, you might give a synopsis in the e-zine
with a hyperlink to more detail on your Web site.
• Limit your content to four or five dynamite articles for an e-mailbased
e-zine. Provide a brief table of contents at the beginning
of the e-zine. Keep the copy short and to the point.
• Keep your line length under 60 characters including spaces to
avoid word-wrap issues.
• Encourage your readers to send a copy to others they feel might
be interested in your great content. Make sure you provide subscribing
instructions as well for those who receive these forwarded
copies (Figure 22.4). You should also provide instructions
on how to opt out, or unsubscribe.
• Test your e-zine with different e-mail programs to ensure that
your e-zine looks the way you designed it no matter which e-mail
program your reader uses. Send test copies to friends with different
e-mail readers such as Outlook Express, Netscape Mail,
Pegasus Mail, and Eudora. See how it looks, make sure that
word-wrap is not an issue, and make sure the hyperlinks work.
• Keep your subscriber addresses private and let subscribers know
your privacy policy.
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As the word about your e-zine spreads, you will have a large community
of people who fit your target market reading it.
Once you have your own e-zine, you’ll have to:
• Promote it to your target market through newsgroups, mail lists,
your Web site, and your e-mail signature file. If you do promote
your e-zine in newsgroups and mail lists, be sure it is appropriate
to advertise your e-zine in a given newsgroup or mail list
before you post. You do not want to be accused of spamming.
However, promote your e-zine shamelessly on your site (let people
subscribe to the e-zine on your site) and in your signature file.
• Provide an opportunity for subscribers to let others know. In
your online e-zine, have a form that allows subscribers to e-mail
a copy of the e-zine to their friends and colleagues. Use a call-toaction
statement such as “Do you know someone who might be
interested in this e-zine? Click here to send them a copy.” This is
a great way to pick up additional subscribers because some of
Figure 22.4. Encourage readers to send a copy of your e-zine to a friend and
provide subscribe instructions for those who receive forwarded copies.
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the non-subscribers who read your e-zine might then become
subscribers if your content is interesting to them.
• Make it easy for people to subscribe to your e-zine. Provide
clear subscription instructions in each e-mail version of your
e-zine and on the online version. Have a form handy on your
site to collect e-mail addresses from people who wish to subscribe.
Always ask for the first name so that you can personalize
your e-zine.
• Provide an archive of past issues on your Web site so that visitors
can sample your wares before subscribing. Make sure you provide
an option for visitors to subscribe from that page as well.
• Don’t provide your list of subscribers to anyone. This protects
your subscribers’ privacy and keeps your list spam-free. Thus,
when you mail your e-zine, use the BCC feature or use a specialized
e-mail program that hides all the recipients’ addresses so
the entire list is not compromised. People will not be happy if
they start receiving spam as a result of your e-zine.

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Maximizing Media Relations 341
send your news release as an attachment. You don’t know which platform
or word-processing program the reporter is using. You might be
using Microsoft Word 2004 on a PC, but the reporter could be using an
incompatible program on a Mac and will not be able to open the file.
There could also be problems downloading, which would prevent your
release from being read. The person on the receiving end of your e-mail
could be using an old computer with a slow dial-up connection, so what
might take you two minutes to transfer might take the recipient 20 minutes
or two hours to download. In addition, you may be using a PC
platform but the reporter may be using a MacOS-based computer. Someone
who spends 20 minutes or longer downloading your e-mail only to
find that it’s useless won’t be impressed—great start to getting the journalist
to do a positive story on you!
Make sure the subject line of your e-mail is compelling. Journalists
can easily delete e-mailed releases unopened, and quite often they do,
because journalists receive large volumes of these daily. Make sure your
e-mail is clear and concise. Get to the point with the first sentence. If
you don’t grab the reader’s attention at the beginning of the release, the
recipient might not keep reading to find out what your news is.
It’s important to be able to send news release information in digital
format (as a file rather than hard copy). With a quick copy-and-paste,
the journalist would then have the “first draft” of the story (Figure
21.7). You have made it easy for him or her to then edit the draft and
have a story quickly. Everybody loves to save time, and nearly all of
these journalists are under tight deadlines.
What Is Considered Newsworthy
Your news release has to contain newsworthy information for it to be
published. One of the main concerns for public relations representatives
is figuring out what is considered newsworthy and what isn’t. You
have to have a catch, and, if possible, it should appeal to some sort of
emotion. Here is a list of newsworthy items:
• A merger or partnership between your company and another
• A free service or resource offered by your company to the general
public
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• A survey or forum that your company is holding to discuss an
already hot news topic
• The appearance of a celebrity at a company event or upcoming
online promotions
• Your participation in a trade show
• The findings of a report your company has conducted
• A breakthrough in technology resulting in a significant new consumer
product
• The development of new strategic alliances or partnerships
• A charitable contribution by your company
• A milestone anniversary that your company is celebrating
• An award presented by your company
Figure 21.7. When a news release is provided in digital format, it can easily
be copied and pasted into another document.
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• Holiday event tie-ins
• Tips, articles, or advice
• Stories with a human interest element.
What Isn’t Considered Newsworthy
Some things that aren’t news to the general public might be news to
targeted trade magazines and journals. Use your own judgment when
trying to determine if your news release is news or just an excuse to get
your company’s name in print. If your release focuses on any of the
following, it is probably not newsworthy enough to publish.
The launch of a new Web site has not been news for a number of
years now. Unless the site is based on a breakthrough in Internet technology
or serves the public interest in an innovative way, you won’t get
a mention in the news. Nor is a new feature or change to your Web site
newsworthy information. Even if your site has undergone a major overhaul,
this is not news to the general public.
Launching a new product is not newsworthy unless the product represents
a significant breakthrough in some area. The upgrade of an old
product simply won’t cut it.
Preparing Your News and Media Kits
Your press kit is an essential item at news conferences and interviews.
This kit can also be sent to reporters when they request more information
about a news release you have sent to them. Your press kit should
start with a folder displaying your company logo and basic contact information.
The folder should have pockets inside so that different sheets
of information can be inserted. The following items should be included
in your press kit:
• A news release outlining the newsworthy event
• A company history
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• Brochures
• Other articles written about your company
• Pictures
• Background information on key players
• FAQs and answers to anticipated questions
• Quotes from key individuals
• Contact information
• Business card.
Developing an Online Media Center for Public Relations
If publicity is a significant part of your public relations strategy, you
should consider developing an online media center as part of your site
(see Figure 21.8). The media center should be easily accessible from
your navigation bar. It would include all the components a journalist
needs when doing a story on your company. Journalists should be able
to find pictures to include in the story and all the information necessary
to do their due diligence. They should be able to send a question to the
appropriate media contact within the organization with one click. The
media center should include:
• A chronology of news releases distributed by the company.
• The company’s history and background information.
• An electronic brochure.
• Links to other articles written about your company.
• Links to story ideas for future articles.
• Links to pictures of a related product or products. Perhaps have
a gallery where journalists can choose the pictures they want to
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include in their story. The TIFF (Tag Image File Format) is preferred
by journalists for crispness and clarity and works best for
desktop-publishing applications. The file will have a .tiff or .tif
extension. The .tif format is not supported by Web browsers, so
you can make it easy for journalists to acquire the photos by
placing thumbnails on your Web site and then having an
autoresponder send them the specific photos they request in the
preferred format. There are also great online media tools available
such as CleanPix (http://www.cleanpix.com).
• Background information on key company personnel, along with
their pictures, bios, and quotes.
• A link to your company’s media contact and contact information.
• FAQs and answers to anticipated questions.
By having a media center on your site, you are sending a clear message
to the journalist. You are saying, “You’re important to me! I want
to provide you with everything you need to quickly and easily complete
your story on our company.” With the media center you are providing
Figure 21.8. Squaw Valley provides a great media center on its site complete
with a Story Ideas section readily available to the press.
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all the information, in a format journalists can use, to enable them to do
the story no matter what time they choose to do it.
You will want to encourage permission marketing by offering
visitors the opportunity to be notified to receive your news releases
“hot off the press.” Place a “Click here to receive notification of our
news releases” link on your Web site. In addition, make it easy for
visitors to send a copy of your news release to a friend. Sometimes
journalists work on stories together, so give the journalist the option
to send the news release to a colleague or even to her editor through
viral marketing.
Internet Resources for Chapter 21
I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding news
releases. For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the Resources
section of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/
resources.html. There you will find additional tips, tools, and techniques.
News Releases
Care & Feeding of the Press
http://www.netpress.org/careandfeeding.html
Journalists’ manifesto for how PR people should work with the media.
Xpress Press—E-mail News Release Information
http://www.xpresspress.com/PRnotes.html
Information on how to write and format a news release to be distributed
by e-mail.
Where to Submit Your News Releases
Businesswire
http://www.businesswire.com
This news release distribution service provides a wide range of services
and has several showcases.
Click Press Direct
http://www.ideasiteforbusiness.com/clickpressfree.cfm
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News release contact list of the nation’s top business-related newspapers
and magazines. It has a subscription service that allows access to a
list of 8,176 publications you can e-mail your press releases to.
Emailwire.com
http://www.emailwire.com
Submit your news releases to more than 300,000 business owners, business
executives, individual investors, and consumers and to 27,000 journalists,
editors, publishers, and syndicators.
Internet Media Fax
http://www.imediafax.com
Custom online news-distribution service that creates targeted media lists
“on the fly.”
Internet News Bureau Press Release Service
http://www.newsbureau.com
For a fee, you can distribute your news release to thousands of online
media outlets here. It also links to a number of good PR resources.
Market Wire
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/home http://www1.internetwire.com
The Market Wire offers online news release distribution via e-mail.
Partyline
http://www.partylinepublishing.com
The standard media placement newsletter for the public relations trade.
PR Newswire Home Page
http://www.prnewswire.com
A leading source for worldwide corporate media, business, the financial
community, and the individual investor.
PR Web
http://www.prweb.com
A dynamite site that distributes news releases but provides an extensive
list of PR resources as well.
WebWire.com
http://www.webwire.com
WebWire is a community of PR professionals, corporate communicators,
and individuals who deliver qualified and professional press re-
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leases to Web-based emerging and conventional media. Full access to
WebWire is provided to the media at no cost, and many aspects of
WebWire are free of charge for PR professionals, corporate communicators,
and individuals. There is a nominal charge for press release submissions
and associated distribution.
Xpress Press News Release Distribution Service
http://www.xpresspress.com
News releases delivered electronically by e-mail to 10,000 journalists
and media members in more than 73 countries.
Canada News Wire
http://www.newswire.ca
Canada NewsWire is Canada’s number one resource for time-critical
news and information from more than 10,000 sources coast to coast
and around the world. Public companies, associations, unions,
nonprofits, municipal, provincial and federal governments all rely on
CNW’s services and networks to effectively send their messages to newsrooms,
the financial community, and the public.
CMP Media LLC
http://www.cmp.com
CMP Media is a leading integrated media company providing essential
information and marketing services to the technology and healthcare
industries.
E.Release
http://www.ereleases.com/index.html
E.Release specializes in press release writing and distribution services,
distributing press releases on-line to subscribing journalists. Unlike other
press release services, they will post all press releases to PR Newswire
and to targeted media in your industry.
News Release Distribution Software
PRWizard
http://www.prwizard.com
PRWizard is a powerful, automated news release submission software
package that lets you effortlessly broadcast your news release to almost
28,000 targeted media contacts.
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349
22
Increasing Traffic through
Online Publications
More than 60 percent of Internet users frequently read
online publications, or e-zines. You can identify marketing
opportunities by searching for and reading e-zines
that are relevant to your business. In this chapter, we
cover:
• What electronic magazines are
• Finding online sites on which to advertise or arrange links
• How to find appropriate e-zines for marketing purposes
• Submitting articles to e-zines
• Advertising in e-zines
• E-zine resources on-line.
e-zines
Electronic
magazines.
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Appealing to Magazine Subscribers on the Net
Many Web users frequently read e-zines. This is one of the reasons they
are among the most popular marketing tools on the Internet. Five years
ago there were a few hundred e-zines in publication. Now there are thousands
of e-zines dedicated to a wide variety of topics such as travel, business
opportunities, food, child care—you name it. For any topic you are
interested in, there quite likely are several e-zines dedicated to it.
What Exactly Are E-zines?
E-zines, or electronic magazines, are the online version of magazines.
They are content-rich and contain information regarding a certain topic
in the form of magazine articles and features. Many e-zines display ads
as well. Some e-zines are Web-site-based and others are e-mail-based.
Many offline magazines provide a version on-line as well.

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Headline
Your headline is critically important. If you get it right, it will attract
the attention you are looking for. Your headline should be powerful,
summarizing your message and making the reader want to continue
reading. Keep the headline short—less than ten words.
City and Date
Name the city you are reporting from and the date you wrote the news
release.
The Body
Your first sentence within the body of the news release should sum up
your headline and immediately inform the reader why this is newsworthy.
With the number of news releases reporters receive, if you don’t
grab their attention immediately they won’t read your release. Begin by
listing all of the most relevant information first, leaving the supporting
information last.
Ask yourself the five W’s (who, what, where, when, and why) and
answer them up front. Write the news release just as if you were writing
a newspaper article for publication. Include some quotes from key individuals
in your company and any other relevant outside sources that
are credible. If there are any statistics that support your main message,
include them as well, providing references.
Your last paragraph should be a short company description.
The Close
If your release is two pages long, center the word “more” at the bottom
of the first page. To end your release, center the word “end” at the end
of your message. A sample news release is shown in Figure 21.1.
Advantages of Interactive News Releases
Online news releases take the same standard format as offline news
releases, but the online news release can be interactive, with links to a
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variety of interesting information that supports your message. When
your news release is provided by e-mail and you provide a hypertext
link in that e-mail, the journalist is just a click away from accessing all
the information he or she needs to complete the story. Helpful links to
include in your interactive news releases are:
• A link to the e-mail address of the media contact person in your
organization so that with the click of the mouse a journalist can
ask a question via e-mail.
• A link to the company Web site so that the journalist can quickly
and easily access additional information as part of his or her
due diligence or can find required information.
• Links to articles that have been written about the company and
related issues, both on the corporate Web site and on other sites.
• Links to graphics and pictures for illustration. If your story relates
to a product, have a link to a graphic that can be used.
Figure 21.1. This press release from Destination Hotels & Resorts contains
several hypertext links, enabling a journalist to quickly access additional
information and perform due diligence.
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• Links to key corporate players, their biographies, their photos,
and possibly some quotes. Journalists usually include quotes in
their stories.
• A link to a FAQ section where you can have frequently asked
questions and a few that you wish were frequently asked.
Figure 21.2 is an example of an online news release.
Sending News Releases on Your Own
versus Using a Distribution Service
When distributing news releases on your own, you save the money it
would cost to have a service do it. You can also be more targeted in
your efforts than a service would be. Some services’ lists could be outdated
or incomplete. Their lists of reporters and editors might not be
comprehensive and might not have been updated. On the other hand,
some services could get your news release taken more seriously. A re-
Figure 21.2. This news release from Apple.com contains textual URLs within
the release.
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porter who recognizes the name of the service might be more receptive
than if the release were to come from an unknown company. Using a
service is bound to save you a lot of time.
If you decide to send your news releases on your own, you have to
build a list of journalists. When reading publications, look for the names
of reporters and find out their contact information. If you don’t know
whom to send a news release to at any publication, you can always call
and ask for the name of the appropriate editor. Subscribe to a personalized
news service to receive articles about your industry. This is a great
way to find the names of journalists who might be interested in what
you have to say.
There are a number of online resources to assist you in building
your news-distribution list, such as the one shown in Figure 21.3.
Mediafinder (http://www.mediafinder.com) is a Web site that might be
useful. It provides access to a database of thousands of media outlets
including magazines, journals, newspapers, newsletters, and catalogues.
MediaMap (http://www.mediamap.com) is a public relations resource
that has detailed profiles on more than 20,000 media contacts, including
their phone numbers, fax numbers, e-mail addresses, and work pref-
Figure 21.3. Use Mediafinder.com to locate appropriate magazines, journals,
newspapers, newsletters, and catalogs.
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erences (Figure 21.4). They also have editorial calendars that tell you
who will be writing a scheduled story, what the topic of the story is, and
when it will be written.
There are a number of news release distribution services on-line
(Figures 21.5 and 21.6). Several of them are listed in the Internet Resources
section at the end of this chapter.
Golden Tips for News Release Distribution
When distributing your news releases, don’t send them to the news desk
unaddressed. Know which editor handles the type of news in your release,
and address the news release to that person. Don’t send the news
release to more than one editor in any organization unless there is more
than one angle to the information in the news release. Call ahead, if
possible, to discuss and solicit the editor’s interest in your news release
before sending it. Also, follow up with a phone call a few days later to
make sure that it was received and to answer any questions. Be sure to
review editorial calendars of publications in your industry to see if there
are upcoming articles where your story could make a contribution.
Figure 21.4. MediaMap is a software and media information company.
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Figure 21.5. Internet News Bureau is an e-mail news release service company
that provides distribution and also the writing of e-mail news releases.
Figure 21.6. You can submit your news release to PRWeb.
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News Release Timing and Deadlines
One of the most important things to remember when sending a news
release or advisory is the deadline. Know how far in advance you should
send your information for each of the media. Here are some time guidelines
for your news release distribution.
Monthly Magazines
For monthly magazines, you should submit your news releases at least
two to three months before the issue you want it to appear in. Magazines
are planned far in advance, because it often takes a number of
weeks to have the magazine printed and in subscribers’ mailboxes.
Daily Newspapers
It is a good idea to have your news release arrive on the editor’s desk at
least several weeks in advance. If it concerns a special holiday, you should
send it even earlier.
TV and Radio
When submitting news releases to TV and radio, remember that you
might be asked to appear on a show as a guest. Be prepared for this
before you submit the release. TV and radio move very quickly; a story
that has been given to the news director in the morning might appear on
that evening’s news.
Formatting Your E-mail News Release
Your news releases can be e-mailed. Some reporters prefer e-mailed releases;
others say they prefer mailed or faxed releases. Check the
reporter’s preference before you send your news release. If you e-mail
your news releases, make sure that your e-mails are formatted properly.
Refer to Chapter 10 for guidelines on how to create effective e-mail
messages.
Keep your e-mailed news releases to one or two pages with short
paragraphs. It is best to insert the news release in the e-mail.

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Considerations When Purchasing Your Banner Ad
Before you sign on the dotted line to purchase banner advertising, there
are a few things you should consider:
• How closely aligned is the target market of the site you want to
advertise on to yours?
• How many sites are there like the one you are considering advertising
on? Are there other sites you could use to reach the
same audience?
• What banner sizes are allowed? Generally, the larger the banner,
the more it costs.
• How many ads are on each page? The more ads on a page, the
lower the click-through rate for any particular ad on that page.
Generally, the more ads on a page, the lower the price per ad.
• What banner rotation system is being used? Is there a comprehensive
program that automatically profiles the visitors and provides
the best banner? The more targeted the audience, the more
expensive the ad; these profiling systems can provide ads to a
very targeted audience.
• What are the site’s competitors charging?
• Does the site have a sliding-scale ad rate?
Make Sure Visitors Can See Your Banner
A major thing that is often overlooked is the fact that some people still
surf the Internet with their graphics turned off. Not a big deal, right?
What if you purchased a banner ad? They are not going to see it, so
how could they click through? An easy way to make sure that the viewer
still knows that your banner is there is to attach an Alt tag to your
banner. An Alt tag is a small piece of HTML code that is added to a
Web site. It tells the browser what is supposed to be displayed if the
graphic cannot be viewed. It is here that you should develop a clever tag
line that still entices the viewer to click through to your Web site. Re-
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member that it is important to include an Alt tag on all of the graphics
on your Web site.
Making It Easy with Online Advertising Networks
If your objective is to reach a large number of users through a wide
variety of sites, Internet ad networks could be right for you. Ad networks
manage the banner advertising real estate on a wide range of
different Web sites that people look at every day. If you are going to join
an ad network, you are known as an advertiser. You supply your banners
to the ad network and determine how you want it to promote you.
ValueClick (http://www.valueclick.com) is an example of a popular ad
network (see Figure 20.7). ValueClick has 6,000 Web sites in its network
and is emerging as an ad network leader. It can target a specific
industry of your choice or advertise your banner to a mass audience.
For a more targeted audience, your CPM would be higher. Even though
you have to pay a little more initially, it saves you in the long run.
The benefit of joining an ad network is that the network not only
targets your audience, it also provides you with real-time reports that
Figure 20.7. ValueClick is a large ad network offering advertisers the opportunity
to target their audience using ValueClick’s network.
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indicate the success of your banner ads. This allows you to evaluate the
success of your current banner ad campaign and offers you the chance
to change your marketing strategy if you are not happy with your results.
Maybe you want to take a different approach, or maybe a different
banner design might work better for you. Whatever it might be, the
data that the ad network can provide you with is beneficial to determining
the strength of your banner ad campaign.
You can also join an ad network as a publisher. Publishers are the
Web sites that banners are placed on. If you have a Web site and would
like to make some additional online revenue from your site, you can
join an ad network, which will place banner ads on your site and pay
you for the usage of this space. Very similar to an affiliate program, or
banner exchange, by joining an ad network you can dramatically increase
your online revenue. A detailed list of ad networks is listed in the
Internet Resources section at the end of this chapter.
Bartering for Mutual Benefits with Banner Trading
Using this technique requires you to barter with other Web sites to trade
banners with their sites. If you are browsing the Internet and find a site
that you think appeals to your target market, then ask for a trade. Send
the Web master an e-mail outlining your proposition. Include the reason
you think it would be mutually beneficial, a description of your site,
where you would place that site’s banner on your site, and where you
think your banner might go on its site.
When you make arrangements like this, be sure to monitor the results.
If the other site has low traffic, then more visitors could be leaving
your site through its banner than are being attracted. Also, check the
other site regularly to make sure that your banners are still being displayed
for the duration agreed upon.
Tips for Succeeding with Classified Ads
Classified ads are also displayed on various Web sites. Some sites offer
to display classified ads for free; others charge a small fee. Here are
some tips for creating effective classified ads:
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• Headlines. The headline of your ad is very important. The subject
line determines how many people read the rest of your ad. Look
at the subject lines of other ads and see what attracts your eye.
• Entice. Use your classified ad to get people to request more information,
not to make immediate reservations. You can then
send them a personalized letter outlining all of the information
and make a great pitch to attract an order.
• Be Friendly. Your classified ad shouldn’t be formal and businesslike.
Make your ad light and friendly.
• Call to Action. Do not only offer information about what you
are selling. Call the reader to action—for instance, to order now!
• Do Some Tests. Run a number of different ads and use a different
e-mail address for each one. This way you can determine which
ad receives the most responses. You can then run the best ad in a
number of places to find out which place gets the biggest response.
• Keep a Record. Keep records of your responses so that you know
which ads were the most successful.
Form Lasting Advertising with Sponsorships
Sponsorships are another form of advertising that usually involve strong,
long-lasting relationships between the sponsors and the owners of the
sites. Sponsors might donate money, Web development, Web hosting,
Web site maintenance, or other products and services to Web site owners
in this mutually beneficial relationship. By sponsoring Web sites on
the Internet, you can achieve great exposure for your site. People appreciate
sponsorships and look at banner ads that are from a sponsor. The
benefits of sponsorships on the Internet are that you can target a specific
audience, you usually get first call on banner ad placement, and
you show your target market that you care about their interest. Overall,
by sponsoring sites on the Internet, you have the opportunity to get
directly in the face of your target market.
There are a number of ways in which you can advertise on-line
through sponsorships. The following is a list of the more common forms
of online sponsorship:
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• E-Zines and Newsletters. An example of this would be Nike
sponsoring a Golf Digest e-zine.
• Content Sites. An example would be DuPont sponsoring a
NASCAR racing Web site.
• Online Chat Sessions. An example would be CDNow sponsoring
a chat on the Ultimate Band List.
• Events. An example would be a search engine such as AltaVista
or Google sponsoring a seminar on search engine strategy.
Commercial Links
Another form of online advertising is commercial links. A number of
targeted sites provide lengthy lists of URLs related to a specific topic.
See Chapter 18 on Meta-Indexes. These sites often provide your listing
for free but charge a fee to have a hypertext link activated from
their site to yours. There are also Web sites where you can be listed if
you don’t have a Web site and would prefer to have only your business
name and phone number or e-mail address listed. These are great sites,
especially because they are targeted toward your demographic group.
An example of this would be Franchise Solutions (http://www.
franchisesolutions.com). This site (Figure 20.8) has a database of franchise
and business opportunities targeted toward entrepreneurs wanting
to open their own business. If you are a franchiser and are interested
in expanding your business, you would want to have a link on this
Web site because your target market visits sites like this.
Sponsoring a Mailing List
Another online advertising opportunity is presented by mailing lists.
Mailing lists provide a much targeted advertising vehicle. Mailing list
subscribers are all interested in the list topic and are therefore potential
clients, if you select the mailing list carefully. The rates for sponsoring
lists are quite low. The cost would be determined on a
price-per-reader basis and is usually between 1 and 10 cents per reader.
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Subscribe to the lists that appeal to your target market and read the
FAQ files to determine whether advertising or sponsorship opportunities
exist for each mailing list. If the mailing list allows sponsorship,
contact the mailing list administrator to inquire about the cost of sponsoring
and, if it is reasonable, check availability and sponsors. All of
the members of the mailing list have subscribed and want to be on the
list; therefore, they are likely to read your e-mail. This is an excellent
opportunity for you to expose your products and services to these
potential consumers. A good example of this would be Trip.com’s sponsoring
a mailing list about vacation destinations around the world.
Readers are interested in the topic, so they might be encouraged to
click through and book a trip.
Online and Offline Promotion
Your advertising strategy shouldn’t be limited to online activities. It is
important to integrate your offline advertising strategy to include promotion
of your Web site. For more information on offline promotion,
see Chapter 26.
Figure 20.8. Franchise Solutions allows franchisors to purchase links from
its site.
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Internet Resources for Chapter 20
I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding productive
online advertising. For additional resources on a variety of
topics, visit the Resources section of my Web site at http://www.
susansweeney.com/resources.html. There you will find additional tips,
tools, and techniques.
Banner Ad Tools
Animated Communications
http://www.animation.com
An online resource to build your own animated banners in minutes.
Animation Online
http://www.animationonline.com
Create your own animated banner in minutes for free from this site.
The Banner Generator
http://www.coder.com/creations/banner
The Banner Generator is a free service to help you create graphical banners
for your Web pages.
Online Advertising Agencies
.Com Marketing
http://www.commarketing.com
.Com Marketing is an interactive advertising and marketing firm specializing
in driving traffic to Web sites. It provides Web advertising strategy,
ad banner design, online media research and planning and search
engine submission services.
Ad Networks
24/7 Media
http://www.247media.com
24/7 Media is a network of branded sites in a vast variety of categories.
This allows advertisers to zero in on their target market and get results
from their online marketing efforts.
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B2B Works
http://www.b2bworks.com
B2B Works has well over 70 industries in its network and is emerging as
an ad network leader. It can target a specific industry of your choice or
advertise your banner to a mass audience.
DoubleClick
http://www.doubleclick.com
The DoubleClick ad network’s goal is to provide solutions to make advertising
work for companies on the Internet. Five types of services are
offered. The site enables you to market globally and locally. It can help
you to build brand awareness, or to close the loop on your target market.
DoubleClick also offers its clients the opportunity to participate in
the e-commerce world by offering online sales technology to advertisers
that would like to sell products online.
ValueClick
http://www.valueclick.com
ValueClick is the Internet’s largest results-based advertising network. It
uses a cost-per-click model, which enables participants to pay only for
the viewers who click through to their Web site.
Banner Exchanges
GSAnet
http://einets.com/
GSAnet Banner Swap is unique in that it offers up to a 1:1 display ratio
to members depending on where you locate the banner on your Web
page(s). In addition, sites with few visitors see an even greater ratio due
to what are called “charity banners.”
Online Advertising Education
Advertising Age Magazine
http://adage.com/news_and_features/deadline
This advertising industry publication always has interesting articles on
advertising online.
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Internet Advertising Bureau—Online Advertising Effectiveness Study
http://www.iab.net/news/pr_1997_09_24.asp
The IAB Online Advertising Effectiveness Study is the most comprehensive
and projectable test of online advertising effectiveness to date. With
12 major Web sites and over 16,000 individual users taking part in the
test, the study ranks as the largest, most rigorous test of advertising
effectiveness.
Nielsen Net Ratings
http://www.netratings.com
Nielsen Net Ratings provides you with continuously updated statistics
on the top advertisers on the Internet, and which banner advertisements
are the most commonly viewed on the Internet. The site also offers a
wide range of other Internet-related statistics that could prove important
to your marketing needs.
Know This
http://www.knowthis.com
KnowThis.com and its Marketing Virtual Library contain a wealth of
information, resources, and references for professionals, academics and
students in traditional and Internet marketing, advertising, selling,
e-commerce, market research, PR, and more.
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21
Maximizing Media Relations
Your online media strategy can be extremely effective in building traffic
to your site. News release distribution can be done easily. Build the
right list of e-mail addresses or make use of one of the online news
release distribution services. Most reporters and writers have e-mail
addresses. Some do not like to receive e-mailed news releases; others
prefer the e-mail versions. When e-mail news releases are sent out, reporters
reply by e-mail. They will expect your response within 24 hours.
Develop a media kit that you can e-mail out to editors. In this chapter,
we cover:
• Developing your online media strategy
• Public relations versus advertising
• Online public relations versus traditional public relations
• Effective news releases
• News release and distribution services on-line
• How to distribute news releases on-line
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• Providing an area for media on your site
• How to find reporters on-line
• How reporters want to receive your information
• Encouraging republication of your article with a direct link to
your site or the article
• Providing press kits on-line
• Electronic newsletters.
Managing Effective Public Relations
Media relations are very important to your marketing efforts. The best
results are achieved when you integrate both online and offline publicity
campaigns. News release distribution can be accomplished easily if
you have an established list of reporters and editors, or if you make use
of a news distribution service.
Maintaining effective public relations delivers a number of benefits
to your company. Your company and products gain exposure through
news releases, and a positive image for your company is portrayed. Your
relationship with current customers is reinforced, and new relationships
are formed.
Benefits of Publicity versus Advertising
Media coverage, or publicity, has a major advantage over paid advertisements.
Articles written by a reporter carry more weight with the
public than ads do because the media and reporters are seen as unbiased
third parties. The public gives articles printed in media publications
more credibility than they do paid advertisements. Another
advantage of distributing news releases is that it is more cost-effective
than advertising. You have to pay for advertising space on a Web site or
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time on the radio, but the costs of writing and distributing news releases
are minimal.
One of the disadvantages of news releases compared to advertising
is that you don’t have control over what is published. If the editor decides
to cast your company in a negative light, there is nothing you can
do to stop him or her. If the writer of the piece does not like your company,
for whatever reason, this might come across in the article. Basically,
after your news release is distributed, you have no control over
what will be written about your company.
It is important to note that when generating publicity you might
lose control over the timing of your release as well. For example, you
might want an article released the day before your big sale, but the
editor could relegate it to a date the following week. There is nothing
you can do about this. It is not a good idea to rely exclusively on publicity
for important or newsworthy events, because if the release is not
reviewed or is not considered newsworthy, you might be stuck with no
promotion at all.
What Is a News Release?
Before you begin your media campaign, you should know what news
releases are and how to write them. News releases are designed to inform
reporters of events concerning your company that the public might consider
newsworthy. News releases can get your company free public attention.
A news release is a standard form of communication with the media.
News releases must contain newsworthy information. Companies that
continually send worthless information in a blatant attempt to get their
name in the press do not establish a good relationship with the media.
Writing a News Release
Journalists are bombarded with volumes of news releases. To improve
the chances of having your story interest the journalist enough to publish
it, you must make the journalist’s job easier by presenting your
news release in an appealing format and style. Your news release should
be written as if it were prepared by an unbiased third party. The news
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release should follow a standard format, which is described in the following
paragraphs.
Notice of Release
The first thing the reader sees should be:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
unless you have sent the information in advance of the time you
would like it published. In that case, state it as follows:
FOR RELEASE: Wednesday, April 14, 2005 [using the
date you want it released].
Remember that no matter what date you put here, the publication
can release the information before or after that date. If the news is really
big, it is unlikely that the publication will hold it until the date you
have specified.
Header
The header should be in the upper-left corner. It should contain all of
the contact information for one or two key people. These contacts should
be able to answer any questions regarding the news release. If reporters
cannot get in touch with someone to answer their questions, they might
print incorrect information or even drop the article altogether.
Contact:
Susan Sweeney
Connex Network Incorporated
(902) 468-2578
susan@susansweeney.com
http://www.susansweeney.com

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CPM
Cost per thousand, or CPM, is a standard advertising term. CPM is
often used to calculate the cost of banner advertising if a site sells advertising
based on impressions. If the CPM of banner advertising on the
site was US$40 and the number of impressions the ad had was 2,000,
then the advertiser would have to pay US$80 for displaying the ad.
Keywords
You can purchase keyword banner advertising on search engines (see
Chapter 8) sites that have sophisticated banner advertising programs,
or sites whose banner advertising real estate is maintained by online
advertising agencies that have sophisticated banner advertising programs.
Your banner ad appears when someone does a search on the keyword
that you purchased. This is good for zooming in on your target market.
Geotargeting
Purchasing geographically targeted banner advertising is one of the
latest trends in Internet marketing. This is done by purchasing banner
advertising for a range of IP addresses. Every device that connects to
the Internet has its own unique IP address. These are assigned centrally
by a designated authority for each country. We are now seeing
search engines sell IP addresses to help businesses pinpoint their target
geographic group. For example, John Doe is building a new home in
Utah and is searching for a company selling lumber in his area. Dooley
Building Supplies, a lumber company in Utah, happens to be marketing
over the Internet, and as part of Dooley’s banner advertising campaign
they have purchased banner ads by keyword and by IP address.
Simply stated, they have said that they only want their banner ad to
appear when the keyword lumber is searched on by individuals whose
IP address is within a certain range (the range being those existing in
Utah). When John Doe does his search on the word lumber, the Dooley
Building Supplies banner ad is displayed at the top of the page holding
the search results. Someone in Michigan searching for lumber would
see a different banner ad.
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Jump on the Banner Wagon
Banner advertising is the most common and most recognized form of
online advertising. Banner ads are available in various sizes. (See Figure
20.2 for some of the more popular banner ad sizes.)
Banners usually have an enticing message or call to action that coaxes
the viewer to click on it. “What is on the other side?” you ask. The
advertiser’s Web site, of course. Banner ads can also be static, just displaying
the advertiser’s logo and slogan, or can be animated with graphics
and movement.
If you use an advertising or PR company to develop your offline
ads, quite often they provide you with a library of banner ads that you
can use for your online advertising campaign. If you choose not to use
an advertising or PR company, you can outsource the creation of a banner
ad to another company or create your own.
The banner ad is designed to have a direct impact on the number of
click-throughs it achieves. There are a number of resources on-line to
assist you in developing dynamic banner ads. The Banner Generator at
Figure 20.2. There are many different marketing resource Web sites available
on-line that can provide you with the popularity of different sizes and types of
banner ads.
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http://www.coder.com/creations/banner allows you to create banners online
at no charge. The Media Builder at http://www.3dtextmaker.com
allows you to develop animated banner ads directly from its site. Other
resources to assist you in designing and building banner ads are identified
in the Internet Resources section at the end of this chapter.
As noted previously, there are a wide variety of banner sizes available.
You should consult with the owners of the Web sites on which you
want to advertise before creating your banner ad or having one created
professionally for you.
The objective of your banner ad is to have someone click on it. Do
not try to include all of your information in your ad. A banner that is
too small and cluttered is difficult to read and is not visually appealing.
Many banners simply include a logo and a tag line enticing the user to
click on it. Free offers or contest giveaways are also quite effective for
click-throughs because they tend to appeal to the user’s curiosity.
Exploring Your Banner Ad Options
Static banners are what the name suggests. They remain static on the
same Web page until they are removed. Your banner ad will be visible
on that particular page until your reader moves to another page.
Animated banners are banners that move on a Web site. Animated
banners are usually in GIF format and contain a group
of images in one file that are presented in a specific order
(see Figures 20.3a through 20.3c). When using animated
banner ads, you can choose to loop the file so
that the banner continues to move between the images
in the files, or you have the option to make it stop after
a complete cycle.
Rotating banners are banner ads that rotate among different Web
pages on the same site. Some rotating banners rotate every 15 or 30
seconds, so a visitor might see several ads while remaining on the page.
Other rotating banner ads rotate every time there is a new visitor to the
page. Rotating banners are commonly used in high-traffic Web sites.
Scrolling banners are similar to modern billboards. Here the visitor
sees a number of billboard ads, scrolled to show a different advertisement
every 10 to 30 seconds.
Gif
Graphics Interchange
Format.
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Banner Ad Tips
Follow these tips to ensure that your banner ad achieves your marketing
objectives:
• Make sure that your banner ad is quick to load. If the Web page
loads in its entirety before the banner, then the viewer might
click away before ever seeing it. Ideally, you should have a very
fast banner ad on a relatively slow loading site. This way your
viewers have nothing to do but read your banner ad while they
are waiting for the site to load. You should always try to keep
your banner ad size under 5K.
Figure 20.3a. This is the first stage in an animated banner ad. It catches
visitors’ attention and makes them think the banner is doing a search on popular
keywords related to skiing.
Figure 20.3b. This is the second stage in the animated banner ad. It acts as
though the banner is continuing the search.
Figure 20.3c. This is the final stage in the animated banner ad series. It looks
as though the search was completed. Now they have the viewer’s complete
attention.
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• To see how big files are when using any version of Internet Explorer,
you can follow these steps:
– Right-click on the banner ad.
– Select Properties.
– In the Properties window you will see a Size line which
will tell you the banner size.
• Keep it simple! If your banner contains too much text or animation,
or too many colors and fonts, viewers experience information
overload and will not be encouraged to read or click on
your banner.
• Make sure your banner ad is easily viewed. Many banners on the
Internet are nicely designed but difficult to read. Use an easy-toread
font with the right size. Be careful in your choice of color.
• Always use Alt tags for those visitors who surf the Internet with
their graphics turned off or cannot see your banner ad for whatever
reason.
• Make sure your banner ad links to the optimum page in your
site. It is not uncommon to click on an interesting banner only to
find an error message waiting for you. This is annoying to Internet
users and counterproductive for your marketing effort. Check
your banner ads on a regular basis to verify that the link remains
active and is pointing to the right page on your Web site.
• If you are using animated banner ads, limit your ads to two to
four frames.
• You should always include a call to action such as “Click here.”
It is amazing how many people do what they are told. You still
have to make your ad interesting and one that grabs their attention.
Don’t simply say “Click here”—give your audience a compelling
reason to do so.
• Test your banner ads with the different browsers, the different
versions of these browsers, and at different screen resolutions to
make sure that they look the way you want them to.
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• If you know absolutely nothing about advertising and graphic
design, do not try to create a banner on your own. Go to a
professional. If you do design your own banner, get a second
opinion and maybe a third.
Interesting Banner Ads
The following are more technologically advanced forms of banner advertising.
They are interesting to viewers because they have attributes
that are unique or unusual in some way. These attributes might be more
apt to grab viewers’ attention and entice them to click on the banner ad.
Expanding Banner Ads. An expanding banner ad (see Figures 20.4a
and 20.4b) is one that looks like a normal banner ad but expands
when you click on it, keeping you on the same site rather than transporting
you to another site on the Internet. Usually these say “Click
to Expand,” and the viewer then can learn more about what the
banner is promoting. Some of the more advanced expanding banner
ads have e-commerce capabilities, which allow you to actually order
products from the banner, without ever going to the Web site.
Figure 20.4a. This expanding advertisement displays the ad and then
prompts the viewer to expand the banner ad.
Figure 20.4b. When the banner expands it explains more about the product
while remaining on the site that hosts the banner ad.
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Animated Banner Ads. Animated banner ads contain a group of
images in one file that rotate in a specific order. These banner ads
are more likely to receive a higher click-through than a normal
banner ad because moving images increase chances of the viewers
reading the banner. These banners also allow you to deliver more
information than in a normal banner ad because you can show
different files, which contain different data. Limit your banner ads
to two to four frames to keep your load time fast and to make sure
your viewers read your information before they continue to surf
the Internet.
Drop-Down Menu Banner Ads Containing Embedded HTML.
Lately we are seeing an increase in banner ads containing embedded
HTML (see Figures 20.5 and 20.6). This allows viewers to select
from a drop-down menu which site they want to visit. These banners
are great because instead of making viewers click through and
then navigate through your site, as with a conventional banner, these
Figure 20.5. Trips.com advertises using banners with embedded HTML which
allows the viewer to choose various different sites from the drop-down menu.
Figure 20.6. Another embedded HTML banner allowing different selections
for the viewer to choose.
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direct your viewers to the page of interest on your site. This type of
banner ad also is great for co-op advertising programs. Several companies
selling noncompeting products or services to the same target
market can use this type of banner advertising to get more exposure
for their dollar.
Interstitial Ads. These are advertisements that appear in a separate
browser window while your visitors wait for a Web page to load.
Interstitial ads are more likely to contain large graphics, streaming
presentations, and more applets than a conventional banner ad.
However, some users have complained that interstitial ads slow access
to destination pages.
Java, Flash, and Shockwave Ads. These banner ads allow you to use
rich media in your advertisements. By using these technologies, you
can incorporate animation and sound into your banner advertisement.
Although Java banners are more technologically advanced
and offer more features, they also take longer to download and risk
not being viewed. Flash was designed to generate faster-loading Web
sites, online animation, and advertising. If you want to incorporate
rich media into your banners, you may want to go with Flash or
Shockwave because you want your visitors to see your banner ads
as quickly as possible.
Floating Ads and DHTML. These ads appear when you first view a
Web page, and they appear to “fly” or “float” over the page for
anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds. They tend to obscure your view of
the page, and they often disable mouse input until the ad is finished
loading so that you must watch it before being able to access the
page content. They have a high click-through rate and are great for
branding, although their intrusiveness has been questioned.
Unicast Ads. Although not widely seen on the Internet at the present,
their popularity is increasing. A Unicast ad is basically like a television
commercial that runs in a pop-up window. It has animation
and sound and can last from 10 to 30 seconds. Although they are
like television commercials, they go a step further in that a viewer
can then click on the ad to obtain further information. They have a
higher than average click-through rate.
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Location, Location, Location
As with all types of advertising, the location of the ad is extremely important.
There are any number of targeted sites where you can place
your banner ads. Always make sure that your banner advertising location
is consistent with your objectives.
Search Engines
Advertising with the Search Engines is covered in Chapter 8.
Content Sites
If your objectives include bringing interested people from your target
market to your site, then advertising on strategically chosen content
sites would be extremely effective. These are sites that concentrate on a
specific topic. The CPM of advertising on content sites ranges from
US$25 to US$50 depending on the traffic volume they see and the focus
of their visitors.
Banner Ad Price Factors
The price of banner ad space varies from site to site. Banner ads often are
sold based on the number of impressions or number of click-throughs. As
stated earlier, an impression is an ad view, and click-throughs are the actual
clicking on the banner ad and being sent to the advertiser’s Web site. The
price per impression should be less than the price per click-through.
When site owners charge per impression, there is usually a guarantee
that your ad will be seen by a certain number of people. The burden
is on the seller to generate traffic to its site. When the charges are per
click-through, the responsibility is on you, the advertiser, to design an
ad that encourages visitors to click on it. Sites that charge per impression
are more common than those that charge per click-through.
There are obvious advantages to the advertiser when paying per
click-through. The advertiser doesn’t have to pay a cent for the 10,000
people who saw the banner but did not pursue the link. Sites that do not
have a large volume of traffic often charge a flat rate for a specified
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• First, make a list of the URLs of the award sites you are interested
in.
• Understand the submission form and guidelines. Review a number
of forms to determine the information commonly requested.
• To save time, develop a document with the answers to the various
questions from which you can copy and paste into the different
submission forms.
• Submission forms capture the following types of information:
– URL
– Title of your site
– Contact person (name, e-mail, phone, address)
– Owner of the site
• Submission guidelines tell you what types of sites can be submitted.
(Some awards do not accept personal pages; others do
not include commercial sites.) The submission guidelines also
tell you what meets the definition of “cool” or “new” and what
doesn’t.
• Some award sites require that you display their award icon on
your site. Posting an award on your site can provide a number
of positive results—including enhanced credibility.
What’s Hot and What’s Not in the Name of Cool
Most of the award sites provide their selection criteria. Some base their
selection on valuable content; others look for innovative and unique capabilities.
Sites vary on what they consider “hot” or “cool,” but they are
fairly consistent on what doesn’t make the grade, as summarized next.
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What’s Hot What’s Not
Awesome graphics Single-page sites
Great, original content Single-product promotion
Broad appeal Offensive language or graphics
Fun features Lengthy download time
Posting Your Awards on Your Site
If you have managed to collect a few awards for your Web site, you
want to display them. After all, any award is a good award, and the
site that granted you one expects you to display it in return for the
recognition. Posting the awards on your home page might not be the
best idea, though. For one thing, the additional graphics that will have
to be downloaded will slow the load time for your home page. Second,
by posting the awards on your home page, you are placing links
leading out of your site on the first page. Thus, you are giving people
the opportunity to leave your site before they have even had a chance
to explore it. Where should you post your well-deserved awards, then?
Simply create an awards section on your Web site. Here, you can list
all of your awards without adversely affecting the load time of your
home page or losing traffic.
Becoming the Host of Your Own Awards Gala
You can also create your own awards program to draw traffic to your
site; however, this requires a considerable amount of work to maintain.
The benefits of having your own award program include having links
back to your site from the awards placed on winners’ sites, which is
important for search engine placement because of link popularity. Because
you control the text around the link back to your site, make sure
you include your most important keywords to enhance your link relevancy
score to further improve your search engine ranking. There are
also great opportunities for permission (“Click here to be notified via
e-mail when we have a new award winner”) and viral marketing (“Tell
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a friend about this award—Click here”). In addition, having your own
awards program provides you with “bragging rights” and the opportunity
for press releases to announce your awards, which gain exposure
for your Web site and increase traffic. You need to work at it daily or
weekly, so you must be committed to it. Be sure there is a benefit from a
marketing perspective before you design and develop your own awards
program. You must also be prepared to conduct your own searches to
find sites worthy of your award if the quality of sites being submitted to
you is not up to your standard.
There are a number of steps involved in getting your awards program
up and running:
• Develop the criteria to use in your site selection.
• Develop several Web pages related to the award (information
on selection criteria, submission forms, today’s or this week’s
award winner, past award recipients page, etc.) in order to promote
the award. (Be sure that you stipulate whether you are
looking for submissions from commercial sites or personal pages
and what criteria will be used in judging submissions.)
• Develop your award icon. Have this icon link back to your site.
The award distinguishes the winner; thus, the link might be displayed
prominently on its site. This is a great traffic builder.
• Finally, announce the award and market, market, market.
Internet Resources for Chapter 19
I have included a few resources for you to check out about winning
awards and being designated a cool or hot site. For additional resources
on a variety of topics, visit the Resources section of my Web site at
http://www.susansweeney.com/resources.html. There you will find additional
tips, tools, and techniques.
Award Sites
http://www.awardsites.com
Free guide to promoting, marketing, or just browsing some of the best
sites on the Internet that offer a diverse range of information, services,
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or products—including many with excellent Web site award or review
programs.
Jayde.com
http://www.jayde.com/goldlnks.html
Awards the Gold Diamond Award to sites with great style, design, and
content. Jayde.com also has an award for commercial sites.
Webby Awards
http://www.webbyawards.com
The Webby Awards have been embraced by the online community as
the leading creative honors for digital media. The awards recognize the
most creative and innovative Web sites of the year and the talented
editorial, technical, and design teams behind them.
WebAwards
http://www.webaward.org
Since 1997, the annual WebAward for Web site development has been
the premier awards event where Web sites are recognized, competing
head to head with other sites within their industry and against an overall
standard of excellence.
The AXIEM AWARDS
http://www.axiemawards.com
The AXIEM AWARDS is an international awards program created to
honor those who produce the best in all forms of electronic media.
Hot Sites/Cool Sites
100 Hot Web Sites
http://www.100hot.com
Directory of Web sites based on Web traffic and organized by category.
Cool Site of the Day
http://www.coolsiteoftheday.com
Cool Site of the Day is a wildly popular Internet award site that features
interesting, provocative, and irreverent Web sites from around the world.
CoolStop
http://www.coolstop.com
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The Best of the Cool Award consistently recognizes outstanding sites in
terms of design, originality, and content.
JimWorld Way Cool Hot Site Award
http://jimworld.com/hotpg.html
From this site you can visit some of the coolest, most interesting hot
sites on the Web. These sites are selected by a blue ribbon panel of
one—Jim. The sites here are truly special. Jim receives about 500 submissions
every week; that’s about 2,000 per month. Out of that he usually
finds only one winner. Visit a few of these sites. It’s worth the time.
USA Today Hot Sites
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch.htm
USA Today scours the Web for sites that are hot, new, and notable. Visit
their daily list to find some of the best sites the Web has to offer. They
look for sites that stretch the design envelope and show where the Web
is headed—sites that offer something unusual or unexpected, or just
plain useful.
Virtual Reference Meta-Index of Award Sites
http://www.refdesk.com/textcool.html
A listing of sites that host Site of the Day, Hot Sites, and so on.
Web Pages That Suck
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com
Keep your site from being nominated to this awards site, and you are
probably doing well. However, you can learn much here about how to
properly design your site from a marketing perspective.
World Best Websites
http://www.worldbestwebsites.com
World Best Website Awards are granted to exemplary Web sites that are
pursuing “best practices” in Web site design and Internet communications.
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Productive Online Advertising
The world of banner advertising is changing rapidly. Several years ago
banner advertising was in vogue, visitors were clicking through, good
banner space was hard to find, and prices were rising. What a difference
a day makes! The last several years have seen banner advertising
prices decline significantly. Quality space is not difficult to obtain, and
click-through rates are on the decline dramatically. Banner advertising
is being used primarily to meet branding objectives.
Despite all the doom and gloom and bad press, however, banner ads
can still be an effective advertising medium if the banner ad is properly
developed and placed on a well-chosen site. We are starting to see a
shift toward ads using rich media. Advertising on-line provides visibility—
just as offline advertising does. You must develop a banner advertising
strategy that works with your product, your marketing objectives,
and your budget.
Advertising in the search engines is an important related topic. This
topic is covered in Chapter 8.
In this chapter, we cover:
• Your online advertising strategy
• Advertising opportunities on the Web
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• Banner ad design and impact on click-throughs
• Banner ad sizes and locations
• Placing classifieds
• Tips to creating dynamite banner ads that work
• The cost of advertising on-line
• Measuring ad effectiveness
• Banner ad exchange networks
• Using an online advertising agency
• Sources of Internet advertising information.
Expanding Your Exposure through Internet Advertising
Today, Internet advertising is being recognized in the advertising budgets
of businesses around the globe. Banner ads are a way to create
awareness of your Web site and increase the traffic to it. Banners are
placed on the sites that your target market is likely to frequent, thus
encouraging this market to click through and visit you!
The Internet offers many different advertising spaces. Banner ads
can be placed on search engines, content sites, advertising sites, and
online magazines. The choice of where your ad is displayed is based on
the objectives you wish to achieve with your online advertising strategy.
There are a number of advantages to online advertising:
• The response from these ads can easily be measured within one
day through Web traffic analysis.
• The amount of information that can be delivered, if your Web site
is visited, far surpasses that of a traditional advertising campaign.
• The cost of developing and running an online advertising campaign
is much less than using traditional media.
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Traditionally, advertising used to be handled by a public relations
(PR) firm or advertising company that would come up with your marketing
concept. As clients, businesses would review and approve (usually
after several attempts) the concepts before they were ever released
to the public eye. The PR or advertising firms would be responsible
for developing TV, radio, and print ads for the businesses. They would
come up with the media-buy strategy after reviewing appropriate publications,
editorial calendars, pricing, and the discounts that they would
receive for multiple placements. The ads were then gradually released
over the period of the campaign and finally were viewed by the public.
At the end of the campaign, the PR or advertising company would
evaluate the success of the marketing campaign. This is very easy if the
objective of the campaign was to achieve X number of sales, but it is
much more difficult if the goal of your campaign was to generate brand
awareness.
Today, online banner ads are developed in much less time and are
placed on Web sites quickly. Web traffic analysis software can tell you
the next day if the banner ad is working or not by tracking the number
of visitors who clicked through and visited your site through the ad.
This provides you with the opportunity to change the site on which you
are advertising or to change the banner ad to see if it attracts a greater
audience.
Nielsen Net Ratings (http://www.nielsen-netratings.com—Figure
20.1) offers great up-to-date resources to find out who is doing the
most online advertising. You can check this resource to find the top ten
banners displayed on the Internet each week and the top ten advertisers
on-line.
Maximize Advertising with Your Objectives in Mind
When developing your advertising strategy, start with the objectives of
your advertising campaign. The most common objectives for an online
advertising campaign include:
• Building brand awareness
• Increasing Web site traffic
• Generating leads and sales.
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You have a number of choices to make, such as what type of advertising
to use and where to advertise. These decisions should be based on
your objectives. If your objective is to increase overall brand recognition,
a nicely designed banner ad on several of the high-traffic search
engines would be effective. If you would like to develop leads and find
new clients, then a more targeted approach should be taken, such as
placing a banner ad on a high-traffic Web site that is frequented by your
target market.
When deciding how to proceed with your advertising strategy, consider
how many people you want to reach. Do you want a high-quality
response from a small number of much targeted people, or do you want
to reach a mass audience of grand proportions?
Think about the people you are targeting. If you sell dentistry supplies
to dental practices, then you want to target dentists and hygienists.
It would not make much sense to put an ad on Yahoo! when you could
advertise on a site about new medical discoveries in dentistry.
Always keep your budget in mind when you are devising your online
advertising strategy. There are many ways to stretch your advertising
dollar. If you have the time, you can find promising sites to trade ban-
Figure 20.1. Neilsen Net Ratings provides you with continuously updated
statistics on who is doing the most advertising on the Internet. The site also
provides you with interesting information and popular banner ads.
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ners. You can also participate in banner exchange programs, which are
set up by a third party, and your banner is displayed randomly on other
banner exchange participants’ pages.
Online Advertising Terminology
Banner Ads
Banner ads are small advertisements that are placed on a Web site. Companies
usually develop their banner ads, find sites for placement, and
then either purchase or trade banner space.
Click-Throughs
When a viewer clicks on a banner ad with the mouse and goes to the site
advertised, it is called a “click-through.” Sometimes banner advertising
prices are determined by the number of click-throughs.
Hits
Hits to a site are the number of times that another computer has accessed
that site (or a file in a site). This does not mean that if your site
has 1,000 hits, 1,000 people have visited it. If your home page has a
number of graphic files on it, this number could be misleading. A hit is
counted when the home page main file is accessed, but a hit is also
counted for every graphic file that loads along with the home page. So if
a person visits six pages on a site and each page has five graphics, at
least 30 hits would be generated.
Impressions or Page Views
When a banner ad is viewed, it is called an impression. Banner advertising
prices are often calculated by impressions. If a person visits a page
six times, this generates six impressions.

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• Search for appropriate meta-indexes
• Request a link
• Provide the details necessary
• Look at sponsorship or banner advertising opportunities.
Meta-indexes can be arranged by subject (such as sites that provide
information on book publishing) or by geography (tourist sites in Alaska).
As mentioned before, the major search engines are a good place to start.
For example, to find tourist sites in Alaska, conduct a search by entering
+Alaska+tourist+directory. Once you find a good list and start to
check the links, you will likely find other lists. Bookmark or keep a
record of the meta-indexes you like for future reference.
When requesting a link to your site, send an e-mail with “Site addition
request” in the subject area of your message. Include the following
in the body of the message:
Figure 18.4. Google’s Search Options page.
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• URL
• Description of your site
• Why you feel your site is appropriate for the list
• Your contact information in your signature file (see Chapter 9).
Once you have identified indexes that appeal to your target market,
determine whether additional opportunities exist for sponsoring or purchasing
banner advertising on the site. Meta-indexes that relate to your
market are a great place to advertise because they are accessed by your
target customers.
To make your link stand out, inquire about adding a prominent link
or icon to the meta-index page along with a short tag line, in addition to
your company name. If you provide the GIF and the HTML, the metaindex
owner might be happy to include it.
Keep in mind that the compilers of the free meta-indexes are motivated
by noncommercial reasons and are under no obligation to add
your site to their list or process your request quickly. However, more
and more meta-index sites have a commercial focus.
A listing on a meta-index might be free, but there could be a fee
charged for placing a hypertext link within the listing. However, there
also are meta-indexes that charge a fee for the listing. If you are considering
paying a fee to be included in a meta-index, consider the volume
of traffic the meta-index receives, whether the traffic is targeted, and
the cost involved in relation to the return on investment. It might be
wise to contact those already listed in the meta-index to see if the listing
has been a good investment for them.
Internet Resources for Chapter 18
I have included a few resources for you to check out on meta-indexes.
For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the Resources section
of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/resources.html.
There you will find additional tips, tools, and techniques.
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Essential Links: Portal to the Internet
http://www.el.com
Essential Links is a portal to Internet portal sites, news headlines, search
engines, Web directories, references, and utilities.
Internet Resources Meta-Index
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/MetaIndex.html
A meta-index of the various resource directories and indexes available
on the Internet.
Metaplus
http://www.metaplus.com
The Webmaster’s Ultimate Resource—A meta-index of the directories
and essential sites.
Virtual Library
http://vlib.org/Overview.html
The Virtual Library is the oldest catalog of the Web, started by Tim
Berners-Lee, the creator of the Web itself. Unlike commercial catalogs,
it is run by a loose confederation of volunteers who compile
pages of key links for particular areas in which they are experts. Even
though it isn’t the biggest index of the Web, the VL pages are widely
recognized as being among the highest-quality guides to particular sections
of the Web.
WWW Meta-Indexes and Search Tools
http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/globe/metaindex.html
A Library of Congress Internet resource page.
WWW Meta-Indexes and Search Tools
http://www.fys.ruu.nl/~kruis/h3.html
A Library of Congress Internet resource page.
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19
Winning Awards,
Cool Sites, and More
There are literally hundreds of Cool Sites, Sites of the Day, Hot Sites,
and Pick-of-the-Week Sites. Some of these sites require you to submit;
others are selected based on such things as:
• Awesome graphics
• Dynamite content that is useful and interesting
• Uniqueness
• Fun features.
If you are selected for one of these sites, it can mean a huge increase
in the number of visitors to your site. You must be prepared for the
increased traffic flow as well as the increased demand for online offerings.
In this chapter, we cover:
• Where to submit your site for award consideration
• How to win Site of the Day—tips, tools, and techniques
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• Getting listed in What’s New
• Posting your awards on your site
• Hosting your own Site of the Day.
It’s an Honor Just to Be Nominated
There are sites that find and evaluate other sites on the Internet and
recognize those that are outstanding by giving them an award. The award
sites are generally quite discriminating in terms of selecting which sites
are the recipients of their award. They have established criteria defining
what they consider “hot” or “cool” and base their award selection on
those criteria. Figure 19.1 shows a variety of awards.
What’s New Web sites are designed to inform Internet users of new
sites and updates to existing sites, and are often selective in which new
sites they promote. The owner of each site also selectively chooses awards
for Site of the Day, Week, Month, and Year. As mentioned earlier, some
of these sites require you to submit an announcement or site description,
and the awards are granted based on criteria such as graphics,
dynamic content, uniqueness, and the “fun” quality of your site. Other
Figure 19.1. A collage of some of the more popular award sites.
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sites grant their awards based solely on the personal likes and dislikes
of the owner of the site and do not adhere to any criteria at all.
Some awards are taken just as seriously as the Academy Awards.
The Webby Awards have a very comprehensive nomination procedure.
Information regarding the Webby is available on their Web site at
http://www.webbyawards.com.
When you win an award, you post it on your site for all to see. The
award icon is usually a link back to the site that bestowed the honor
on you.
Choosing Your Awards and Submitting to Win
There are different levels of prestige associated with the award sites.
Some are an honor to receive. Some are highly competitive because of
the number of submissions they receive.
Some awards are easier to receive than others, such as those from
commercial sites that give out awards in an attempt to increase the traffic
to their own site. Traffic increases because the award is a graphic
link displayed on the winner’s site that visitors can follow back to the
award giver’s site. Other Webmasters give out awards to anybody and
everybody who makes a submission. The award is granted with the sole
purpose of building traffic.
The bottom line is that awards are valuable assets. The average Web
user cannot tell which awards are the prestigious ones and which are
given to anyone who submits. So, submit for any awards that you choose
to, as long as your site is ready. (A sample submission form is shown in
Figure 19.2.)
Where you place these awards is important. If you win many awards,
consider developing an Awards page with a link from your navigation
bar to house them.
Something to consider before you submit for an award is whether
the huge amount of new traffic would benefit your site. If you sell T-shirts
emblazoned with WWW cartoons, then any traffic is good traffic, and
awards could benefit your site. On the other hand, if you are a marine
biologist specializing in red tides in the Arctic, then the traffic that Site
of the Day would bring might be more of a hindrance than a help in
marketing your services. Always determine if the marketing tools and
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techniques will increase visitors from your target market before deciding
to include them in your online marketing strategy.
Getting mentioned on one of the popular Cool Sites lists is probably
the single biggest way to draw a tremendous amount of traffic to
your site. However, that traffic is like a flash flood—fast and furious.
Be careful what you wish for—you just might get it! Be prepared! Have
a plan that you can implement on a moment’s notice. If you offer something
free from your site, be sure that you can access a huge volume of
whatever it is and that you have a plan to distribute quickly. If you
offer a free download from your site, plan to have a number of alternative
FTP sites available to your visitors. If you have a call-in offer,
make sure you have a telephone response system
in place and staff to handle the huge volume of
calls you might get. You need a plan to handle a
huge volume of e-mails as well.
Once you have decided that the type of traffic
that comes along with winning awards fits with your
marketing strategy, make sure your site has the makings
of a winner and then submit to as many award
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strategic about the keywords that you include in the text around the
link to your site, you will increase your link relevancy score as well.
The affiliate links generate a significant amount of traffic to your
site and also help to increase your search engine rankings. Some of the
major search engines use link popularity in their ranking criteria. Once
you have successfully launched your affiliate program and have developed
a wide sales force on the Internet, you might be surprised by the
amount of new traffic coming to your Web site.
Your greatest advantage is the opportunity to expand your sales
force to thousands of people. If you run a good affiliate program, your
sales force could consist of people all over the world, thus expanding
your target market into different cultures that your personal sales force
otherwise might not have been able to penetrate.
Another benefit of launching an affiliate program on your Web site
is that you increase the brand awareness for your business. For example,
how many times have you seen an Amazon.com logo on a personal or
commercial Web site? Many hundreds of thousands have subscribed to
Amazon.com’s affiliate program, making it one of the largest programs
on the Internet. All of Amazon.com’s affiliates place banner ads, buttons,
text links, and other promotional tools on their Web site in an
effort to encourage their visitors to click through to the Amazon.com
Web site and make a purchase. Even though not everybody clicks through
to the Amazon.com site, their Web site visitors are still exposed to the
Amazon.com brand, thus increasing the brand exposure for
Amazon.com’s products and services. This could ultimately result in
those visitors going directly to the Amazon.com Web site in the future
to make a purchase, thus bypassing the affiliate’s Web site and the need
to pay that affiliate a referral for their business.
Purchasing Affiliate Software
There are several options when it comes to purchasing Affiliate software:
• You can use an ASP.
• You can purchase software.
• You can build your own.
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• You can use a storefront software solution that includes an Affiliate
module.
Depending on what features you would like to provide to your affiliates,
the cost of tracking software ranges from $300 to $15,000.
There are many varieties of affiliate software. Some programs are
quite unsophisticated and offer few features, and others offer all the
bells and whistles. There are some features that you should watch for
when purchasing your software. They can help you to run a smooth
affiliate program and can save you a lot of time. Here are some of the
more important features available:
Automated Signup. You should always look for this feature because
you want to make it as easy as possible for your affiliates to
sign up for your program. It should not take them days to officially
sign up; they should be able to do so automatically. You
want them to get started as quickly as possible, so as soon as they
sign up, they should automatically be sent all information that
you feel is necessary for them to quickly incorporate your program
on their Web site.
Automated Tracking System. This is one of the most important features
that you must look for. You want to make sure that your software
is capable of tracking all sales made so that you can reward
your affiliates with the appropriate commission. You don’t want to
have to calculate which Web sites the sales came from at the end of
the month. You want to be able to let the software do all of the
tracking for you, and at the end of the reporting period provide you
with a report outlining payment due to your affiliates.
Automatic Contact Systems. You should be able to contact all of
your affiliates whenever you find it necessary. Some software allows
you to send messages to all of your affiliates at the click of a button.
It compiles their e-mail addresses in a database.
Real-Time Statistics. Real-time statistics allow your affiliates to view
their current sales statistics. This lets them know how many people
clicked through from their site and how many of those people actually
purchased something. This is a very good feature because it is
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important to keep your affiliates informed about their current sales
status in your program.
Variable-Payment Option. Another important feature that you
should look for is the variable-payment option. Some forms of affiliate
software only let you work with so many variables, meaning
the fixed fee, percentage, or flat rate per click-through that you
multiply by the referrals from your affiliates’ sites. Some software is
only designed for certain types of programs. You might purchase
software designed to calculate payments for a click-through program.
If you wanted to have a commission-based program that pays
a percentage of sales resulting from each click-through, this software
would not be good for you. It would not be able to comprehend
and manipulate data to calculate the payments, for it is
incapable of using the percentage-of-sales variable. Check this out
before you purchase any software.
Automatic Check Payment. Once your affiliate program is up and
running, and you have developed an extensive list of affiliates, it
can become a hassle to write checks at the end of each payment
period. Some software comes equipped with an automatic check
payment option that allows your computer to print the checks. This
can make your affiliate program run more smoothly and can save
you time.
Automatic Reporting-Period Statistic Distribution. Some of the more
advanced affiliate-tracking software automatically e-mails each of
your affiliates at the end of the reporting period. This tells your
affiliates how much success they are having with your program, and
allows them to adjust their marketing strategy to help them to succeed
with your program.
Some of the more popular affiliate-tracking software programs available
to people wanting to start their own affiliate program are:
My Affiliate Program
http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com
Kowabunga! Technologies provides affiliate-tracking software that allows
you to manage all of your affiliate members and track impressions,
click-throughs, and online sales.
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AffiliateLink
http://www.affiliatezone.com
AffiliateLink enables you to do everything from signing up affiliates to
checking on both administrative and individual affiliate statistics.
Affiliate Shop
http://www.affiliateshop.com
The premier affiliate-tracking system. It provides Webmasters with a
powerful and easy-to-use affiliate-management tool. No complicated
software to be installed; just cut and paste a few lines of HTML code on
your site to get your affiliate program going.
Affiliate Wiz
http://www.affiliatewiz.com
Affiliate tracking software for managing an affiliate marketing program.
Affiliate programs are one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to
your site while rewarding your affiliates for their participation. You provide
your affiliates with a special link to your site, whether it is a text link
or image or even a picture of your product. The affiliate displays your
link on their site and then you sit back and watch visitors start traveling
to your site. You then reward your affiliates for sending traffic your way.
Internet Resources for Chapter 17
I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding affiliate
programs. For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the Resources
section of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/
resources.html. There you will find additional tips, tools, and techniques.
My Affiliate Program
http://www.myaffiliateprogram.com
Technologies, the makers of MyAP, is a leader in Affiliate Marketing
and has been offering intuitive affiliate tracking and management solutions
since 1998.
2-Tier.com
http://www.2-tier.com
2-Tier.com offers a directory of more than 1,136 affiliate programs.
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Affiliate Handbook
http://www.affiliatehandbook.com
This is the definitive resource for affiliate program managers aspiring to
develop a best-of-breed affiliate program.
AssociatePrograms.com
http://www.associateprograms.com
The AssociatePrograms.com directory helps you find the best associate
programs—also known as referral, partner, revenue-sharing, or affiliate
programs—to earn money from your Web site.
ClickQuick: Affiliate and Pay-per-Click Program Reviews
http://www.clickquick.com
ClickQuick provides in-depth reviews of Webmaster affiliate, associate,
and pay-per-click programs that offer opportunities to make money on
the Internet. Also provides reviews of banner ad networks and helpful
articles on improving affiliate program performance.
MakeMoneyNow.com
http://www.makemoneynow.com
A great site filled with resources on affiliate programs, including a directory
of programs and tips on starting your own.
Refer-it.com
http://www.refer-it.com
Refer-it.com is the authoritative guide to Internet affiliate programs,
associate programs, and referral programs. Refer-it is a great resource
for merchants with affiliate programs and for Webmasters with affiliate
Web sites.
Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants
http://www.affiliatemanager.net
Everything you wanted to know about affiliate marketing but were afraid
to ask.
AffiliateWorld.com
http://www.affiliateworld.com
Affiliate World is the Web’s premier site for finding affiliate programs.
Commission Junction
http://www.cj.com/index.jsp
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Commission Junction affiliate programs offer pay-for-performance online
advertising and Internet marketing solutions.
More Popular Affiliate Programs
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com
A pioneer in the affiliate program industry, Amazon.com claims to have
the world’s biggest selection of products, including free electronic greeting
cards, online auctions, and millions of books, CDs, videos, DVDs,
toys and games, and electronics.
Barnes and Noble
http://www.barnesandnoble.com
BarnesandNoble.com offers a wide selection of books and has more
than 120,000 Web sites participating in its affiliate program.
CDNow
http://www.cdnow.com
CDNow is the world’s leading online music store.
Chapters Indigo
http://chapters.indigo.ca
Chapters Indigo gives you 5 percent for each purchase made from your
Web site.
Reel.com
http://www.reel.com
Reel.com is one of the biggest places on-line to buy movies.
Priceline.com
http://tickets.priceline.com/affiliates/agreement.asp
Affiliates earn money each time a visitor books hotel, air, or car rental
service.
SusanSweeney.com
http://www.susansweeney.com/affiliate.html
Sign up now and start earning money from your site!
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18
Maximizing Promotion
with Meta-Indexes
Meta-indexes are designed to be useful resources for people who have
a specific interest in a particular topic. Meta-indexes are a large and
valuable resource for reaching your target audience and should be utilized
to their full potential. In this chapter, we cover:
• What meta-indexes are
• Why meta-indexes are useful
• How to make the links to your site stand out
• Creating your own meta-index.
What Are Meta-Indexes?
Meta-indexes are lists of Internet resources pertaining to a specific subject
category and are intended as a resource for people who have a
specific interest in that topic. These lists, such as the one for Internet
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shopping sites shown in Figure 18.1, consist of a collection of URLs of
related Internet resources that are arranged on a Web page by their
titles. The owners or creators of meta-indexes put a lot of effort into
compiling these lists and are eager to find new sites to add to them. It
used to be that the owners of these sites would list your site for free
because they desired to have the most meta of the meta-indexes—they
strived to have the largest of the large indexes, and more sites means a
larger index. Today, many of these meta-indexes are commercial and
charge a fee for the link to your site.
Some of these meta-indexes have a “Submit” or “Add Your Site”
area; for others, you have to develop an inclusion request e-mail and
send it to the owner of the site. In your inclusion request e-mail, let the
owner know that you visited the site and feel that your site would be
appropriate to be included. Give the reasons you think your site is appropriate
and request the link. You should provide the HTML for the
link as well. Review the techniques discussed in Chapter 16 to have
your link stand out with a graphical icon, hypertext link, and tag line as
well including targeted keywords to enhance your link relevancy scores
for enhanced search engine placement.
Figure 18.1. All-Internet Shopping Directory—meta-index of malls, stores,
products and services on the Web.
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Meta-indexes are directed at a specific topic, such as “Connecticut
Country Inns” or “Antique Car Sites.” Meta-indexes provide easy access
to a number of sites on a specific topic, and they are a great way to
draw targeted, interested people to your Web site. In addition, some
users might rely on meta-indexes as their only search effort. They might
not use a search engine to perform a query on Mexican resorts, for
example, if they know a certain meta-index contains 200 sites on Mexican
resorts. Where search engine results might show books on Mexican
resorts, personal Web pages relating to family vacations at Mexican
resorts, etc., experienced Web users know that meta-indexes only provide
links to the Web sites of Mexican resorts. Meta-indexes can increase
your chances of being found by people who are interested in
what you have to offer.
You might want to consider placing a banner ad on one or more of
the meta-indexes you find, given that the target audience you want to
reach will be the people using these indexes. Choose carefully, though;
you don’t want to buy a banner ad on a meta-index that is not up to par
and doesn’t provide the traffic you are looking for. Take your time and
investigate the meta-index before advertising on it. Does it appeal to the
eye? Is it of good quality? Are there many dead links? Is it updated
frequently? Does it have sufficient traffic?
Meta-indexes can be an effective way to increase traffic to your
Web site. Word spreads quickly about the best meta-indexes because
they are a great resource. Your target market will tell two friends and
they will tell two friends, thus increasing traffic. In addition, as more
people add links to your meta-index, and the more links you have to
your Web site, the more traffic your site gets.
How to Find Appropriate Meta-Indexes
Now that you know what a meta-index is, how do you find one? You
might be browsing on the Web and happen to come across one. A better
way to find meta-indexes is through the search engines and directories
on the Web.
You need to know how your particular search engine of choice works.
Most search engines have advanced search capabilities, so be sure to
explore them. When you’re looking for meta-indexes, we recommend
that you create a more focused search by adding an extra word such as
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directory, list, index, table, resource, reference, or guide. By adding one
of these words in conjunction with another word—for example, travel—
you’re increasing your chances of finding appropriate meta-indexes.
Performing a search on travel alone will return far less targeted results.
Looking for a travel directory alone might not work for you.
Why not? A search for a travel directory on the search engines
often means looking for all sites that contain the words travel and all
sites that contain directory. You should refine your searches to achieve
more accurate results. Some general techniques that use the words
travel and directory as examples you can apply in your search for
meta-indexes are:
• Entering travel directory generally means: Look for all sites containing
the words travel or directory, but try to gather those
sites with travel and directory together.
• Entering “travel directory” (with quotation marks) often means:
Look for all sites containing the words travel and directory next
to each other.
• Entering +travel directory generally means: Find all sites with
the word travel and preferably the word directory as well.
• Entering +travel+directory generally means: Find all sites with
both words.
Search engines look for information in different ways and allow
different techniques to be applied in order to narrow or broaden the
search criteria. This information can be obtained by looking at the respective
search engines’ Help page (Figure 18.2).
Many search engines and directories offer an Advanced Search or
Search Options page that lets you perform more detailed searches without
using the parameters outlined above. Yahoo! (Figure 18.3) and
Google (Figure 18.4) are two such sites.

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If another Web site is generous enough to provide a link to your site,
your image should be only a thumbnail, for you don’t want to take up
too much space. This image could be your corporate logo or a graphic
from a current promotion for one of your products or services. By having
this image and tag line strategically placed on a Web site, the chances
that a viewer will click through to visit your Web site are much higher.
Here is an example of what it should look like:
www.yourdomainname.com”> Catchy tag line here.
To Add or Not to Add with Free-for-All Links
There are thousands of free-for-all links on the Net. These sites allow
you to add your URL to a long list of links, but they provide little traffic
unless you make your link stand out from the rest. One advantage you
can get from these sites is in search engine ranking. As mentioned previously,
some search engines use the number of links to your site in their
ranking criteria.
Figure 16.4. By adding a small graphic to your link, you can make your link
stand out from the others.
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Add Value with Affiliate Programs
Another way of benefiting from links to your Web site is by developing
an affiliate program. Affiliate programs (also called reseller or partnership
or associate programs) are revenue-sharing arrangements set up by
companies selling products and services. When another site agrees to
participate in your affiliate program, it is rewarded for sending customers
to your business. These customers are sent to your site through links
on your associates’ or affiliates’ Web sites. By developing and offering
this type of program, you generate increased business and increased
links to your site and increased link popularity for search engines. Affiliate
programs are explained in more depth in Chapter 17.
Maintaining a Marketing Log
Record all new links to your site in your Internet marketing log. It is
important to maintain this log and review it regularly. You must periodically
check to make certain that links to your site are operational
and are going to the appropriate location. Along with the URL where
your site is linked from, you should also keep track of all contact information
gathered when communicating with the Webmaster.
A Word of Caution with Link Trading
You must be aware when trading links that all links are not created equal.
• If you provide a prominent link to another site, make sure you
receive a link of equal or greater prominence.
• Be aware, when trading your links with sites that receive substantially
less traffic than you do, that you will probably have
more people “link out” than “link in” from this trade. Consider
trading a banner ad and a link from their site for a link from
your site, thus making it more of an equal trade. If their site has
more traffic than yours, don’t mention it unless they do.
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• Never put your outbound links directly on your home page. Have
your outbound links located several levels down so that visitors
to your site will likely have visited all the pages you want them
to visit before they link out.
• When incorporating outbound links, make sure that when the
link is clicked, the Web page is opened in a new browser window
so that the visitor can easily return to your Web page.
• Sometimes when people update their site, they change the Internet
address or delete a page altogether. If you have placed a link on
your page to that page, and one of your viewers tries to link out
to that page and receives an HTTP 404 error, this reflects badly
on your site. You should frequently check your Web site for
dead links.
• When you change content on a page within your site, don’t create
totally new pages; just update the content on your current
pages and keep the same file names. There might be links to
your pages and if you delete them, anyone trying to click on a
link to your site from another site will get an HTTP 404 error.
This results in a dead link on the referring page as well as in any
search engine listings you might have.
Internet Resources for Chapter 16
I have included a few resources for you to check out about developing
a dynamite link strategy. For additional resources on a variety of topics,
visit the Resources section of my Web site at http://www.
susansweeney.com/resources.html. There you will find additional tips,
tools, and techniques.
Tools That Check for Dead Links
NetMechanic
http://www.netmechanic.com
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To find out if you have any dead links with NetMechanic, simply enter
your URL into the query box and view the results. The site generates a
detailed report, which outlines whether you have any dead links—and
if so, where.
Dr. Watson
http://Watson.addy.com
Dr. Watson is a free service to analyze your Web page. You give it the
URL of your page and Watson gets a copy of it directly from the Web
server. Watson can also check out many other aspects of your site, including
link validity, download speed, search engine compatibility, and
link popularity.
Site Owner
http://www.siteowner.com/badlinks.cfm?LID=229
When using Site Owner, you can check your site for various Web site
criteria. To check for dead links, you must enter your URL into the
query box. The results outline any dead links that are on your site.
BizLand SiteDoctor
http://www.bizland.com/product/sitedoctor.html
This Link Check tool searches your site, tests each link it finds and
reports the status of each link it tests.
Reciprocal Link Information
Virtual Promote
http://www.virtualpromote.com/guest6.html
This tutorial covers how to promote traffic to your Web site with reciprocal
links. This is a free service for all Web site developers who want to
learn more about announcing their Web site and promoting more traffic
to the Internet.
Automate link exchange
http://www.linkautomate.com/index.html
Reciprocal Link Exchange software and automate link exchange management
software.
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Free-for-All Link Sites
FFA Net
http://pages.ffanet.com/links/list.pl
This page has a detailed listing of thousands of free-for-all link pages. It
also offers you the opportunity to set up your own free-for-all link pages
on the FFA network.
Link-O-Matic
http://www.linkomatic.com/index.cgi?10000
This site allows you to submit your URL to more than 450 quality promotional
sites with one click, driving traffic to your Web site and saving
you loads of time.
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17
Affiliate Programs
It is a well-known fact that referral business is the easiest and most
efficient business to generate. When doing business on-line, affiliate programs
enable you to capitalize on this concept. The concept of setting
up a referral business model was first started in 1996 when Amazon.com
started paying other Web site owners for referring customers to their
Web site. This referral business model caught on, and now many sites
are incorporating this model into their everyday business activities. The
idea and the corresponding software technology have come a long way
since 1996. The software available today makes the process so simple
that anyone with basic Web skills can set up an affiliate program.
There are many different affiliate programs available on the Internet.
These programs vary in terms of reliability, quality, and the amount of
commissions offered. E-tailers use these programs to develop repeat
business and increase sales. A side benefit to having an affiliate program
is that every affiliate provides a link to your site, which in turn
improves link popularity, which in turn improves your ranking in a
number of the popular search engines. On the downside, developing
and implementing the affiliate program takes time and effort, and you
must be competitive with other affiliate programs to encourage participation.
In this chapter, you will learn:
• How to distinguish among the different types of affiliate programs
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Affiliate Programs 279
• How to pick the appropriate affiliate program for your Web site
• Tips to succeed with affiliate programs
• The benefits of affiliate programs
• How to start your own affiliate programs
• Important features for affiliate-tracking software
• Affiliate program resources.
Affiliate Programs: Increase Traffic to Your Web Site
To understand the opportunities available, you must first understand
the different types of affiliate programs. All pay for referral business,
but in different ways. Before you decide to implement an affiliate program,
you must first look at your objectives, your products and services,
and your target market, and then decide whether an affiliate
program is appropriate for your site. If so, choose the type of program
that works for you.
Commission-Based Affiliate Programs
The most common type of affiliate program is commission based. This
type offers the referring Web site a percentage of sales income resulting
from its referrals. Commissions typically range from 1 to 15 percent.
Some programs offer a two-tier commission structure, and some offer
an increased commission for higher-traffic sites. In a two-tier commission
program, an affiliate is paid a commission on each sale (or lead or
click-through) it refers plus a commission on each sale referred by any
affiliate it told about your program. Some examples of commissionbased
affiliate programs include:
• Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com)
• One and Only (http://www.oneandonlynetwork.com)
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• WebPositionGold (www.webposition.com—see Figure 17.1).
Flat-Fee Referral Programs
Flat-fee referral programs pay the owner of a Web site a fixed amount
for every new visitor who links from the referring site to the host site
and takes certain predefined actions. The required action often is making
a purchase on the host site. Some flat-fee programs do not require a
purchase; the predetermined actions might be joining its e-club, signing
up to receive its e-specials or newsletter, downloading a free demo, ordering
a catalogue, requesting a quote, or taking another action desired
by the host site. A good example of this is eBay (http://www.ebay.com),
which offers affiliates compensation when visitors to their Web site click
through and bid on an item (see Figure 17.2).
Click-Through Programs
A click-through program is one in which affiliates receive a fee for every
unique visitor who clicks through on the referring link on the affiliate’s
Figure 17.1. WebPositionGold (http://www.webposition.com) has a very
popular affiliate program.
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Affiliate Programs 281
Web site or from a link the affiliate has included in a signature file,
e-zine article, advertising or elsewhere. There are many click-through
programs on the Internet. For example, Google AdSense (http://www.
google.com) and ValueClick (http://www.valueclick.com) have clickthrough
programs that eliminate the problems of finding individual advertisers
and allow you to place banner advertisements on your Web
site. Whenever a visitor links out from your site through one of these
banner ads, you receive a flat fee. Two other popular click-through programs
are:
• AllClicks (http://www.allclicks.com—see Figure 17.3)
• SearchTraffic.com (http://www.searchtraffic.com).
Selecting an Affiliate Program That Is Right for You
The first step in deciding whether to start an affiliate program is to
ask whether this fits in with your Web site objectives. Click-through
programs can serve to increase traffic to your Web site as long as your
banner ad is designed with your target market in mind and the banner
Figure 17.2. Ebay.com has a flat-fee referral program.
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ad is placed on sites that are of interest to your target market. Commission-
based and flat-fee affiliate programs can further encourage
the referred visitors to do what you want them to do when they get to
your site. The referring site knows that it receives a commission only
when a certain action has been taken by the visitor, whether that action
be a purchase, a quote request, or something else. The referring
site has a vested interest in having the referred visitor take the desired
action and is in a position to suggest or recommend that the visitor
take that action.
How to Succeed with Your Affiliate Site
You may have an affiliate program, but are you really doing all you can
to exploit it? There are several things you could do to be successful with
an affiliate program. You should go out of your way to help make the
links stand out on your affiliates’ sites. Provide different-sized icons
that grab visitors’ attention and are designed with the target market in
mind. Also prepare the proper HTML coding and a tag line linking to
Figure 17.3. AllClicks has one of the top click-through affiliate programs on
the Internet.
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your Web site, and you help your affiliates get the attention of their
visitors. You can also inspect your affiliates’ Web sites regularly to determine
whether there is anything you can do to help them add value to
the links on their pages. You could offer them advice about where they
should locate your links if they are in an obscure place on their Web
site. Remember that you don’t run their Web sites, so be diplomatic.
Other affiliate program operators offer more advanced tools to
their affiliates. For example, a program operator might offer affiliates
a generic e-mail newsletter, which the affiliate could easily download,
personalize, and send out in its mailing list. This generic newsletter is
written in an enticing manner and encourages the affiliate’s mail list
subscribers to visit the affiliate Web site and click on the affiliate program
link.
Some affiliate program operators provide a weekly e-mail to their
affiliates with new material, icons, articles, banners, etc. as well as recommended
actions to be taken by the affiliates for the coming week.
The key point is that you should take advantage of as many opportunities
as possible to leverage the power of your affiliate program.
Through providing your affiliates with these value-added services, you
not only strengthen the power of your affiliate program, but you also
show your affiliates your commitment to seeing that they are successful
with your program.
You should also make sure that you, the affiliate administrator, do
your best to be prompt with reporting and referral payments. People
will not want to participate in your program if you are late with payments
or don’t provide them with detailed reports of their referrals from
the previous reporting period. By sticking to the program schedule and
doing the best you can for your affiliates, you not only keep your affiliates
happy, you also advance the interests of your affiliate program.
Benefits of Creating an Affiliate Program
There are many benefits to participating in an affiliate program, especially
if you decide to create your own. There are also some not-soobvious
advantages that you can benefit from. By creating your own
affiliate program, you could generate a significant increase in traffic to
your own Web site. When your affiliates place links on their Web sites
linking to your site, you will increase your link popularity and, if you’re

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Strategies for Finding Appropriate Link Sites
Ideally, you should be linked from every high-traffic site that is of interest
to your target market. Develop a strategy to find all of these sites
and arrange links.
Start with the popular search engines. Most people use search engines
and directories to find subjects of interest on the Internet. Most of
the people searching never go beyond the first 20 to 30 results that the
search engine returns. Thus, these top 20 to 30 sites get a lot of traffic.
Search relevant keywords in all the popular search engines and directories,
and investigate these top sites for link possibilities. Some of these
sites will be competitors and might not want to reciprocate links. The
best opportunity for links is with noncompeting sites that have the same
target market. I suggest you take your most important keywords, do a
keyword search in the 20 most popular search engines and directories,
and review the top 30 sites in each for potential link sites.
Another strategy to find useful link sites is to see where the leaders
in your industry and your competitors are linked. I use the term “competitors”
very loosely. It would include your direct competitors, your
industry leaders, companies selling noncompeting products to your target
market, companies selling similar types of products or services to
your target market, and companies that compete with you for search
engine ranking. See what your competition is doing. Determine where
they are linked from, and decide whether these are sites that you should
also be linked from. Learn what they are doing well, and also learn
from their mistakes. You should be linked everywhere your competition
is appropriately linked, and then some.
Explore These URLs
There are many tools on the Internet to help you identify a Web site’s
links. These tools can be used to see which sites are linking to your Web
site. But they can also be used to see what sites are linking to your
competition. This is a great way to research where your site could be
linked from but isn’t—yet! Let me walk you through a step-by-step process
to increase the number of links to your Web site.
When determining which sites you should be linked from, you first
have to develop a lengthy list of competitors. A competitor can be any
business or site that offers the same products or services as you do or
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Developing a Dynamite Link Strategy 265
anyone targeting the same demographic group. Because the Internet creates
a level playing field for all businesses, you are also competing against
large and small companies from around the globe. Someone using a
search engine to find information on services that your company can
provide might see results from companies from all across the world in
the top ten results.
Once you have developed your extensive list of competitors and
have gathered their URLs, you must then find out what sites they are
linked from. Tools have been developed to assist you in finding who is
linking to your site. In most cases you enter your URL, and then these
tools provide a list of sites linking to it. However, by entering the URL
for a competitor’s site you can just as easily determine which sites are
linking to your competition and industry leaders.
The more organized you are for this exercise, the better. I suggest
that you:
1. Gather an extensive list of competitors and their URLs.
2. Choose the tool(s) from the next section that you are going to
use for this exercise.
3. Enter the first competitor URL to find the sites linking to it.
4. Copy and paste the results into a Word, Notepad, or other file
that you can access later.
5. Enter the next competitor URL to find the sites linking to it.
6. Copy and paste the results into the same Word, Notepad, or
other file, adding to your list of potential link sites.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you have found all the sites linking to
your competition. When this is done, you have your potential
link sites list.
8. Now develop a link request (see the next section for details) and
keep it open on your desktop so that you can copy and paste it
into an e-mail when you find a site you’d like to have a link from.
9. Next, visit every one of the potential link sites to determine
whether the site is appropriate for you to be linked from. If so,
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send your link request. If the site is not appropriate for whatever
reason, delete it from your list. Also delete duplicates. When
you get to the bottom of your list, it has changed from a potential
links list to a request links list.
10. Follow through and follow up. Follow through and provide an
appropriate link to those who agree to a reciprocal link. Follow
up to make sure that they provide the link to your site as promised,
that the link works, and that it is pointing to the correct
page on your site.
11. Submit the Internet address of the page that has provided the
link to the popular search engines so that they know it’s there.
This will help boost your link popularity scores.
Tools to Identify Your Competitors’ Links
The following tools can be used to obtain a list of locations on the
Internet that are linked to your competitors’ Web sites:
AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com
To find out where your competitors are linked using AltaVista, simply
enter the competitor’s URL in the search area like this: link:
yourcompetitorsdomain.com. This returns all pages in AltaVista with a
link to your competitor’s Web site.
Excite and Other Search Engines
Just enter your competitors’ URLs and see what comes up. (Be sure to
include http://.) If anything, the search query will include all indexed
Web sites that contain the URL searched.
Google
http://www.google.com
Enter your competitor’s URL in the search box like this: link:
yourcompetitorsURL. The results will contain all Web sites linking to
your competitor’s Web site.
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HotBot
http://www.hotbot.com
Enter your competitor’s URL in the search box and change the default
from “all the words” to “links to this URL.” When you type in the
URL, remember to include http://. The results will contain all Web sites
linking to your competitor’s Web site.
Link Popularity
http://www.linkpopularity.com
Simply type in your competitor’s URL and it will give you a list of all the
sites linking to that particular site (see Figure 16.2).
Link Popularity Check
http://www.linkpopularitycheck.com
Use this tool to compare your Web site to up to three other competitors’
sites using their link popularity check. In addition to a comparison graph
of the number of links each site has, it also gives details on where those
links are coming from.
Figure 16.2. LinkPopularity.com offers a free link popularity check service.
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WebCrawler
http://www.webcrawler.com/WebCrawler/Links.html
Enter your competitor’s URL into the search query box to find out how
many links are provided to that page. WebCrawler provides the names
of all the referring sites.
Other Potential Link Strategies
Another strategy for finding potential link sites is to visit the many
different search engines and do a search on keywords you feel people
would search on if they were looking for your site. The top results get
a lot of visits from your target market so they are always good potential
link sites.
The following is a step-by-step strategy to get linked from these sites.
1. Make a list of your most important keywords for your Web site
using your master keyword list and meta-tags (see Chapter 6).
2. Develop a list of the top 30 search engines (check SearchEngine
Watch.com).
3. Go to each of the 30 search engines and input your most important
keyword as identified in step 1.
4. Copy and paste the results into a Word, Notepad, or other file
that you can access later.
5. Enter the next keyword and copy and paste the results into the
same Word, Notepad, or other file, adding to your list of potential
link sites.
6. Repeat step 5 until you have used all the keywords in your list.
When this is done, you will have 900 potential sites for each
keyword. You now have your potential link sites list.
7. Now develop a link request (see the next section for details)
and keep it open on your desktop so that you can copy and
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Developing a Dynamite Link Strategy 269
paste it into an e-mail when you find a site you’d like to have a
link from.
8. Next, visit every one of the potential link sites to determine
whether the site is appropriate for you to be linked from. If so,
send your link request. If the site is not appropriate for whatever
reason, delete it from your list. Also delete duplicates. When
you get to the bottom of your list, it has changed from a potential
links list to a request links list.
9. Follow through and follow up. Follow through and provide an
appropriate link to those who agree to a reciprocal link. Follow
up to make sure that they provide the link to your site as promised,
that the link works, and that it is pointing to the correct
page on your site.
10. Submit the Internet address of the page that has provided the
link to the popular search engines so that they know it’s there.
This will help boost your link popularity scores.
Winning Approval for Potential Links
Now that you have a list of Web sites you would like to be linked from,
the next step is to determine from whom to request the link. Usually
this can be found on the site. Titles such as Webmaster@ or any variation
on that theme are usually a safe bet. If the site does not have an
obvious contact, try feedback@. You can either send the request there
or ask for the e-mail address of the right person.
If you cannot find an e-mail address on a Web site you can visit a
domain registration service such as Network Solutions (www.
networksolutions.com) to find out contact information for that domain
name. Click on the “WHOIS Lookup” link and submit the URL to do a
search. The results will include the contacts, both technical and administrative,
for that Web site. The technical contact most likely is the person
you are looking for, because that is who most likely looks after the
Web site. The administrative contact is usually responsible for the re-
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newal of the domain name, and the billing contact is usually the bill
payer for the domain name.
Generally, a short note with the appropriate information in the subject
line is most suitable. Your note should be courteous, briefly describe
your site’s content, and provide the rationale for why you think
reciprocating links would result in a win-win situation. It doesn’t hurt
to compliment some aspect of the site that you think is particularly
engaging.
It is a good idea to develop a generic “link request” letter that you
can have on hand when you are surfing. You should always keep this
letter open on your desktop when surfing the Internet so that you can
easily copy and paste the letter into an e-mail.
Here is an example of a link request e-mail:
Dear Web Site Owner,
I have just finished viewing your site and found it quite enjoyable.
I found the content to be very valuable, particularly [customize
here]. My site visitors would appreciate your content as I think
we appeal to the same demographic group. My site, http://www.
mysitename.com, focuses on [my site content] and would likely
be of value to your visitors. I’d like to suggest we trade links.
Sincerely,
John
A typical response might say that they would appreciate the link to
their site and offer to provide a reciprocal link. To facilitate this, you
should either have the HTML for the link ready to send or have it available
on your site, or both. Make sure you have your most important
keyword in the text around the link to your site to ensure you score as
high as possible in the link relevancy category.
Make sure to follow through and follow up. If you said that you
would provide a reciprocal link, do so within 24 hours. Follow up to
make sure that your site has been linked from theirs, the link works
properly, and it is linked to the right page on your site.
Then remember to send a thank you. Because they are doing you a
favor by adding your site to their Web page, you should strive to develop
a good relationship with them. This way they might be more generous
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with the link they give you. They might place it higher on the page, or
even offer you the opportunity of having a small graphic link on their
page, which would be dynamite for increasing traffic to your site. These
graphic links are explained in more detail later in the chapter.
Another way to get links is to ask for them on your site. In a prominent
location on your site, place a link that says something like, “Would
you like to provide a link to this site? Click here.” Link this message to
a separate page that holds several options for links. You can provide
viewers with several different sizes of banner ads they could place on
their Web site. You can also provide them with a thumbnail icon, the
HTML, and your tagline, which they could simply copy and paste into
the HTML code on their Web site. Again, remember to select appropriate
keywords to include in the text around the link to increase your link
relevancy score with the popular search engines.
Quite often, if you offer viewers these opportunities for links, you
have a better chance of receiving these enhanced link features. If you
make it easier for them to add the link, they will be more willing to
provide it. Figure 16.3 shows an example of a site that provides the
relevant coding and images for people who want to provide a link.
Figure 16.3. By providing the HTML text and icons on your site you can
make it very easy for visitors to add your link to their site.
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You might want to offer an incentive to people who provide you
with a link. It could be something that can be downloaded or a free
sample of your product in exchange for a link. This provides you with
another opportunity to market your site because you are giving something
away for free, and thus you can be listed on the many Internet
sites that identify sites for freebies. Another useful tactic is to include
viewers who provide a link to your site in a drawing for a prize.
You might run a contest such as “Provide a Link to Us and Win,”
where you include all those sites linking to you in a drawing once a
week or once a month, depending on the size of the prize.
Meta-indexes and Web rings are other sources for
links. For a complete discussion of meta-indexes and Web
rings, see Chapters 18 and 23, respectively.
You might need to prompt sites to provide promised
links. If you have made an arrangement for a link and
find that the link is not there, it is appropriate to send an e-mail reminder.
When sending the follow-up e-mail, include your icon, HTML,
URL, and any other helpful information.
Making Your Link the Place to Click
There are links and then there are links. Usually links are your company
name hyperlinked to your home page, and your company’s site link is
listed with a number of other companies’ links. Sometimes, if you are
lucky, there is a brief description attached to the link.
You should take a proactive approach with linking arrangements.
Explore every opportunity to have your link placed prominently and, if
possible, to have it differentiated from the other links on the page. Figure
16.4 demonstrates how having an image associated with your link
can make your link stand out among all of the other links.
Once you have an agreement with a site willing to provide a link,
you should ask if you could send them an icon and the HTML
for the link. The icon (GIF or JPG format) should be visually
pleasing and representative of your company. Within the
HTML, include a tag line or call to action that entices people
to click on the link. With the icon or logo, the tag line, and
your company’s name, your link will stand out. Again, remember
to include appropriate keywords to add to your link
relevancy score to improve your search engine ranking.

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Outsourcing
InBox360
http://www.inbox360.com
The 360 System is one of the most flexible and powerful database and
permission-based e-mail-marketing systems available today.
Bluestreak
http://www.bluestreak.com
Bluestreak is a global online direct marketing firm founded upon advanced
technologies and best practices for interactive marketing.
Blacklists
Razor2
http://www.razor.sf.net
DCC List
http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/dcc/dcc-tree/dcc.html
Pyzor
http://www.pyzor.sf.net
Mail Abuse Prevention
http://www.mail-abuse.org
Network Abuse Clearinghouse
http://www.abuse.net
Not Just Another Blacklist
http://www.njabl.org
SPAM Blocking Blackhole
http://www.blackholes.bruli.net
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15
Effective Promotion
through Direct Mail Lists
For years marketers have been renting mail lists from reputable companies
for direct marketing purposes. These companies take their
customers’ marketing materials and manage the process of printing
labels, affixing the labels and postage, and sending the materials
out. The same type of service is available on-line—only the marketing
message is sent via e-mail rather than snail mail. In this chapter,
we cover:
• How direct mail list companies work
• How to select a company to work with
• How you work with a direct mail list company
• Costs related to direct mail list marketing
• Tips on how to make the most of your direct mail list marketing.
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How Direct Mail List Companies Work
Online direct mail list companies work on the same premise as offline
direct mail list companies. They provide a service to organizations that
want to directly market to a particular demographic or geographic segment
of the population. To do this effectively, they develop large databases
of individuals that fit specific criteria.
How they generate these databases is what differentiates the good
from the bad. The not-so-reputable companies and the bulk mail list
companies tend to “grab” e-mail addresses from newsgroups, public
mail lists, and a number of other places on the Internet, using programs
built just for that purpose. Reputable companies, on the other
hand, have a number of strategic ways to build their lists of people
interested in receiving information on specific topics. They partner
with sites that have significant targeted traffic to offer relevant and
interesting information to that site’s visitors. They offer the site visitors
the opportunity to “opt in” to receive updates or information on
the specified topic.
To opt in, there has to be an offer for information on the topic and
the visitor has to ask to be put on the list, provide his or her e-mail
address, and often also provide his or her first name. The list company
wants the first name so that future correspondence can be personalized.
Some of the more reputable companies require a “double opt-in” to
increase the value of their list and to ensure the validity of the names on
their list. With a double opt-in, the site visitor asks to be put on the list
to receive updates or information on a particular topic. When the mail
list company receives this request, it follows up with an e-mail notifying
the individual that the request has been received and asking for confirmation
of the request by a reply to the e-mail.
These direct mail list companies organize their databases by area
of interest. They continually improve their lists by doing a little data
mining with their correspondence to the people on their lists. Sometimes
they use tracking techniques to hone in on specific areas of
interest, sometimes they ask a question or two to access more demographic
or psychographic information about the individuals on the
list, and sometimes they send a detailed survey-type questionnaire
asking for feedback so they can better tailor the information being
sent to the individual.
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Effective Promotion through Direct Mail Lists 255
How to Select a Direct Mail Company
There are a number of factors to consider when selecting a direct mail
list company to work with. First and foremost, the company must be
reputable.
The company should have a topic list that meshes with your target
market. If you sell tropical fish, the company should have a category
that fits. Not all direct mail list companies focus on the same
categories. Some concentrate on business topics, others on individual
leisure topics, still others on technology topics and some focus on a
combination.
When you have narrowed down the reputable companies with topic
lists that relate to your product or service, look at costs, tracking, policies
on content and opt-in policies. You want to work with a company
that personalizes its correspondence to the individuals on the list. You
also want to be able to encourage recipients to visit your Web site, so
you don’t want to have any restrictions on hypertext links. Some direct
mail list companies provide tracking statistics for their customers. It is
useful to know how many people read the message, and how many
people merely “clicked through” to your Web site rather than taking
the action you wanted them to.
How to Work with a Direct Mail List Company
Once you have selected the direct mail list company or companies you
want to work with, you should:
• Fine-tune the specific list to receive your message.
• Provide the message content to the direct mail list company.
• Approve the sample message.
Then, the mail list company will:
• Compile the specific list.
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• Develop or format the message you provided.
• Send you a sample for final approval.
• Merge the list with your message so that each person on the list
receives a personalized message.
• Send out the message to the list.
• Track specific actions taken by recipients once they have received
the message.
You work with the direct mail list company employees to have them
develop the specific list that meets with your objectives and fits your
budget. These companies usually can segment their lists to come up
with just the right grouping to meet your needs and budget. For example,
you might want your message to go out to people interested in
white-water rafting. If the direct mail list company’s list for outdoor
adventure enthusiasts is segmented, they can pull out the white-water
rafting segment. If that list provides more names than your budget can
afford, they might be able to segment the list again to only include whitewater
rafting enthusiasts in specific states.
Costs Related to Direct Mail List Marketing
The costs for direct mail list marketing are always on a per name basis.
Often there is a sliding scale based on volume. The costs per name generally
include all the services you need from the direct mail list company,
including segmenting and rental of the list, merge and
personalization, and delivery of the message. Different companies charge
different amounts per name.
Postmaster Direct (http://www.postmasterdirect.com) is one of the
oldest and most reputable direct mail list companies around (see Figure
15.1). It has more than 3,000 topic lists, with more than 30 million
e-mail addresses. It has the largest database of business-to-business
double-opt-in e-mail addresses. One hundred percent of the names on
its list are opt-in. It partners with high-traffic reputable sites to generate
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Effective Promotion through Direct Mail Lists 257
its lists—sites like About.com, Internet.com, and CNET. Postmaster
Direct costs per name range from 10 cents to 35 cents, including rental,
merge, and delivery. A minimum order costs $1,000.
There are a number of direct mail list companies to consider. I have
provided a link to many of them from the free Internet Resources section
of my Web site (http://www.susansweeney.com/resources.html).
Although the pricing information and numbers of topic lists or categories
were correct at the time of printing this book, check the direct mail
list company sites for updates before making any decisions.
Make the Most of Your Direct Mail List Marketing
Direct mail list marketing is a great way to reach a significant number
of your target market with your message in a short period of time. Ideally,
you would like to have each of these names on your private mail
Figure 15.1. PostMaster Direct is one of the oldest and most reputable direct
mail list companies around.
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258 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
list. If you’re smart about the content of the message you have the direct
mail list company send out, you can go a long way toward converting
the direct mail list recipients to your private mail list subscribers.
In your direct mail list message, you want to give recipients a compelling
reason to visit your Web site. The URL or specific page reached by
the hypertext link in your direct mail message should provide them with
not only the content they are expecting, but also a compelling reason to
join your private mail list and an opportunity to easily sign up.
To ensure that your message is opened and read put in the time and
effort to have a dynamite subject line. Often the subject line determines
whether the message is read or is one of the many deleted unopened.
Consider personalizing the subject line with the recipient’s name. And
make sure the subject line copy does not read like an ad. Ads and junk
mail are the first to be deleted.
Write your message so it can be easily scanned. That’s how busy
people read their e-mail—they scan it. Grab the reader’s attention in the
first sentence. If you don’t, he or she won’t read any further.
Of course, be sure you have used the proper upper- and lowercase,
correct grammar, and correct spelling. You know yourself how many
business e-mails you get that don’t take this seriously. Your e-mail is a
reflection of the attention to detail you give everything in your business.
Make sure you access and analyze any tracking information available
from the direct mail list company. Notice what copy works best.
Notice what subject lines give a better response rate. Notice the different
responses from different direct mail list companies.
Internet Resources for Chapter 15
I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding direct
mail list marketing. For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit
the Resources section of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/
resources.html. There you can find additional tips, tools, techniques,
and resources.
Act One Lists
http://www.act1lists.com
Act One Lists is a full-service list company specializing in compilation,
brokerage, management, data processing, and direct marketing consulting
with 26 years of experience.
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Direct Mail Library
http://www.amlist.com/Knowledge/articlelist.asp
Lots of articles on everything from how to create your e-mail message
to the 12 most common direct mail mistakes.
Direct Marketing Network
http://www.minokc.com/dmnetwork
A searchable database of more than 80,000 business listings for direct
mail marketing.
DMNews.com
http://www.dmnews.com
An online paper devoted to direct mail marketing.
Dunn & Bradstreet Sales and Marketing Solutions
http://www.zapdata.com
Provider of direct mail list solutions.
GreatLists.com
http://www.greatlists.com
An independent supplier of both domestic U.S. and international business-
to-business and professional marketing lists to clients throughout
America and in more than 25 countries around the world.
iList
http://www.ilistinc.com
iList provides double-opt-in e-mail list services from the top e-mail solution
providers in the United States.
Nerd Wide Web Direct Marketing Resources
http://www.nerdworld.com/nw9490.html
Links to lots of companies providing direct mail list solutions.
Tips for Writing your E-mail Message
http://www.htmail.com/article5.html
Tips to keep in mind when writing your e-mail marketing piece.
USAData’s Direct Marketing Portal
http://www.usadata.com
USAData’s Direct Marketing Portal allows you to easily and quickly
launch your own targeted direct mail program.
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260
16
Developing a Dynamite
Link Strategy
The more strategically chosen links you have to your site, the better!
Increase your traffic and improve your search engine ranking by orchestrating
links from related Web pages. In this chapter, we cover:
• Developing a link strategy
• How to arrange links
• Getting noticed—providing an icon and tag line
hypertext for links to your site
• Link positioning
• Tools to check your competitors’ links
• Using links to enhance your image
• Web rings and meta-indexes
• Getting links to your site
Links
Selectable connections
from one word, picture,
or information
object to another.
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Developing a Dynamite Link Strategy 261
• Reciprocal link pages
• Associate programs
• How links can enhance your search engine placements.
Links Have an Impact
Developing your link strategy is one of the most crucial elements of
Internet marketing. It is a time-consuming task, but it is time well spent.
Links are important for several reasons.
1. Strategically placed, they can be a real traffic builder.
2. A number of the frequently used search engines use link popularity
and link relevancy as part of their ranking criteria. The
more links to your site, the more popular it is, so the number of
links you have to your site can significantly impact your placement
with those search engines.
3. The more links you have to your site, the more opportunities
search engine spiders have to find you.
Links Have Staying Power
When you post a message to a newsgroup where you promote your
Web site through your brilliant contributions and your signature file,
you receive increased traffic while the message is current and is being
read by participants in the newsgroup. As time passes, your message
appears farther and farther down the list until it disappears, and then
your traffic level returns to normal. The same goes for a promotional
effort in a mail list. You can expect increased traffic for a short while
after your mail list posting, but as soon as everyone has read your posting
and visited your site, traffic levels return to normal.
This is not the same for links. Traffic from links does not go away as
easily as other forms of Internet marketing. Links generally stay active
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262 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
for a long time. When a link to your site is placed on another Web site,
you hope people see it and are enticed to click through to visit your site.
As long as the site that hosts your link has new traffic, you continue to
receive traffic through it. The beauty of links is that in three months,
that link will still be there and people will still be clicking through!
Links are very important because if you have links placed on a
high-traffic Web site, they can turn into traffic builders for your own
site. They also are important because they can have a major impact on
your ranking in search engines, because some of the busiest ones use
link popularity in their ranking criteria. Some of these search engines
include:
• Google (www.google.com)
• Yahoo search (www.search.yahoo.com)
• AltaVista (www.altavista.com)
• HotBot (www.hotbot.com)
• MSN (www.msn.com)
• Inktomi (www.inktomi.com).
Once your link strategy is implemented and you begin to see an increase
in the number of sites linking to your Web site, you will see
your ranking in the previously mentioned search engines improve. For
more information on search engines and their ranking criteria, see
Chapters 6 and 7.
A Quick Talk about Outbound Links
The more links to your site, the better chance that someone will be
enticed to visit. However, a quid quo pro usually applies, and this means
providing reciprocal links, giving people the opportunity to leave your
site with the click of a button. To minimize this “flight effect,” make
sure you place outbound links two or three layers down in your site.
Never place outbound links on your home page. You want your visitors
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Developing a Dynamite Link Strategy 263
to come into your site and see and do everything you want them to
before they have the opportunity to go elsewhere.
There are two ways you can provide outbound links. The first is by
providing a hypertext link, which transports the visitor from your site
to some one else’s with a single click. The second and preferred method
is to have each outbound link open a new browser window when clicked.
This way your visitors get to see the referred Web site, but when they
are finished and close that window, the original browser window with
your Web site is still active. The browser window with your site should
still be visible on the task bar during their visit to the referred site.
Regularly test all of the links from your site to ensure that they are
“live” and are going to the intended locations. Dead links reflect poorly
on your site even if they are out of your control. There are tools available
on-line to help you determine whether you have dead links. These
tools include NetMechanic at http://www.netmechanic.com (see Figure
16.1) and Dr. Watson at http://watson.addy.com. Each of these tools is
discussed in more depth in the Internet Resources section at the end of
this chapter.

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• If you use tele-sales, add an element that promotes your mail list
and asks if the person would like to join.
Promoting Your Private Mail List
Promote your private mail list wherever you can reach your target market:
on your site, on-line through various online marketing techniques,
and off-line. You will:
• Encourage your Web site visitors to join your list by making
sure you have “Join our mail list—click here” calls to action
throughout your site. You might enhance this with an incentive
“Join our mail list to receive our biweekly tips, tools, and
techniques and to be included in our drawing for a Palm Pilot—
Click here.”
• Include a viral marketing element as previously described to
encourage your subscribers to recommend your mail list to
others.
• Publicize your mailing list in postings to other mailing lists and
newsgroups if it is appropriate. There is a moderated mailing
list devoted to helping new list owners promote their list. To
subscribe, send a message containing the line “Subscribe NEWLIST
firstname lastname” to listserv@vm1.nodak.edu.
• Invite your friends, colleagues, current clients, and potential clients
to join your list.
• Remember to mention your mailing list in your e-mail signature
file. This is an easy way to promote the list.
• If you are looking for a large distribution list, you might even
register your mailing list with Topica (http://www.lists.
topica.com), or other public mail lists (see Chapter 13 on Public
Mail Lists).
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Your Communication with Your Mail List
To be successful with private mail list marketing, you have to have a
great targeted list and you have to know how to communicate effectively
with your subscribers. How often should they receive your messages?
When do you start to become an irritant? What time and day are
your recipients going to be most receptive? How should your communication
be formatted? Should it be text or HTML? These all are important
questions to be answered if you want to improve the response.
How often should you communicate? It depends on what you’re
sending and what they asked to receive. Newsletters should generally
be sent out every couple of weeks. Special promotions, coupons, and
e-specials generally will be sent out weekly at a consistent time. What’snew
updates would generally be sent monthly unless you’ve got something
“hot.” Tips of the day should be sent…daily. Tips of the week
should be sent…weekly.
When should your communication be delivered? There have been
many studies on this topic, and consensus has it:
• Never send your message late in the day or first thing in the
morning. If you do, your e-mail is included in that large group
that is in the recipient’s inbox first thing in the morning. You
know what happens to all that e-mail because you do it yourself—
the first thing you do is see how much you can delete—
starting with anything that looks remotely like an ad or
promotion.
• Not after 2 p.m. on Friday or afternoon on Friday in the summer
months. Being buried in that huge pile awaiting a recipient
on Monday morning is the kiss of death for your e-mail.
• Lunch hour is best for business-to-business messages. Generally,
people clean out their e-mail first thing in the morning and
again before they go to lunch. After their lunch break they are a
little more relaxed and the first thing they do is check their e-mail.
This is the best chance for your e-mail to get noticed.
When it comes to the formatting of your correspondence, if you
communicate in a newsletter, coupons, e-specials, or this type of marketing
content, an HTML message has a better chance of grabbing the
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Establishing Your Private Mailing List 243
viewer’s attention. If your message is meant to look like a personal oneon-
one message, then text-based is better. Your communications should
be personalized using the recipient’s first name appropriately throughout
the correspondence and in the subject field.
Your content should always be valuable, fresh, relevant, and succinct.
One bad message could result in many “Unsubscribes.”
Each paragraph should be written so it can be easily scanned, containing
no more than six or seven lines. Include calls to action. Always
encourage viral marketing—“Send a copy to a friend”—and provide
instructions for the friend to subscribe to be included in your list.
Use a personal name in the “From” field. You want to build a relationship!
Take time with your subject field:
• Avoid ad copy
• Avoid gimmicky slogans
• Build business credibility
• Use action words
• Be positive
• Personalize.
Stay Under the Spam Radar
These days anywhere between 5 and 20 percent of legitimate, permission-
based e-mail is filtered out by the spam detectors and never reaches
the intended recipients. Always run your marketing messages through a
spam checker before sending out. The spam checkers will give you a
spam rating score and tell you how you received that score. Today if
your score is 5.0 or higher it will be deemed to be spam by most of the
spam filters. If your message scores too high you should edit your message
to eliminate or change the items that gave you the score. Then you
should run your new message through the spam checker to make sure
you have an acceptable score before sending your message out.
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244 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
Many ASP mail list software programs have an integrated spam
checker. If yours does not there are a number of free spam checkers online
and others that charge a fee.
Some of the e-mail elements that add points to your spam rating
include:
• Using software and listservers that are commonly used by
spammers. The header identifies the software that you are
using.
• Spam words in the subject line. Things such as:
– FREE in CAPS
– GUARANTEED
– Subject talks about saving
– Starts with Hello
– $
• Hyperlinks—Using links without the http:// prefix or using IP
numbers instead of domain names.
• Color discrimination
– Color tags not formatted correctly
– Using colors not in the 217 Web-safe colors
– Hidden letters (same color as background)
• Background other than white
• HTML issues
– HTML message has more than 50 percent HTML tags
– JavaScript within the message
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– HTML forms within your e-mail
– HTML comments that obfuscate text
• Using excess capital letters.
• Using large fonts and characters. Fonts larger than +2 or 3 can cause
you to have points added to your score. Use H1, H2, H3 instead.
• Using spam words or phrases in the body of your message adds
points to your score. There are way too many of these to list.
Your spam checker lets you know what words are adding points.
The following are the type of words and phrases that they are
looking for:
– Great offer
– Risk free
– You have been selected
– Guarantee
– Call now
– Amazing
– Act now
– Millions
– Order now
• Carefully word your Unsubscribe. Claims that you can be removed,
claims that you listen to removal lists and list removal
information all add points to your score. Use text like “Use this
link to unsubscribe.”
• If your communication is a newsletter, say so. The spam rating
also allows points to be deducted from your score for certain
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elements. When the subject contains a newsletter header, or contains
a newsletter frequency, month name or date, you might be
spared some unwanted points.
• Use a signature file. This is another element that can cause points
to be deducted from your score. Spammers never include their
signature file.
• Don’t mention spam compliance—only spammers do this.
• Keep your message size over 20k. Spammers’ messages are very
small in file size because they often send millions in a mailing.
Always make sure you update your list and do your housekeeping
regularly. Remove any addresses that have bounced back to you as undeliverable
if your software doesn’t automatically do this for you. Remove
and “spam flag” addresses in your database—those that begin
with spam@, abuse@, postmaster@, or nospam@.
Set up test accounts for yourself at the popular e-mail hosts to ensure
that your mail is getting through. Set up test accounts at MSN,
Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL and some of the popular ISPs.
Always monitor the Blacklists to make sure you are not included. A
number of Blacklists are included in the Resources section at the end of
this chapter.
Recent Legislation
It is essential to make sure you are in compliance with legislation regarding
anti-spam (in the U.S.), privacy (in Canada) and other rules and
regulations related to commercial e-mail throughout the world.
The U.S. legislation, which took effect January 1, 2004, is called the
Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing
Act (CAN-SPAM). This legislation provides regulations for commercial
e-mail. The full details can be found at http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/
108s877.html.
The main rules for CAN-SPAM include:
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• You must provide accurate header information. The sender has
to identify him/her/itself accurately.
• You must provide an accurate Subject line for commercial e-mails.
• You must provide a functioning return e-mail address that is
clearly and conspicuously displayed and permits a recipient to
decline future commercial e-mails (opt-out) from that sender.
• Commercial e-mail must include the (snail mail) postal address
of the sender.
• Commercial e-mail must include clear and concise identification
that the content of the e-mail is an advertisement or solicitation.
• If a person opts out of your mailings you must remove that individual
from your database within 10 days and you are not allowed
to transfer, sell, or give that individual’s contact
information to anyone else after they have asked to be removed.
The Canadian legislation is the Personal Information Protection and
Electronic Documents Act, commonly referred to as PIPEDA. The Canadian
legislation establishes rules to govern the collection, use and disclosure
of personal information. It recognizes the “right of privacy” of
individuals with respect to their personal information. Full details on
the Canadian legislation can be found at http://www.privcom.gc.ca/legislation/
02_06_01_01_e.asp.
The main rules for PIPEDA include:
• Accountability—An organization is responsible for personal information
under its control and shall designate an individual or
individuals who are accountable for the organization’s compliance
with the following principles.
• Identifying purposes—The purposes for which personal information
is collected shall be identified by the organization at or
before the time the information is collected.
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• Consent—The knowledge and consent of the individual are required
for the collection, use, or disclosure of personal information,
except where inappropriate.
• Limiting collection—The collection of personal information shall
be limited to that which is necessary for the purposes identified
by the organization. Information shall be collected by fair and
lawful means.
• Limiting use, disclosure and retention—Personal information
shall not be used or disclosed for purposes other than those for
which it was collected, except with the consent of the individual
or as required by law. Personal information shall be retained
only as long as necessary for the fulfillment of those purposes.
• Accuracy—Personal information shall be as accurate, complete
and up-to-date as is necessary for the purpose for which it is used.
• Safeguards—Personal information shall be protected by security
safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information.
• Openness—An organization shall make readily available to individuals
specific information about its policies and practices
relating to the management of personal information.
• Individual access—Upon request, an individual shall be informed
of the existence, use, and disclosure of his or her personal information,
and shall be given access to that information. An individual
shall be able to challenge the accuracy and completeness
of the information and have it amended as appropriate.
• Challenging compliance—An individual shall be able to address
a challenge concerning compliance with the above principles to
the designate individual or individuals accountable for the
organization’s compliance.
Measure, Measure, Measure
You want to improve your effectiveness as you learn from experience.
This can only happen if you keep track of past performance. You want
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to track such things as delivery rate, how many undeliverables, how
many unsubscribes, click-through rates, gross response, and net response.
You want to compare response rates within different timings,
different types of creativity, different formats, different segments of
your list, and different target markets. Once you analyze what is working
and what is not, you’ll be in a better position to improve your
conversion ratios.
Where to Go from Here
In this chapter, we discussed reasons you might want to have your own
mailing list, how you can set up your list, and other issues you might
face once your list goes live. Private mailing lists are prime marketing
vehicles if you manage them correctly and actively promote them. You
can reach out to your target market with a mailing list. This technique
of permission, or opt-in, e-mail marketing is the key to your success. If
you have something to offer to people in your industry and it is feasible
for you to establish and administer a mailing list, give the idea strong
consideration.
Internet Resources for Chapter 14
I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding private
mail lists. For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the Resources
section of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/
resources.html. There you can find additional tips, tools, techniques,
and resources.
Mail List Software
Professional Cart Solutions
http://www.profcs.com
This is the mail list software I use for my newsletter. It is a combination
shopping cart and mail list software solution. Great in terms of functionality,
easy to use and fantastic support. The program has built in
autoresponders, integrates easily with your Web site, automatically
handles the administrative issues of subscribes and unsubscribes, pro-
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vides great reports, and allows you to build the profile of everyone in
your database.
nTarget
http://www.ntarget.com
nTarget’s permission e-mail marketing software allows you to manage
your own marketing program with only a Web browser. nTarget’s permission
e-mail marketing software is so intuitive and easy to use that
even beginners can create an account, enter contacts, and distribute an
e-mail promotion within minutes.
Topica Email Publisher
http://www.topica.com
Topica’s Marketing Automation Software allows you to build and manage
your customer database, create and send targeted e-mail campaigns,
and track and optimize your campaign results.
Lyris
www.lyris.com
Lyris is a powerful e-mail list server that automatically delivers newsletters,
announcements, and discussion lists.
SparkList
www.sparklist.com
Sparklist is an outsourcing service for e-mail announcement and discussion
lists. With Sparklist, you don’t need special equipment or an IT
staff—all you need is a Web browser connected to the Internet, and
you’re ready to mail!
EmailFactory
http://www.emailfactory.com
EmailFactory helps you build superior customer relationships with sharp,
targeted permission e-marketing tools. A start-to-finish e-mail marketing
solution, EmailFactory offers you every tool you’ll need to achieve
your unique marketing.
Majordomo
http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/
Majordomo is a program that automates the management of Internet
mailing lists. Commands are sent to Majordomo via electronic mail to
handle all aspects of list maintenance. Once a list is set up, virtually all
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operations can be performed remotely, requiring no intervention by the
postmaster of the list site.
GotMarketing Campaigner
http://www.gotmarketing.com/index.html
E-mail marketing with Campaigner is fast, easy and affordable. Campaigner
has plenty of self-serve tools to help you get started. Tutorials,
live-chat assistance, online help and audio best practices are integrated
right into the product! Create and send campaigns whenever
you want, 24/7.
Constant Contact
http://www.roving.com
Constant Contact, Do-It-Yourself E-mail Marketing helps small and midsize
businesses and associations develop an ongoing relationship with
their customers and site visitors. Constant Contact makes it easy and
affordable to build and manage permission e-mail lists, create and send
eye-catching HTML e-mail newsletters, announcements and promotions,
and track results.
MailWorkZ
http://www.mailworkz.com
MailWorkZ—experts in the business of e-marketing software and services.
With products like Broadc@st’s E-mail Marketing Software and
services like ezListZ and the newest addition, ezTrackZ, thousands of
MailWorkZ customers have everything they need to increase market share,
revenue, and profits as well as improve their customer relationships.
EmailUnlimited
http://www.4officeautomation.com/EmailUnlimited/index.asp
EmailUnlimited makes it extremely easy to send professional-looking
e-mail messages to large lists of recipients. Just select your address list,
type in your message or select an existing text or HTML file, click on
the Send button and your customers can soon be informed about your
newest products and offerings.
Microsoft bCentral ListBuilder
http://www.bcentral.com/products/lb/default.asp?LID=32559
List Builder is the e-mail marketing software of choice. Use it to quickly
and easily create professional-looking e-mail newsletters, targeting different
customer segments with personalized messages.

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Establishing Your Private Mailing List
Private mailing lists enable you to create one-way communication to
your target market and are a tremendous vehicle for building relationships
and a sense of community. Generating your own mailing lists is
highly recommended because a targeted opt-in list has many marketing
uses. The list can be used to maintain dialogue with customers and potential
customers regarding updates, support, specials, and so on. It can
also be used to distribute corporate newsletters, price lists, new catalogues,
product updates, new product announcements, and upcoming
events. In this chapter, we cover:
• Why have your own mailing list?
• The issue of privacy
• Managing your mail list
• Building your mail list
• Promoting your mail list
• Tips to stay under the spam radars
• Recent legislation.
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Why Have Your Own Mailing List?
There are numerous reasons to own and use your own mail list. They
include some of the same reasons that make it imperative to join someone
else’s list. Running a private mailing list can be beneficial in many
ways, including:
• Permission-based marketing
• Establishing yourself or your business as an expert in your field
• Networking
• Conserving contacts
• Building repeat traffic to your Web site (as discussed in Chapter 3)
• Branding
• Promotion of your business’s products and services
• Potential source of revenue.
Permission-Based Marketing
Permission and privacy are critical to the success of any e-mail marketing
campaign. Although unsolicited direct “snail mail” might be
generally accepted or at least tolerated by many consumers, the rules
are completely different on-line. Unsolicited e-mail (known as spam)
runs the risk of damaging your company’s reputation, not to mention
the very real possibilities of flames, public blacklisting, hack attacks,
or having your Internet services revoked. For serious spammers, recent
legislation adds the possibility of prison. Online consumers are
quick to let you know when you have crossed the line, and unsolicited
e-mail definitely crosses the line. Because of this, online marketers are
using many techniques to get their customers, potential customers,
and Web site visitors to give them “permission” to send e-mail on a
regular basis.
Permission marketing is really a win-win situation. Recipients receive
information that they asked to receive, and the marketer is com-
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municating with an audience that has expressed interest in what is being
marketed. Online marketers claim that permission e-mail marketing
is one of the best ways to improve customer retention and boost sales.
Permission e-mail marketing generally yields response rates ten times
that of banner advertising.
So how do you get this coveted permission? Generally you have to
provide something of value and of interest to your target market. There
are many opportunities on your Web site to ask for permission. The
more repeat-traffic generators on your site, the more opportunities you
can provide for visitors to give you the permission. (See Chapter 3 for
repeat-traffic generators.) You should leverage repeat-traffic generators
with permission marketing that “sells the sizzle” and accelerate responses
with a call to action. On my Web site I have a call to action that says
“Sign Up Now” for Susan’s biweekly newsletter filled with Tips, Tools,
Techniques, and Resources to assist you in achieving your Internet
Marketing goals. Here are some typical examples:
• “We change our coupons every week! Click here to join our
mail list to be notified as soon as we update.”
• “Click here to join our mail list and receive our biweekly Internet
marketing tips, tools, techniques, and resources newsletter.”
• “We have new specials on a regular basis. Click here to be notified
by e-mail when we post our new specials.”
• “We have a new contest every three weeks. Keep checking back
or Click here if you’d like to be notified by e-mail every time we
begin a new contest.”
• “We constantly update our Calendar of Events. Keep checking
back or Click here if you’d like to be notified by e-mail every
time we update.”
• “Join our e-club to receive our member-only specials, our great
newsletter and advance notice of upcoming events!”
You get the picture. Almost every page on your Web site provides
an opportunity for you to offer permission marketing. Of course, when
site visitors click, they are taken to a screen where they add themselves
to your mail list. Your mail list program should keep track of the ele-
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ment the visitor gave you permission to send. Your mail list should be
integrated with the Web site so when someone gives you permission his
or her name is automatically added to your database.
Permission marketing enjoys its success because it is personal, relevant,
and anticipated. Your messages should be personalized, enhancing
the one-to-one relationship marketing element.
Privacy is a very big issue when a Web site visitor is deciding whether
to give you an e-mail address or not. It is very important to assure your
visitors that you will not pass on their e-mail address to others or use it
for anything but the purpose intended. Your privacy policy should clearly
be evident on your Web site. The privacy policy can read like a legal
document or be short and to the point.
Benefits of Private Mail Lists
• Establish Yourself as an Expert. By operating your own private
industry-specific mailing list and offering your advice to members
of your list, you can establish yourself as an expert in your field.
As a result, you can quickly earn the respect and admiration of
your peers and develop new business contacts and clients.
• Networking. Having your own private list permits you to network
closely with others in your industry and with current and
potential clients. Very often, new business relationships and opportunities
develop when people with similar interests are
brought together. Use your mailing list to create these sorts of
relationships. It could be that you find new business partners,
establish new clients, or start another business venture.
• Conserving Contacts. You develop many great contacts every
day in business. Often businesses develop a relationship with a
client firm, complete a project with it, and then lose contact as
time goes on. Starting your own private mailing list enables you
to stay in constant contact with these individuals. This helps
you to maintain these relationships in the long term, and ultimately
results in more business and a stronger reputation for
your business.
• Branding. Once you develop your own private mailing lists and
generate a loyal list of subscribers, people relate the value of
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your list to your company’s products or services. Mailing lists
are an effective way to brand your business’s products and services
on-line. If you send messages to your subscribers on a regular
basis, they will be exposed again and again to your corporate
ID and products and services.
• Promotion of Your Business’s Products and Service. It is important
to remember that people are subscribing to your mail list to
receive valuable information that helps them in some way. If
your mail list messages consist solely of blatant advertising, the
retention rate of your subscribers will drop dramatically. However,
to take advantage of your mailing list’s potential as a branding
tool, you should always include a call to action that
encourages a subscriber to click through to your Web site and
learn more about your products and services. This is a great
way to generate exposure for your products and services.
• Potential Source of Revenue. Once your list becomes established
and has many subscribers, you might be able to sell advertising
to people interested in marketing to your list members. Needless
to say, a mailing list becomes an excellent revenue source as
its credibility and membership numbers expand. In the end, the
time and effort you exert nurturing your list to prominence can
pay for itself and more. If you are already a member of a publicly
accessible mailing list, take note of the number of advertisements
that appear in each posting you receive from the list.
Administer your own private mailing list and earn advertising
revenue for yourself. However, be ever mindful of the number
and type of ads you have in your mail list. The ads should not
detract from your message or your credibility.
• The Issue of Privacy. Privacy is a growing concern among many
online users. You can boost your mailing list’s sign-up rate by
guaranteeing that subscribers’ e-mail addresses are kept confidential
and not sold to anyone else. If you cannot assure them
that your company will use their e-mail address solely for your
correspondence with them, they will not feel comfortable giving
their e-mail address to you. Provide people with your privacy policy
statement. Make them feel comfortable about divulging their
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e-mail address to your business. To do this, you should place a
link to your business’s privacy policy in a prominent location on
your Web site, especially on your mail list sign-up page.
You should never add someone’s name to your mailing list without
his or her permission. People really resent receiving unsolicited mail,
even if you give them the option to unsubscribe.
Where We Need To Be
There are only two ways to do more business on-line:
• Have more people to receive your offer.
• Improve your conversion rate of Web site visitors to Web site
customers.
There are only a few ways to have more people to get your offer:
• Increase the number of visitors to your Web site.
• Increase the number of people whom you reach with your online
marketing in newsgroups, public mail lists, affiliate marketing
or any of the 101 ways in this book.
• Increase the number of people in your mail list who have given
you permission to send them e-mail on an ongoing basis.
Ideally, where we’d like to be in terms of mail list marketing is:
• Have the right mail list technology.
• Grow your mail list through permission-based marketing as big
as you can as fast as you can.
• Provide consistently valuable content to your list on an ongoing
basis.
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• Learn as much as you can about everyone in your list, building
a profile on each person, so that you can send more targeted
communication.
The Right Mail List Technology
There are several ways that you can manage your mail list:
• Use your e-mail program (not recommended)
• Use mail list software
• Outsource your mail list management.
Using Your E-mail Program
Although managing your mail list through your e-mail program might
look like a great option in that it doesn’t cost you anything and is run
from your desktop, giving you ultimate control, there are limitations.
Your e-mail program doesn’t easily afford you the opportunity to segment
your mail list—those who asked to receive your newsletter versus
those who asked to receive notification when you update your What’s
New section, for example. Your e-mail program doesn’t generally provide
the technology to quickly and easily personalize your communication—
that is, insert the recipient’s first name in designated areas within
the e-mail. E-mail programs do not provide much in the way of tracking
information, either. It would be nice to be able to track such things as
how many people opened your e-mail, how many sent a copy to a friend,
how many clicked through and visited your Web site. The tracking technology
is generally available only through mail list software or from the
third party that manages your mail list marketing if you choose to
outsource this activity.
Another drawback is the administrative headache of manually managing
all the “Subscribes,” “Unsubscribes,” and “Changes of e-mail Address,”
particularly when you have multiple sign-up opportunities on your
Web site—for example, someone wants to unsubscribe from your e-spe-
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cials but still wants to receive your newsletter and coupons. The time
really has come when you need to invest in mail list software or outsource
if you want to take this element of online marketing seriously.
Using Mail List Software
There are numerous mail list management software programs available
to help you organize your list distribution. This software enables you to
easily add or remove subscribers. Mail list management software enables
you to draft and send properly formatted messages directly from
within the software. Mail list software generally allows you to personalize
your e-mails quickly and easily. Most of these programs can be
integrated with your Web site so that people can add themselves to your
list right from the site. You can also use this software to set up notification
mechanisms to reply to subscribers confirming that they have been
added to the list. This makes running your mail list less time-consuming,
as the software does most of the work for you.
Using your own mail list software requires an initial investment to
purchase the program or an ongoing cost if you use an Application
Service Provider (ASP)—a company that develops the mail list software
and provides it to you as a monthly or annual service rather than as a
product. The major advantage to this model is that as new bells and
whistles are introduced they are immediately available to all users of
the software.
The cost to purchase software can range from an entry-level program
at $99 to a robust, full-featured program at $2,500. The ASP
model could cost you from $30 a month to several thousand if you use
an application that charges you per e-mail sent and you have a very
large database.
Some of these programs run from your desktop; others have to be
run from your server or through your Internet service provider. Many
of the ASP model programs are run from the ASP’s server. Most of these
programs are sophisticated enough to allow you to segment the e-mail
addresses in your database so you know who has asked to receive what
from your Web site.
Most of these programs today have the personalization capability
to allow you to insert a recipient’s first name throughout the correspondence
and in the subject line of the message as well. For this
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to work, you have to capture the first names for each e-mail address
in your database. Keep this in mind when asking people if they’d like
to give you permission to send them e-mail for whatever reason—in
addition to their e-mail address, have a mandatory field for their
first name.
More and more of these programs are incorporating tracking features
to let you know what’s working and what’s not. From an administrative
perspective, many of these programs do a great job of adding
new “Subscribes,” deleting “Unsubscribes,” and managing undeliverable
addresses. This feature alone is worth its weight in gold.
Features to look for in mail list software include:
• Personalization capability—You want to be able to personalize
each e-mail by inserting the recipient’s first name in the subject
line, salutation and throughout the body of your message.
• HTML capability—You want to be able to send HTML e-mail
(e-mail that looks like a Web page rather than text), which gets
much higher readership than text e-mail.
• Message editor—You want to be able to bring up a past e-mail,
edit it and re-send to a group.
• Previews—You want to be able to preview your message before
you send it to make sure the formatting is correct, the personalization
is working and that the message looks great before you
send it.
• Spam checker—The spam checker is a valuable tool to ensure
your message has the best chance of being received and not being
rejected as spam. You want to be able to run your message
through the spam checker to see how you score before you send
any message. Today if you score 5.0 or higher in the spam checker
you will want to edit your message to reduce your score before
you send.
• Multi-threaded sending—This feature is important for large lists.
It divides a list and sends multiple messages at one time through
different streams.
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• Filtering—This feature allows you to send specific messages to
parts of your list. You could send a message only to those individuals
in a specific state by filtering on the name of the state.
You could send a message only to those interested in golf if you
have that information in a field in your database.
• Scheduling—This allows you to pre-arrange to send your e-mail
at a specific future time and date. Great if you want to set up all
of your “Tips of the Week” in advance or if you are going to be
traveling when you want you newsletter to be sent out.
• Autoresponders—Some mail list software applications have
autoresponders built in. See Chapter 11 for details on their uses.
• Web site integration—You want your mail list software to work
with your Web site so when someone subscribes from your site
their contact information is automatically included in your mail
list software. If someone wants to unsubscribe or change their
contact information they can take care of it through your site or
through the e-mails they have received from you. This really
cuts down on the administration you have to deal with.
• Reporting and tracking—Some mail list software provides reports
on messages sent (audience selected, date sent, clicks, total
sent, number of bounces), subscriber activity (subscribes,
unsubscribes, e-mails opened), link tracking, and bounce activity
(number of undeliverables, hard bounces, soft bounces).
Outsourcing Your Mail List
A third option is to outsource your mail list management to a third
party. There are companies that specialize in this service with great depth
of experience. One such company that we have had the pleasure to
work with is Inbox360.com (http://www.inbox360.com).
When you outsource this activity, of course you have a monthly
service fee. The software is run from the outsource company’s server or
their ISP’s server.
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Virtually all of the mail list service providers have the latest software,
allowing you to personalize your messages, segment your lists,
and get great tracking reports. Generally, administrative issues like adding
the “Subscribes,” deleting “Unsubscribes,” and managing the
undeliverables are handled by the outsource company.
On the down side, you might lose some control—over content, over
your customer, and over timing of your message release. It is imperative
to have a clearly laid-out contract with the outsource company, addressing:
• Ownership of e-mail addresses
• Use of e-mail addresses
• Timing of correspondence
• Final approval of content
• Responsibility and timelines for replies to subscribers.
It is important that you retain ownership of all e-mail addresses and
that the contract clearly states that all subscribers’ names and e-mail
addresses are the property of your company. Also include in the contract
that you are provided the current list in digital format every month.
This way, if you decide to change service providers, your list goes with
you. It takes a lot of effort to build your list, and it is a very valuable
asset. Make sure you protect it.
Make sure that your contract clearly states that your e-mail addresses
are not to be used by anyone else or provided to anyone else for
any purpose whatsoever. People on your list have given you their e-mail
addresses in confidence. They trust that you will not abuse the relationship.
Make sure it is in your power to live up to that expectation.
Make sure that you have final control over the timing of your communication.
It is important that your messages be delivered when you
want them delivered. Timing is everything. We discuss timing later in
this chapter.
Make sure that your contract has a clause that permits you to approve
the final content going out to your list. You want to see and approve everything.
You want to make sure the formatting is the way you want it; you
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want to be sure the personalization is working as it should; and you want
to make sure there is no problem with graphics or word wrap.
You want to have a clear understanding with the outsource company
regarding replies from messages going out to your list. Often the
“From” field, although it looks like it is coming from you, is actually an
address that resides with the outsource company. Discuss and agree on
what happens when a recipient replies to your communication. Where
does it go? When does it go? To receive a batch of replies three weeks
after your communication went out is not acceptable.
There are certain benefits to outsourcing this activity to a third party
that specializes in mail list marketing. This is their core responsibility.
Often the outsource company has been involved in many campaigns—
gaining expertise in what works and what doesn’t. Often they can help
you tweak your content or format to help achieve your objectives. Also,
outsourcing this activity to a competent third party frees up your time
and allows you to focus on other priorities.
Building Your Database or Mail List
Once you are committed to private mail list marketing, you want to
focus on building your database of e-mail addresses. The more people
you can reach in your target market with your message, the better.
There are many ways to grow your list:
• Import from your existing database. You probably already have
a customer or prospective customer list that you can import into
your mail list. You should send a one-time message asking them
if they’d like to be on your list or join your e-club. The best way
to handle this is with an opt-out message. Tell them what they’ll
be receiving and how often, and stress the benefits. Tell them
that if they’d like to receive it they don’t have to do anything—
they’re already included. Provide instructions for them to
unsubscribe if for some reason they don’t want to be included.
• Use permission marketing techniques to ask if site visitors would
like to be included in your list to receive your newsletter, your
e-specials, your coupons, or anything else you want to use to
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entice them to join your list. See Chapter 5 for more information
on permission marketing.
• Collect names and e-mail addresses at your point of contact—
registration desk at a hotel, checkout counter in a retail environment,
member renewal or registration forms for membership
associations or organizations. Ask permission to add them to
your e-club—remember to “sell the sizzle.”
• Have employee contests and reward the employee who collects
the most sign-ups for your e-club.
• Have posters in your bricks-and-mortar location promoting your
e-club and letting people know how to join. Think about providing
an incentive: Join our e-club and get a 10 percent off
coupon for your next purchase or a free gift.
• Promote your e-club in all your direct mail pieces and ads.
• Use direct e-mail rental lists to ask for sign-ups.
• Use brokers to run campaigns on complementary sites to get
targeted sign-ups.
• Promote your e-club in your signature file.
• Encourage viral marketing via existing list members: “Send a copy
to a friend” works for a number of repeat-traffic generators such as
coupons, newsletters, e-specials, contest information, special offers,
and promotions. Make sure that every viral marketing communication
includes sign-up information so recipients can add their
names and e-mail addresses to your list as well: “If you’ve received
a copy of this newsletter… or coupon… or e-special from a friend
and would like to be included in our list to receive your own in the
future, Click here.” The link should take them to a sign-up page on
your Web site or open a new message in their e-mail program with
“Subscribe” in the subject line and details of what exactly they
would like to subscribe to in the body of the e-mail message.

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and so on, to find potential newsgroups for your marketing effort. A benefit
of the Google site is that you can post to the newsgroups directly from
the site. You don’t have to go through alternative software to do so.
Read the FAQ Files and Abide by the Rules
Read the FAQ files, charter, and rules about posting
and advertising for each of your target
newsgroups. It is very important that you abide by
all the rules. If the FAQ files do not mention the
group’s stance on commercial advertising and announcements,
then go back to Google Groups. Conduct a search based
on the group’s name and charter. This tells you where the newsgroup
stands on commercial activity.
Lurking for Potential Customers
Once you have narrowed your potential newsgroup list, visit each one
to determine whether its participants are, in fact, potential customers.
Spend time lurking. Monitor the types of messages being posted. Is there
likely to be an opportunity for you to contribute?
Are the participants your target market? Research
the newsgroup to ascertain if it might appeal to your
customers. The name of the newsgroup might not
reveal what the newsgroup is about, so take your
time and make sure.
Tips on Posting Messages
After you have become familiar with the rules of your selected newsgroup,
have spent some time lurking, and have decided that the newsgroup
is one where your target market is participating, you can begin to
post messages. Remember to abide by the rules! If the rules do not allow
advertising, then do not blatantly post an ad. To take full advan-
Lurking
Browsing without
posting.
Charter
Established rules and
guidelines.
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tage of the newsgroup, you have to gain the trust of its members. With
one wrong message, you could outrage all of the potential customers
who participate in the newsgroup.
It is a good idea to run a test before you post a message to a newsgroup.
Doing a test shows you how the posting works and prevents you
from making a mistake when it comes to the real thing.
Becoming a respected member in a newsgroup is a way to promote
yourself as well as your company. Provide valuable responses—the readers
can tell when you are making a valuable contribution and when you
are just advertising. In time you might forget that you began reading the
newsgroup to promote your business. You will find yourself reading
newsgroups in order to participate in stimulating discussions. You will
be discussing anything and everything about the newsgroup subject.
Only mention your Web site when you find an opportunity to bring
your business knowledge into the conversation.
Newsgroups exist for specific purposes. They can be designed for
discussions, news announcements, postings related to particular topics,
and even buying and selling goods. They might have hundreds of messages
sorted and available for access at any moment. Newsgroup participants
will decide whether to open or pass up your posted message
based on the words in the subject area. Make your subject short and
catchy so that your message will be read. Try to put the most important
words of the subject first. This is a critical part in posting a message to
a newsgroup. Some people adjust the screen to see only the first few
words in the subject area. When deciding on the text for the subject
area, think about what keywords someone would use to search for information
on the content of your message. The worst thing that you can
do is post a message to a newsgroup with no subject at all. This will
definitely receive no attention and is a waste of your time.
Start your message with a short description of how it relates to the
group’s main topic. People are looking for answers to specific questions,
so it is rude to jump into the conversation with a topic that doesn’t
match the one in the subject line. You should attempt to get your message
across right away. You should get to the point of your message in
the first sentence. By doing so, you catch the readers’ attention and
ensure that they read the entire message.
Message length should be short, no longer than 24 lines. Short paragraphs
of six or seven lines work well. Write for scannability.
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When responding to a message in a newsgroup, you have the option
of privately responding to the individual who posted the message or
responding through the newsgroup. Determine which is better under
the given circumstances. If your message is of value to the entire group
or promotes your company’s capabilities, then post the response to the
newsgroup for all to see. If you think that your company has a solution
for the individual and would like to provide details to the “target customer,”
but feel that it would not benefit the other members of the
group, then deliver a private response. Often you do both because once
the answer to a question has been received, the original poster might
not visit the newsgroup for awhile and you want to make sure he or she
has the benefit of your posting. Whichever approach you take, make
sure that you respond as quickly as possible so that the first message is
still fresh in the mind of the recipient.
Tips to Ensure That Your Messages Are Well Received
Here are some basic rules to help you post well-received messages.
Keep to the Newsgroup Topic
Make sure you always stay on the newsgroup’s topic of discussion. People
participate in specific newsgroups because of that subject and don’t
appreciate off-topic postings.
Stay on the Thread
When responding to a message, use the Reply option. When you reply
without changing the subject line, your message will appear immediately
below the message you are responding to in the newsgroup. This
is referred to as “staying on thread” and makes it easy for others to
follow the discussion.
Make a Contribution
Informed, quality responses to people’s questions give you credibility
with the group and reflect well upon you and your company. If you post
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positive and useful information, visitors will return to the newsgroups
and look for your posts.
Don’t Post Commercials or Advertisements
Advertising is not welcome in most newsgroups, and many charters
specifically forbid the posting of ads. Read the FAQ files before posting
a message. If the newsgroup does not allow commercial messages or
ads, don’t post them.
You Don’t Have to Have the Last Word
Don’t post gratuitous responses in newsgroups. Never post a message
with just a “Thanks” or “I like it” if you have nothing else to contribute.
If you feel such a response is warranted or would like to discuss the
issue privately, send a private e-mail to the person to convey your appreciation
or opinion.
Newsgroup Advertising Hints
Newsgroups have been developed for different audiences and different
topics. Some newsgroups are dedicated to posting advertisements. If
advertising is appropriate for your company, the following newsgroup
types might be included in your Internet marketing strategy. Most of
the newsgroups that allow advertising are readily identifiable. The
newsgroup name itself might include one of the following:
• biz
• classified
• for sale
• marketplace.
Again, read the FAQ files and lurk to determine if the newsgroup is
appropriate for your target market before you post. Use a short, catchy
subject line with keywords at the beginning—the subject will determine
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Effective Promotional Use of Newsgroups 215
whether your message warrants a read or a pass. Avoid ALL CAPITALS.
This is equivalent to shouting on the Internet. Stay away from
!!!!, ****, @@@@, and other such symbols.
When you have found a newsgroup whose participants include your
target market but the newsgroup does not allow advertising, don’t despair.
When responding to queries or providing information that is of
genuine interest to the newsgroup, you have the opportunity to attach
your sig file. A sig file can be as effective as an ad if it is designed properly.
Your message should offer valuable information pertinent to the
discussion. (A thinly veiled excuse to get your sig file posted will not be
appreciated.) If your information is relevant and of value to the participants
of the newsgroup, the fact that the tag line in your sig file is an
advertisement will not matter—in fact, it could add credibility to the
information you have provided and enhance your company’s reputation.
See Chapter 9 for discussion on signature files.
Cross-Posting and Spamming
Cross-posting is posting identical messages to a number of relevant
newsgroups. Doing this is considered to be inappropriate because of
the number of common users in associated newsgroups. Spamming is
posting identical or nearly identical messages to irrelevant newsgroups
without care or regard for the posting guidelines, the newsgroup topic,
or the interests of the group. Cross-posting and spamming annoy the
readers of the newsgroup. Doing these things reflects badly on you and
your company and prevents you from achieving your online marketing
objectives.
Earning Respect with Newsgroup Netiquette
Following are ten rules for netiquette. Incorporating them in your
newsgroup posting will gain you respect by the other participants.
1. Don’t use CAPITALS. They are akin to shouting on the Internet.
2. Don’t post ads where they are not welcome.
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3. Do provide valuable, on-topic information for the newsgroup.
4. Don’t be rude or sarcastic.
5. Don’t include the entire message you are replying to in your
response. Only quote relevant sections of the original message.
6. Do a thorough review of your message before you post. Check
your spelling and grammar. Check your subject; it should be
short and catchy with the keywords first.
7. Do provide an appropriate sig file.
8. Don’t post messages that are too lengthy. Online communication
tends to be one screen or less.
9. Don’t spam or cross-post.
10. Don’t post replies that contribute nothing to the discussion (e.g.,
“I agree” or “Thanks”).
Internet Resources for Chapter 12
I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding
newsgroups. For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the
Resources section of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/
resources.html. There you can find additional tips, tools, techniques,
and resources.
Google—The Source for Internet Newsgroups!
http://groups.google.com
The Web site where you can read, search, participate in, and subscribe
to more than 50,000 discussion forums, including Usenet newsgroups.
Google has recently bought Deja.com, a resource for finding people,
getting noticed, and getting answers to all sorts of questions. You can
find discussion forums on any topic imaginable.
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Effective Promotional Use of Newsgroups 217
Internet FAQ Archive
http://www.faqs.org
Formerly at the University of Ohio, the Internet FAQ Archive is the
place to look for Usenet newsgroup descriptions and Frequently Asked
Question (FAQ) lists. They also have quite a bit of general information
about Usenet as well.
MG’s House of News Knowledge
http://www.duke.edu/~mg/usenet
A great resource filled with information on every aspect of newsgroups,
from how to post to how to create your own newsgroup.
Newsgroups
News.newusers.questions
News.announce.newusers
News.newusers
These provide information to new Usenet users on posting, finding appropriate
newsgroups, netiquette, and other frequently asked questions
new users are faced with.
Tile.net
http://www.tile.net
A service for finding newsgroups and mailing lists as well as their descriptions.
Worldnet User’s Service Desk
http://www.wurd.com/cl_news_faq.php
The Worldnet User’s Reference Desk (WURD) is dedicated to providing
AT&T Worldnet members the very best information available about
AT&T Worldnet Service and how to use third-party software.
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218
13
Effective Promotion through
Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists
Internet mailing lists are quick and easy ways to distribute information
to a large number of people. There are thousands of publicly
available online lists. You can also create your own Internet mailing
lists to keep your clients and prospects informed of company
events, product announcements, and press releases. In this chapter,
we cover:
• How to identify useful publicly accessible mailing lists (discussion
lists)
• Subscribing to the mailing list
• Writing messages that will be read
• Mailing list netiquette
• Creating your own mailing list.
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Effective Promotion through Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists 219
Connecting with Your Target Audience
Discussion mailing lists are publicly accessible and are focused on a
particular subject. Participating in a discussion list relevant to your
line of business can help you attract new customers. Discussion lists
are organized hierarchically by subject in a way similar to Usenet newsgroups.
Likewise, the membership of each discussion mailing list varies.
People subscribe to particular lists to participate in that list and to
receive all of the postings that are sent to the group, generally because
they have an interest in the topic. When you post a message to a mailing
list, the message is sent out by e-mail to everyone who has subscribed
to the list.
Discussion mailing lists offer an efficient way to distribute information
to masses of people interested in a particular topic. The difference
between discussion mailing lists and newsgroups is that while anyone
on the Internet can visit newsgroups at any time and anonymously read
any articles of interest, a discussion list delivers all messages posted
directly to the subscribers’ e-mail. Only discussion list subscribers can
receive these messages. To subscribe to a discussion list, you have to
send a subscription message to the list administrator and request permission
to join the mailing list.
Types of Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists
Publicly accessible mailing lists can be one of several types, each with
varying degrees of control. Following is a discussion of the two major
types of lists.
Moderated Discussion Lists
This type of list is maintained by a “gatekeeper” who filters out unwanted
or inappropriate messages. If you try to post an advertisement where it is
not permitted, your message will never make it out to the list of subscribers.
Similarly, flames (i.e., publicly chastising another list member) are
screened out. The gatekeeper also keeps the topic of discussion on track.
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Unmoderated Discussion Lists
An unmoderated list is operated without any centralized control or
censorship. Many publicly accessible lists are of this type. All messages
are automatically forwarded to subscribers. Unmoderated lists tend to
have more blatant advertisements and flame wars because there is no
gatekeeper to guide the discussion. It is then the responsibility of the list
members to police their own actions. If the list participants aren’t rigidly
abiding by the rules and reprimanding others who stray, the list
could end up being a landfill for spammers. When this happens, many
members simply leave the list.
Targeting Appropriate Discussion Mailing Lists
There are four types of mailing lists:
• Publicly accessible mail lists
• Direct mail lists
• Private mail lists
• Bulk mail lists.
There are thousands of publicly accessible lists on-line and a number
of sites that provide lists of these mailing lists. Several of the most
popular and comprehensive are:
• Topica at http://lists.topica.com/ (Figure 13.1)
• Tile.net at http://tile.net/lists.
There are also companies on-line that specialize in providing targeted
lists for a fee, much like purchasing a direct-mail list in the offline
world. One company that provides this type of list is Post Master Direct
Response at www.postmasterdirect.com. This company rents e-mail lists
of people who have requested information on a particular topic. These
direct-mail lists are discussed fully in Chapter 15.
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Another option is to develop your own private mailing list. This
concept is discussed in Chapter 14.
Still another option is to purchase bulk e-mail lists—not. We’ve all
received e-mails that say, “Reach 5 million with our mailing list available
for $29.95.” After all, one of the major benefits of the Internet is
reaching large numbers of people quickly—right?
Wrong! Do not use these! This is an unacceptable
practice because it involves spam. Bulk e-mail lists
are generally sold without the permission of the
addressees, much like junk mailing lists. The recipients
did not ask to be put on a mailing list and often
do not appreciate being sent unsolicited e-mail.
Another drawback is that usually these lists are not
targeted. By using bulk e-mail lists, you run the risk
of not reaching any of your target market. You also
risk annoying those addressees who under other circumstances
might have been interested in what you were trying to sell.
The best approach is to choose a list whose subscribers fit your
target market as closely as possible. For example, if you are selling geographic
information systems to municipalities, a shotgun approach is a
Figure 13.1. Topica provides access to thousands of mailing lists and discussion
groups.
SPAM
Sending the same
message to a large
group of people who
didn’t ask for it, or
Sending People
Annoying Mail.
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222 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
waste of both your time and your resources. By using bulk e-mail, you
raise the ire of thousands of recipients, destroy your corporate image,
and potentially damage your professional credibility. In this case, a targeted
list, even though much smaller, would get a much higher-quality
response rate. Less is sometimes better.
Finding the Right Mailing List
Whether you join a publicly accessible discussion mailing list or choose
to purchase an opt-in e-mail list from one of the many online sources,
you want to find a list whose members are your target market. You
need to do your homework here, because there are thousands of lists to
choose from.
There are various meta-indexes of publicly accessible mailing lists
where you can search by title or by subject. Some of these sites provide
detailed information on the lists, such as their content and the commands
used to subscribe. We have provided information on a number
of these in the Internet Resources section at the end of this chapter.
Once you have identified mail lists that have your target market as
members, subscribe to those lists. To confirm that the list is right for
your marketing purposes, lurk a while to monitor the discussion taking
place. Then you can begin participating in the list by providing valuable
content. If advertising is not allowed, abide by the rules. However, signature
files are generally allowed, and you can always have that oneline
tag line or mini-ad to advertise where advertising isn’t allowed.
Subscribing to Your Target Mailing Lists
Topica (http://lists.topica.com/) and tile.net/lists (http://tile.net/lists) are
great resources that provide a huge roster of accessible mailing lists plus
specific instructions for joining those that interest you. After you subscribe,
you generally receive an e-mail response with the rules, FAQs,
and instructions on how to use the list.
For the most part, the rules for posting to newsgroups apply to
mailing lists as well. Read the rules carefully and abide by them. A
lurking period should be considered before you post a message. This
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helps you observe what types of messages are posted and the commonly
accepted practices for that particular group.
List Digests
When subscribing to a mail list, quite often you are given the option to
subscribe or to subscribe to the digest. When you subscribe, you receive
each message as it is posted. When you subscribe to the digest, the messages
are accumulated and sent in one e-mail, usually overnight. The
compilation of many individual messages is sent to each subscriber as
one bulk message. Many digests contain a table of contents. The good
thing about a digest is that you do not receive as many separate e-mail
messages and your mailbox doesn’t become clogged.
Composing Effective Messages
As discussed in the previous chapter, your e-mails must be carefully
prepared before you post to a mailing list. Remember to make your
subject line relevant, keep your messages short and to the point, and
always include your sig file. If you are unsure whether your posting is
right for the group, you can send a test message to the moderator asking
for advice.
Unlike newsgroups, the members of mailing lists receive all the messages
directly into their mailbox every day. Some people prefer to receive
the postings in digest form; that is, all the messages for that day
are compiled into one e-mail sent to the recipient at the end of the day.
At the beginning of the e-mail, the digest provides a listing of all the
messages with the “From” and “Subject” identified, followed by the
complete messages. Just as individuals who visit a newsgroup don’t read
all the messages, subscribers to publicly accessible discussion lists do
not read every posting. They decide which messages to review based on
the subject line. Thus, the content of the “Subject” field is extremely
important.
Never repeat the same or similar messages to a mailing list, as you
might do in a newsgroup. Once members of a mailing list have seen
your posted message, they don’t appreciate seeing it again, whereas a
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224 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
newsgroup has different readers all the time and similar postings are
acceptable if they are timely. The following tips on mailing list postings
should assist you in becoming a respected member of their online
community:
• Make sure that your messages are on the subject. List subscribers
don’t want to receive announcements unrelated to their topic.
• You should be a regular contributor to your list before making
any commercial announcement. If your mailing list does not allow
advertising (most do not), use your sig file. Sig files are generally
accepted. Be sure to make effective use of your tag line to
get your mini-ad into discussion mailing lists where blatant advertising
is not permitted.
• Track and record your responses when you use a new mailing
list. You should have a call to action in your posting, encouraging
the readers to visit a specific page on your site or to send
e-mail to an address designated solely for this purpose. Only by
tracking responses can you know with any certainty which mailing
lists are successful and which are not. It’s amazing how well
calls to action work. For some reason, people tend to do what
they’re told.
• Set reasonable and achievable goals. As a benchmark, in most
e-mail marketing campaigns, a 1 to 3 percent response rate is
considered a good response. However, if your mailing list is
well targeted and you are offering something of interest or value
to a particular group, your response rates should be significantly
higher.
Building Your Own Private Mailing Lists
You might want to build your own private mailing list. Generating your
own lists is often beneficial because of their many marketing uses. They
can be used to maintain dialogue with existing customers regarding
updates, support, specials, and so on. They can also be used to communicate
with current and prospective customers through distribution of
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corporate newsletters, price lists, new catalogues, product updates, new
product announcements, and upcoming events. A full discussion of private
mail lists is provided in Chapter 14.
Starting Your Own Publicly Accessible Mailing List
You can create your own publicly accessible Internet mailing list. This is
something you should carefully consider before you make your final
decision. It takes lots of time and effort to do this right, so be sure
you’re ready and that it would bring sufficient return on your investment.
First you must give it a name that reflects the desired discussion
and is enticing for your target market. You must draft an FAQ file or
charter containing information on what the list is all about. You must
develop guidelines for participation.
You should create a Web page for your list to provide information
about the list as well as its charter and guidelines. You should provide
an opportunity to subscribe from the Web site as well. This adds credibility
to your mailing list.
Once the list is up and running, advertise it so that people actually
subscribe. You can promote your list by participating in newsgroups
that relate to your mail list topic. Remember not to post blatant ads
where advertising is not allowed. Contribute to the newsgroup with
your postings and use a tag line in your signature file to promote your
mail list. You can also trade e-mail sponsorships with other mailing lists
for promotion purposes.
There are a number of places to announce your list. Get your mail
list linked from the many lists of lists on the Internet. We provide some
of these in the Internet Resources section at the end of this chapter.
Make your list worth reading by ensuring that you and others have
valuable information on the topic to share. You should make sure you
include an opportunity for your subscribers to spread the word or to
recommend your mail list to others. You can do this in your mail list
messages and also through the companion Web page. In the newsletter
or announcement mail lists where messages go only one way, it is easy
to encourage your subscribers to send a copy to a friend who they think
might be interested. If you encourage viral marketing in this way, you
want to make sure you have included the how-to-subscribe information
in the messages as well. When encouraging viral marketing through the
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226 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
companion Web page, make sure you include a call to action. It’s amazing
how well this works!
Internet Resources for Chapter 13
I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding publicly
accessible mailing lists. For additional resources on a variety of topics,
visit the Resources section of my Web site at http://www.
susansweeney.com/resources.html. There you can find additional tips,
tools, techniques, and resources.
AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe
All have their own areas where you can search for mailing lists.
Campaign E-mail Marketing Software
http://www.arialsoftware.com
This is e-mail marketing software used to conduct legitimate e-mail marketing
campaigns. Campaign can import your contact database information
and send personalized e-mail messages to all of your contacts.
HTMARCOM
A mailing list that discusses high-tech marketing. To subscribe, send the
message “subscribe htmarcom your name” to the e-mail address
listserv@usa.net.
Internet Marketing Mailing List
http://www.o-a.com
The Online Advertising Discussion List focuses on professional discussion
of online advertising strategies, results, studies, tools, and media
coverage. The list also welcomes discussion on the related topics of online
promotion and public relations. The list encourages sharing of practical
expertise and experiences among those who buy, sell, research, and develop
tools for online advertising, as well as those providing online public
relations and publicity services. The list also serves as a resource to
members of the press who are writing about the subject of online advertising
and promotion.
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L-Soft’s CataList
http://www.lsoft.com/lists/listref.html
CataList, the catalog of listserv lists! From this page, you can browse
any of the 56,423 public listserv lists on the Internet, search for mailing
lists of interest, and get information about listserv host sites. This information
is generated automatically from listserv’s lists database and is
always up to date.
List-Etiquette’s Guide to E-mail List Guidelines, Rules and Behavior
http://www.arialsoftware.com
Helpful tips for publishers, subscribers, moderators, and discussion list
members regarding good mailing list netiquette.
Topica
http://lists.topica.com
A very big directory of mailing lists and newsletters organized by subject
categories. Topica provides details on how to subscribe to each of the
mailing lists in its database and provides information on content as well.
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E-mail shorthand is used in newsgroups and other e-mail to represent
commonly used phrases. Some common abbreviations are:
• BTW By the way
• IMHO In my humble opinion
• IMO In my opinion
• IOW In other words
• JFYI Just for your information
• NBD No big deal
• NOYB None of your business
• TIA Thanks in advance
• PMFJI Pardon me for jumping in
• OIC Oh, I see . . .
• OTL Out to lunch
• OTOH On the other hand
• LOL Laughing out loud
• LMHO Laughing my head off
• ROFL Rolling on the floor laughing
• BFN Bye for now
• CYA See ya!
• FWIW For what it’s worth
• IAE In any event
• BBL Be back later
• BRB Be right back
• RS Real soon
• WYSIWYG What you see is what you get
• Adding a grin
Because e-mail shorthand is most commonly used in newsgroups
and chat rooms, you will be most successful when using these acronyms
with others who are familiar with them.
E-mail Marketing Tips
Be prepared. You will receive a number of e-mails requesting information
on your company, your products, your locations, and so on, from
people who have seen your e-mail address on letterhead, ads, business
cards, and sig files. Don’t wait for the first inquiry before you begin to
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develop your company materials. Here are some tips. Following them
will make you more prepared to respond.
Include a Brochure and Personal Note
Have an electronic brochure or corporate information available that
you can easily access and send via e-mail. Try to send a personal note in
your e-mail along with any material requested.
Gather a Library of Responses
Different people will ask a number of the same questions, and over time
you should develop a library of responses to these frequently asked questions.
When responding to an e-mail, ask yourself if you are likely to get
the question again. If your answer is “yes,” then consider developing a
document in your word processor called “Frequently Asked Questions,”
or “FAQs.” In the future, when you get a question that you have answered
before, simply cut and paste your response from your FAQs file
into your e-mail message. Always make sure to appropriately edit and
personalize your responses.
Following Formalities with E-mail Netiquette
When writing e-mails, remember these points:
• Be courteous. Remember your pleases and thank-yous.
• Reply promptly—within 24 hours.
• Be brief.
• Use lowercase characters. Capitals indicate SHOUTING!
• Use emoticons where appropriate.
• Check your grammar and spelling.
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• Use attachments sparingly.
• Do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail.
Reply Promptly
People expect an answer the same day or the next day at the latest.
E-mail communication is like voice mail. If you do not respond within
24 hours, you send a very clear message to your clients, potential clients,
and colleagues: “Your communication is not important to me.”
Respond within 24 hours, even if the message is only, “Sorry, I can’t get
to this immediately. I’ll try to have a reply for you by the end of the
week.” This might be a response you will want to save in a readily
available file, from which you can copy and paste it into an e-mail message.
A prompt reply, even if it says you can’t respond immediately, is
better than a delayed full response. The people writing you for information
will appreciate the fact that you felt their message was important
enough to respond to immediately.
Internet Resources for Chapter 10
I have included a few resources for you to check out when using e-mail.
For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the Resources section
of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/resources.html.
There you can find additional tips, tools, techniques, and resources.
A Beginner’s Guide to Effective E-mail
http://www.Webfoot.com/advice/e-mail.top.html
Help in writing the e-mail you need. Formats and why you need e-mail
are all explained in detail.
E-mailAddresses.com
http://www.e-mailaddresses.com
A directory of numerous free e-mail services including POP accounts,
e-mail forwarding, newsletters, and so on.
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E-mail—The Mining Company
http://e-mail.miningco.com/internet/e-mail
Updated weekly, this site consists of articles and links to e-mail resources
on many topics: beginning e-mail, finding people, free e-mail, greeting
cards, privacy, and much more.
I Will Follow.com E-mail Tips
http://www.iwillfollow.com/e-mail.htm
This site offers advice to beginners on all aspects of using e-mail.
Smith Family Internet Marketing Support
http://www.smithfam.com/news/ap12.html
“The Secrets of E-mail Marketing Success,” an article by Lesley Anne Lowe.
Windweaver
http://www.windweaver.com/emoticon.htm
Recommended emoticons for e-mail communication.
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11
Autoresponders
Autoresponders act much like fax-on-demand systems. With fax-ondemand
systems you call from your fax machine, dial the specified code,
and you’ll get back the requested document on your fax
machine. The autoresponder works much the same
way—you send an e-mail to an autoresponder e-mail
address and you’ll get back the requested information
via e-mail. In this chapter, you will learn:
• What autoresponders are
• Why you should use autoresponders
• What types of information to send via autoresponders
• Autoresponder features
• Tips on successful marketing through autoresponders.
What Are Autoresponders?
An autoresponder is a program located on a mail server that is set up to
automatically send a preprogrammed reply to the e-mail address that sent
Autoresponder
A computer program
that automatically
returns a prewritten
message to anyone
who submits e-mail to
a particular Internet
address.
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Autoresponders 201
mail to it. The reply can be a single message or a series of preprogrammed
messages. They are known by many names, such as infobots, responders,
mailbots, autobots, automailers or e-mail-on-demand.
Why Use Autoresponders?
One of the major benefits of using an autoresponder is the immediate
response—24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, providing
immediate gratification for the recipient.
Autoresponders are a real time saver, eliminating the need for manual
responses for many mundane and routine requests. They also enable
you to track responses to various offers to assist you in your ongoing
marketing efforts.
One big advantage with today’s autoresponders is the ability to schedule
multiple messages at predetermined intervals. The first response can
go immediately, with a second message timed to go two days after the
first, a third message to go five days after the second, and so on. Market
research shows that a prospect needs to be exposed to your message
multiple times to become a motivated buyer.
Today’s autoresponders are getting even more sophisticated in terms
of mail list administration. These programs gather the e-mail addresses
of people requesting information, and store them in a database. The
program adds new names to the database and eliminates e-mail addresses
that no longer work. Today’s autoresponder programs also provide
reports about site visitors requesting information. This technology
is very cost effective when compared to manual responses by a human,
not to mention the associated telephone and fax costs.
Personalization is a standard feature of today’s autoresponder programs.
Autoresponders are used to send all kinds of information:
• Price lists
• Welcome letters
• Thank you letters
• Out-of-office advice
• Order confirmations
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• Sales letters
• Catalogs
• News releases
• Brochures
• Job lists
• Spec sheets
• Assembly instructions.
You can provide a copy of your newsletter so people can read a
copy before subscribing, or anything else in which your target market
might be interested.
Why use an autoresponder when you could just provide the information
on your Web site? There are many reasons. With the autoresponder
you have the interested party’s name and e-mail address; you don’t get
that from a visitor to your site. The autoresponder also provides you with
the opportunity to send multiple messages to your potential customer.
Types of Autoresponders
There are three different types of autoresponders:
• Free
• Web host
• Other autoresponder providers.
There are many free or minimal-fee autoresponders available that
come with an ad on your responder page. Some Web hosting companies
provide autoresponders in their Web hosting packages. There also
are many autoresponder service providers that offer packages for a fee
if you don’t want to have ads placed on your responder page.
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The important thing is to get the autoresponder that has the features
you are looking for.
Autoresponder Features
When you are looking for an autoresponder, you want to make sure it
has all the features to enable you to make the most of this marketing
activity. Today’s autoresponders keep getting better—new features are
being added all the time. Some of the things you want to look for are
discussed below.
Personalization
Today’s autoresponders capture the requester’s name as well as e-mail
address, allowing personalized responses.
Multiple Responses
Studies have shown that a potential customer has to be exposed to your
message multiple times before he or she is ready to buy. Many autoresponders
allow multiple messages on a scheduled time line.
Size of Message
Some autoresponders have a limit on the size of the message that can be
sent. Ensure that your autoresponder can handle any message you would
want to send to prospective customers.
Tracking
You must have access to tracking reports that provide you with
information to enable you to track the results of your marketing
efforts. You need to be able to determine what is working and what
is not.
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HTML Messaging
Choose an autoresponder that can handle HTML and plain text e-mails.
Studies have shown that HTML marketing e-mails get a higher clickthrough
rate.
Autoresponders are constantly being enhanced. Stay current.
Successful Marketing through Autoresponders
The technology itself is only one piece of this marketing technique. The
content of the messages sent out by the autoresponder is the determining
factor in converting recipients of your message to customers. The
following tips will help you produce effective messages:
• Personalize. Personalize your messages using the recipient’s name
throughout the message and in the subject line.
• Tone. Selling is all about relationships. Give your messages a
tone that builds relationships.
• Focus on the reader’s needs, and how your product or service
provides the solution. Focus on the benefits.
• Subject line. Have a catchy subject line, but don’t use ad copy.
Ad copy in a subject line is a sure way to get your message deleted
before it is read.
• Include a call to action. It is amazing how often people do what
they are told to do.
• Use correct spelling, upper- and lowercase letters, grammar, and
punctuation. This correspondence is business correspondence
and is a reflection of everything related to how you do business.
• Get to the point quickly. Online readers have little patience with
verbose messages.
• Write for scannability. Have a maximum of six or seven lines
per paragraph.
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Internet Resources for Chapter 11
I have included a few resources for you to check out regarding autoresponders.
For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit the Resources
section of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/
resources.html. There you can find additional tips, tools, techniques,
and resources.
Autoresponder Marketing by iBoost Journal
http://www.iboost.com/promote/marketing/autoresponders
Some interesting articles on autoresponders and how they can assist
you in your online marketing.
Care & Feeding of the Press
http://www.netpress.org/careandfeeding.html
Journalists’ manifesto for how PR people should work with the media.
GetResponse.com
http://www.getresponse.com
An autoresponder system that allows you to send multiple responses
without unwanted advertising, and best of all it is free; also includes the
ability to send HTML e-mails.
Responders.com
http://www.responders.com
This site offers free request-form processing, online form builder, and
autoresponder e-mails. Allows for easy integration into your Web site,
and provides a live demo.
Send Free—The Original Autoresponder Ad Exchange
http://www.sendfree.com
A free service that allows you to have autoresponders running from
your Web site, but also allows you to advertise your business in the
e-mail body of other targeted sites’ autoresponders, and vice versa.
SmartAutoResponder.com
http://smartautoresponder.com/index.htm
An autoresponder service that charges a fee of US$15.99 per month.
Allows you to customize your autoresponder to your specifications.
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12
Effective Promotional
Use of Newsgroups
People participate in newsgroups by “posting” or e-mailing comments,
questions, or answers to other participants’ questions, thus taking part
in a conversation or thread. Using proper netiquette is important. To do
this, read the FAQ files and rules, “lurk” first, and stay on topic. In this
chapter, we cover:
• The benefits of using newsgroups in your marketing plan
• Newsgroup netiquette
• Reading the FAQ files, abiding by the rules, and lurking
• How to advertise if advertising is not allowed
• Developing your Usenet marketing strategy
• Identifying your target newsgroups
• Participating in this online community
• How to respond correctly to messages
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Effective Promotional Use of Newsgroups 207
• Cross-posting and spamming
• Using signature files.
Newsgroups—What Are They?
Every day, people from all over the globe enter a virtual community
with others who are interested in the same topic. These people are
brought together by their common interest in the topic of discussion.
While they are in this virtual community, only that specific topic is discussed.
There are many communities discussing different topics. You
can visit and participate in as many of them as
you wish. These virtual communities are called
newsgroups.
Newsgroups are hierarchical and are arranged
by subject. Each newsgroup is dedicated
to a discussion of a particular topic, such as antique
cars, home schooling, travel, artificial intelligence,
or the latest hot band.
Visitors to these virtual communities can “post” messages. These
messages might be questions or comments or responses to other participants.
Everyone who visits the newsgroup has the opportunity to view
these “postings.” Often, many visitors participate in these discussions,
and every side of the issue is presented.
There are three types of newsgroup visitors:
• People asking questions or advice
• People providing answers or advice
• People who read the discussion without taking part.
The Changing Face of Newsgroups
Back in the early days, Usenet newsgroups started out as places where
academics conducted discussions on research. They quickly expanded
to include newsgroups on every topic imaginable, with participants hav-
Newsgroup
A discussion group on
the Internet that focuses
on a specific subject.
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208 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
ing wonderful conversations relevant to the topic. Usenet newsgroups
had to be accessed using your newsgroup reader. Today newsgroups
can be accessed through the Web.
Then commercialization saturated the Web, and today there are many
newsgroups overrun with advertisements with very little topical discussion
taking place. However, there are still many newsgroups that have
vibrant discussions with loyal participants that provide a great opportunity
for communicating with your target market.
Every visitor to a newsgroup made an effort to get there. He or she
chose the specific newsgroup for a reason, usually an interest in the
topic being discussed. If your business’s products or services are related
to that topic, you have found a group of your target market (they have
pre-qualified themselves) in one place interested in discussing what you
have to offer.
The Benefits of Newsgroups
There are many ways online marketers can benefit from participating in
newsgroups:
• Reaching prospective customers. You can immediately reach thousands
of your targeted potential customers with a single message.
• Communicating with existing customers. You can provide your
loyal customers with valuable information.
• Market research. You can use newsgroups to find out the latest
trends, customer needs, what people are looking for, and what
they are talking about. These newsgroups can be beehives of
information where you can check out your competition and
gather invaluable data on your market.
• Reputation building. By answering people’s questions and helping
to solve their problems, you build your reputation as an
expert in the field.
• Increased traffic. You can direct people to your commercial Web
site if you do it in an informative way.
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Thousands of Newsgroup Categories
Newsgroups are organized into different types of discussions or categories.
Each of the major categories has lots of individual newsgroups in
which you can participate. Major newsgroup categories include:
• alt—Discussions on alternative topics.
• biz—Discussions on business topics. You might find groups that
allow advertising here.
• comp—Discussions on computer hardware- and software-related
topics.
• humanities—Discussions on fine arts, literature, and philosophy
topics.
• misc—Discussions of miscellaneous topics that don’t have their
own categories such as employment, health, and other issues.
• news—Discussions on Usenet news and administration.
• rec—Discussions on recreation topics such as games, hobbies,
and sports.
• sci—Discussions on science.
• soc—Discussions on social issues.
• talk—Making conversation.
Each of the major categories has a number of subgroups, and each
of the subgroups has a number of sub-subgroups. For example, under
the rec major group you can find a subgroup rec.sports. Here the discussion
revolves around all kinds of sports. Under the subgroup rec.sports
you can find sub-subgroups and sub-sub-subgroups, for example:
• rec.sports
• rec.sports.hockey
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• rec.sports.hockey.NHL
• rec.sports.hockey.NHL.BostonBruins.
As you can see, the longer the name, the narrower is the discussion
that is taking place.
Target Appropriate Newsgroups
With the large number of Usenet newsgroups that currently exist and
additional groups being introduced every day, it is a formidable task to
identify appropriate newsgroups for your company’s Internet marketing
activities. First, you need to determine which newsgroups your prospective
customers frequent.
Look for a close fit between a newsgroup and the product or service
you are offering. For example, if your company sells software that aids
genealogical work, then one fruitful newsgroup for your business might
be soc.genealogy.methods. Try finding newsgroups that your target
market would enjoy reading, or ask your clients or customers which
newsgroups they participate in or find interesting.
There are many ways to find appropriate Usenet newsgroup listings.
You can do a search using the newsgroup functions of the two
leading browsers, Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer,
and most newsreader programs have a search capability.
Search the newsgroups for keywords that relate to your target market,
your product, or your service to identify possible newsgroups for
your marketing effort. A good place to start is Google Groups (http://
groups.google.com), or you can go to http://www.google.com and select
“Groups” from the four tabs (Web, Images, Groups, or Directories).
Here you can conduct a keyword search of the Usenet newsgroups
by typing your keywords into the search box and clicking “Google
Search.” The search results are displayed in chronological order, with
the results at the top being the most recently used. You should choose
keywords right for your target customer or client. These methods can
identify a fairly large list of potential newsgroups to be considered for
your marketing activities.
If your company specializes in providing exotic vacations to Mexico,
search for keywords like Mexico, vacation, travel, tropical, resorts, beaches,

Utilizing Signature Files to Increase Web Site Traffic 183

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Utilizing Signature Files to Increase Web Site Traffic 183
Talk to Jane Doe about our new lease incentives!
101 Main Street, Woodstock, New York 10010
Tel: (800) 555-0000
Cell: (800) 555-1010
Fax: (800) 555-1020
www.bug.com
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Another mistake that people make is that they try to make their sig
files too flashy or eye catching. Using a lot of large symbols might catch
people’s eyes, but the impression it leaves will not be memorable. Here
is an example of what not to do:
✻✻✻✪✪✪☛✪✪✪☛✪✪✪☛✪✪✪☛✪✪✪☛✪✪✪☛✪✪✪☛✪✪✪✻✻
✻ !Sunnyvale Volkswagen ! ✻
✻ !Jane Doe, Marketing Assistant ! ✻
✻ ! jdoe@bug.com ! ✻
✻ 232 Main Street (800) 555-0000 ✻
✻ Woodstock, New York ✯ ✔ (800) 555-0002 ✻
✻ 30210 ☞ ✻
✻ “Test drives @ www.bug.com” ✻
✻✻✻✪✪✪☛✪✪✪☛✪✪✪☛✪✪✪☛✪✪✪☛✪✪✪☛✪✪✪☛✪✪✪✻✻
Here are some examples of what sig files should look like:
=======================================================
Sunnyvale Volkswagen
Jane Doe, Marketing Assistant
mailto:jdoe@bug.com
101 Main Street, Woodstock, New York, 10010
Tel: (800) 555-0000 Fax:(800) 555-0002
“Our once-a-year sales event is on now @ http://www.bug.com”
=======================================================
_____________________________________________________________
Jane Doe, Marketing Assistant
Sunnyvale Volkswagen
jdoe@bug.com
101 Main Street Tel: (800) 555-0000
Woodstock, New York, 10010 Fax: (800) 555-0001
Check out our online contest http://www.bug.com today and WIN!
_____________________________________________________________
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184 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Jane Doe, Marketing Assistant
Sunnyvale Volkswagen
101 Main Street jdoe@bug.com
P.O. Box 101 Tel: (800) 555-0000
Woodstock, New York 10010 URL: www.bug.com
“1999 Winner of the Best Dealership Award”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Internet Resources for Chapter 9
I have included a few resources for you to check out when developing
your signature file. For additional resources on a variety of topics, visit
the Resources section of my Web site at http://www.susansweeney.com/
resources.html. There you can find additional tips, tools, techniques,
and resources.
Coolsig Signature Files
http://www.coolsig.com
This site contains signature files in a variety of categories.
Esther’s Massive Signature File Collection
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~moose/sigs.html
A massive collection of sig files to review—the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Internet Strategist
http://www.techdirect.com/strategy/sigfiles.html
What to do and not to do on sig files and mailing lists. Learn how to
create your personal sig file and what the different types are used for.
Siglets.com
http://siglets.com
Siglets are short notations, humorous or serious, placed at the bottom
of an e-mail, usually in a sig file.
Signature Files
http://www.smithfam.com/news/n8.html
Signature files are an absolutely vital way of promoting your Web site.
Learn how to market your product on the Internet from the leading
Internet marketing experts, and it is all free.
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Utilizing Signature Files to Increase Web Site Traffic 185
Webnovice.com
www.Webnovice.com/sig_files.htm
“Everything You Wanted To Know About Signature Files…But Didn’t
Know Where To Ask.”
Creating Signature Files in Outlook Express
http://www.webterrace.com/outlook/signature.htm
Promotion World
www.promotionworld.com/tutorial/504.html
This tutorial will teach you the basics of creating signature files.
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10
The E-mail Advantage
E-mail is rapidly becoming one of the most crucial forms of communication
you have with your clients, potential customers, suppliers, and
colleagues. E-mail is now a widely accessible and generally accepted
form of business communication. We are seeing a huge increase in commercial
e-mail volume. The reason for this significant increase is understandable
given that e-mail is a very cost-effective, time-efficient tool
that has a high response rate. E-mail is used to build your community
online, sell products and provide customer service, reinforce brand awareness,
and encourage customer loyalty.
In the online community, e-mail is an extremely efficient way to
build and maintain relationships. As a marketing tool, e-mail is one of
the most cost-effective ways to maintain an ongoing dialogue with your
audience.
However, with the overabundance of spam, spam detection software,
filtering of e-mail, and the new anti-spam legislation, things are
changing rapidly in the e-mail world. It is becoming a challenge to make
sure that your e-mail is received, opened and responded to.
In this chapter, we cover:
• Strategies for creating effective e-mail messages
• E-mail netiquette
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The E-mail Advantage 187
• E-mail marketing tips
• Sending HTML versus ASCII (text-based) e-mail messages.
Making the Connection
E-mail is a communication medium, and, as with all forms of communication,
you do not get a second chance to leave a first impression. E-mail
must be used appropriately. People receive large amounts of e-mail each
day, and the tips in this chapter will help to ensure that your e-mail is
taken seriously.
One of the greatest benefits of e-mail is the speed with which you
can communicate. E-mail takes seconds rather than weeks to send a
message around the world. The cost of this form of communication
is negligible, compared to making a long-distance
phone call or sending a fax. The economies of scale
are significant. One e-mail message can be sent to millions
of people across the globe simultaneously. This type
of mass mailing is done at a fraction of the cost and a
fraction of the time (and internal resources) it would take
with snail mail.
All kinds of files can be sent via e-mail, including sound, video,
data, graphics, and text. With an autoresponder, information can immediately
be sent automatically to customers and
potential customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,
365 days a year in response to their online requests.
E-mail is interactive. Your current and potential
customers can immediately respond to you and carry
on an ongoing dialogue with you. E-mail is seen much
more like a conversation than a text document. It is
perceived as being more personal than snail mail and can go quite a
long way in building relationships.
E-mail Program vs. Mail List Software
The time has come where mail list software is essential for sending mass,
permission-based, marketing e-mail. In this chapter we’ll talk about regu-
Snail mail
Slang term for the
regular postal
service.
Autoresponder
Program that automatically
responds to
incoming e-mails.
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188 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
lar, day-to-day e-mail. See Chapter 14 for the discussion on marketing
e-mail sent to a group or private mail list marketing.
Effective E-mail Messages
Most people who use this medium get tons of e-mail, including their
share of junk e-mail. Many use organization tools, filters, and blockers
to screen incoming e-mails. The following tips will increase the effectiveness
of your e-mail communication to ensure that you have the best
opportunity to have your e-mail opened, read, and responded to.
The Importance of Your E-mail Subject Line
The first thing most people do when they open their e-mail program is
start hitting the delete key. They have an abundance of mail in their
inbox and they want to get rid of the clutter, so they delete anything
that looks like spam or an ad. How do they determine what is junk?
The subject line is usually the deciding factor. It is essential that your
e-mail subject line not look like ad copy.
Never send an e-mail message without a subject line. Subject lines
should be brief, with the keywords appearing first. The longer the subject
line is, the more likely it will not be viewed in its entirety because
different people set the viewable subject line space at various widths.
The subject line is equivalent to a headline in a newspaper in
terms of attracting reader attention. When you read a newspaper,
you don’t really read it; generally you skim the headlines and read
the articles whose headlines grabbed your attention. The same is true
with e-mail. Many recipients, especially those who receive a significant
number of e-mails daily, skim the subject lines and read only the
articles whose subject line grabs their attention. The subject line is
the most important part of your e-mail message because this phrase
alone determines whether or not the reader will decide to open your
e-mail or delete it.
Effective subject lines:
• Are brief, yet capture the reader’s interest
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• Don’t look like ad copy
• Build business credibility
• Attract attention with action words
• Highlight the most important benefits
• Are always positive
• Put the most important words first.
Effective subject lines should grab the reader’s attention, isolate and
qualify your best prospects, and draw your reader into the subheads
and the text itself. Avoid SHOUTING! Using CAPITALS in your subject
line is the same as SHOUTING AT THE READER! DON’T DO
IT!! Stay away from ad copy in your subject lines—it is the kiss of death
for an e-mail. When most people open their e-mail, they delete all the
ads as the first step.
E-mail “To” and “From” Headings Allow You to Personalize
Use personal names in the “To” and “From” headings whenever possible,
to create a more personal feeling. People open e-mail from people
they know and trust. If your message is coming from 257046@aol.com
rather than Jane Doe, will your friends know it is coming from you?
Most e-mail programs allow you to attach your own name to your
e-mail address.
If you are using Microsoft Outlook Express, the following are the
steps to set up your name in the “From” heading:
1. On the menu bar, click “Tools.”
2. On the drop-down menu, click on “Accounts.”
3. Click on the “Mail” tab.
4. Click on your e-mail account, then click “Properties.”
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5. Click on the “General” tab.
6. Under “User information,” type your name and organization in
the appropriate boxes. It is the name from this area that will be
seen in the “From” field in the user’s e-mail program. Then click
“Apply,” then “OK” and “Close.”
For all other e-mail programs, consult the Help file included in the
program.
Blind Carbon Copy (BCC)
Have you ever received an e-mail message in which the first screen or
first several screens were a string of other people’s e-mail addresses to
which the message had been sent? Didn’t you feel special? Didn’t you
feel the message was meant just for you? This sort of
bulk mailing is very impersonal, and often recipients
will delete the message without looking at it.
A few years ago I would have suggested using the
BCC feature when sending bulk or group e-mails.
Today, a number of Internet service providers look
for multiple addresses in the BCC area to determine
if an incoming message is spam. If your message is
deemed to be spam it will probably not go through
to your intended recipient. This is one of the reasons
I recommend moving to private mail list software for marketing messages
that are going out to a group. See Chapter 14 on Private Mail
List Marketing.
Effective E-mail Message Formatting
The content of the message should be focused on one topic. If you need
to change the subject in the middle of a message, it is better to send a
separate e-mail. Alternatively, if you wish to discuss more than one topic,
make sure you begin your message with “I have three questions” or
“There are four issues I would like to discuss.” People are busy, they
read their e-mail quickly, and they assume you will cover your main
points within the first few sentences of your message.
BCC
When blind carbon copy
is used in an e-mail
message, all recipients’
names are hidden so that
no one sees who else has
received the e-mail.
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E-mail is similar to writing a business letter in that the spelling and
grammar should be correct. This includes the proper use of upper- and
lowercase lettering, which many people seem to ignore when sending
e-mail. However, e-mail is unlike a business letter in that the tone is
completely different. E-mail correspondence is not as formal as business
writing. The tone of e-mail is more similar to a polite conversation
than a formal letter, which makes it conducive to relationship building.
In general, you should:
• Keep your paragraphs relatively short—no more than seven lines.
• Make your point in the first paragraph.
• Be clear and concise.
• Use http:// at the beginning of any Web address to ensure that
you make it “live.” When you provide the URL starting with
the www, the reader has to copy and paste the Web address into
the address field in the browser if he wants to visit your site.
When you place http:// before the www, the link is “live” and
the reader just has to click on the address to be taken directly to
your site. Make it as easy as possible for your reader to visit
your Web site.
• Give your reader a call to action.
• Avoid using fancy formatting such as stationery, graphics, different
fonts, italics, and bold, because many e-mail programs
cannot display those features. Your message that reads: “I loved
the flowers. Love ya” could be viewed as “I loved the
flowers. Love ya” if the recipient’s e-mail software can’t
handle formatting. That kind of loses the impact!
• If your e-mail package doesn’t have a spell-check feature, you
might want to consider composing your message first in your
word-processing program. Spell-check it there, then cut and paste
it into your e-mail package.
• Choose your words carefully. E-mail is a permanent record of
your thoughts, and it can easily be forwarded to others. When-
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192 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
ever you have the urge to send a nasty response, give yourself an
hour or two to reconsider. Those words can come back to haunt
you—and they usually do.
A Call to Action
When you give your readers a call to action, it’s amazing how often
people will do as they’re told. I’ll give you an example of something we
did at Connex Network. We ran a series of ten Internet marketing workshops
for a large organization. Their staff and selected clients were invited
to participate in any, some, or all of the workshops. Their clients
could include up to three employees. Because the workshops extended
beyond noon, lunch was provided.
Because Connex Network was responsible for organizing and managing
the project, we needed to know the approximate number of people
who would be attending each of the workshops to organize the luncheons.
When we contacted each company’s representatives by e-mail
looking for participation RSVPs, we conducted an experiment. We sent
half the representatives one version of the message and the other half a
slightly different version. The only difference between the two messages
was that in one, we included a call to action. In that message we asked:
“RSVP before Wednesday at noon indicating if you will be attending as
we must make arrangements for lunch,” and in the other, this same line
read: “Please let us know if you are planning to attend as we must make
arrangements for lunch.”
There was a 95 percent response rate from the group who received
the first message. This is because we gave people a call to action and a
deadline, and they felt obligated to respond more promptly. Meanwhile,
fewer than 50 percent of the people in the second group responded to
our message. What does this tell us? To improve your response rate,
give your readers a call to action when you send them e-mail. People
respond when told to do something; they act with more urgency when
there is a deadline.
Appropriate E-mail Reply Tips
Do not include the entire original message in your replies. This is unnecessary
and is aggravating to the original sender of the message. However,
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use enough of the original message to refresh the recipient’s memory.
Remember to check the “To” and “CC” before you reply. You would not
want an entire mail list to receive your response intended only for the
sender. The same applies for selecting “Reply to All” instead of “Reply.”
HTML or Text?
Should you send e-mail messages as text or as HTML? HTML messages
allow you to send a Web page via e-mail. These HTML messages
are far prettier and eye-catching than text, and studies have shown that
HTML messages deliver significantly higher click-through rates.
Today, the rule of thumb is that you send text e-mail for your routine,
individual communication and you use HTML for mass, permission-
based marketing communication like your newsletter or e-specials.
You send your routine e-mail with your e-mail program and you send
your HTML marketing e-mail with your private mail list software. See
Chapter 14 on Private Mail List Marketing.
Always Use Your Signature Files
As discussed previously, signature files are a great marketing tool. Always
attach your signature file to your online communication. See Chapter
9 for information on signature files. Remember to be sure that the
signature files are right for the intended audience.
Discerning Use of Attachments
If you are sending a fairly large amount of data, you might want to send
it as an attached file to your e-mail message. However, only include an
e-mail attachment if you have the recipient’s permission to send an attached
file. You would never consider going to someone’s home, letting
yourself in, finding your way into their living room, and then leaving
your brochure on the coffee table. However, people do the online equivalent
of this when they send an unsolicited attachment. The attachment
is sent across the Internet to the recipient’s computer and is downloaded
and stored on the computer’s hard drive. This is considered quite rude
and, in most cases, unwanted.
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Also, unless the recipient of your e-mail is aware of the file size and
is expecting it, don’t send an attachment that is larger than 50K. Although
your Internet connection might be a cable modem or a T1 line,
and a 3 MB file is sent in seconds, the person who is receiving your
message and attachment might be using a 14.4 Kbps modem and a slow
machine. If you send a 3 MB file, it might take the person with the 14.4
Kbps modem two hours to download the file. Needless to say, he or she
won’t be too pleased.
Another factor to consider when sending an unsolicited attachment
is that the attachment you are sending might be incompatible with the
operating system or the software on the recipient’s system. You might
be using a different platform (Mac/PC) or different operating system,
and the recipient might not be able to open and read your file. Even PC
to PC or Mac to Mac, the recipient might not be able to open and view
the attachment if that particular program is not installed on his machine.
Someone using a 1994 version of Corel WordPerfect might not
be able to read a Microsoft Word 2000 document sent as an attachment.
Thus, you have wasted your time sending the file and the recipient’s
time downloading the file.
Finally, it is a well-known fact that e-mail attachments
can act as carriers for computer viruses. You might unknowingly
send someone an attachment with a virus, and even if
the file you send is virus-free, you could still take the blame
if recipients find a virus on their system, just because you
sent them an attachment. Basically, avoid sending e-mail
attachments of any type unless you have the recipient’s permission.
Be mindful of the size of the file you intend to
send, compatibility with other platforms, and computer viruses.
One alternative to sending a large attachment is to post the file on
a Web server, and in your e-mail message direct users to a URL from
which they can download the file.
Expressing Yourself with Emoticons and Shorthand
In verbal communication, you provide details on your mood, meaning,
and intention through voice inflections, tone, and volume. You
also give clues about your meaning and intention through facial expression
and body language. E-mail does not allow for the same ex-
Viruses
Programs that
contaminate a
user’s hard
drive, often with
unwanted results.
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The E-mail Advantage 195
pression of feeling. The closest thing we have to
this online is the use of emoticons.
Emoticon is a combination of “emotion” and
“icon.” Emoticons are combinations of keyboard
characters that give the appearance of a stick figure’s
emotions. They have to be viewed sideways and are
meant to be smiling, frowning, laughing, and so on.
Emoticons let you communicate your meaning and intentions to your
reader. For example, if your boss gives you an assignment via e-mail
and your response is, “Thanks a lot for unloading your dirty work on
me,” your boss might become upset at your obvious defiance. But if you
replied with this: “Thanks a million for unloading your dirty work on
me :-),” your boss would understand that you were jokingly accepting
the assignment.
Emoticons enable you to add a little personality and life to your text
messages. However, their use is not universal and should generally not
be used in business correspondence. Some of the more commonly used
emoticons include:
:-) Smiling
:-@ Screaming
:-0 or :-o Wow!
:-p Tongue wagging
;-) Wink
(-: I’m left-handed
:-V Shout
:-& Tongue-tied
:-r Tongue hanging out
;-( or ;-<> Devilish, devious
Emoticons
Symbols made from
punctuation marks
and letters that look
like facial expressions.
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Keyword Research and Evaluation
WordTracker
http://www.wordtracker.com
An online tool for compiling the right combination of keywords. You
can run a free trial, but this is a pay service for keyword generation and
suggestions.
WordSpot
http://www.wordspot.com
Keyword marketing resources, tactics and tips.
Overture—Search Term Suggestion Tool
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion
Overture’s search term suggestion tool to help you identify relevant
keywords.
Overture—View Bid Tool
http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/
Overture’s view bid tool that shows you the value per click for specified
keywords.
Google AdWords: Keyword Suggestions
https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox/
A free tool provided by Google, intended to help AdWord customers
choose keyword phrases.
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176 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
176
9
Utilizing Signature Files to Increase
Web Site Traffic
A signature file, or sig file as it is commonly referred to, is your electronic
business card. It takes the form of a short memo and is attached
at the end of your e-mail messages. You can use your signature file in a
number of clever ways, from just giving out phone numbers and addresses,
to offering some substantial information. Sig files can be used
to let people know about a special event or to inform people about an
award or honor your company has received. In this chapter, we cover:
• The appropriate size of sig files
• The content and design of sig files
• Creating sig files to add statements to your messages
• The benefits of sig files.
Presenting Your e-Business Card
A signature file is your e-business card. It should be attached at the
end of all your e-mails—those that are sent to individuals and espe-
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Utilizing Signature Files to Increase Web Site Traffic 177
cially those that are sent to Usenet newsgroups and mail lists. Most, if
not all, e-mail programs allow for the use of a signature file. If yours
doesn’t, you should consider switching e-mail programs because sig
files can be effective in drawing traffic to your Web site when used
appropriately.
Your sig file should always include all basic contact information:
name, organization, snail address, phone, fax, e-mail, and URL. You
should provide every way possible for recipients to reach you, do not
provide only the way in which you would like to be contacted. The
customer is king and it is the recipients’ choice if they would rather call
than e-mail you.
Some businesses also have a “Click here” on their sig file, which
takes you directly to their Web site. This is a nice idea, but you must
also remember to include your URL so that the recipients have it.
Sometimes people just print their e-mail to take home that night,
and they can’t get to your Web site by trying to click on a piece of
paper.
You should also include a tag line offering information about your
company, its products and services, a current sales promotion, where
you will be located at a trade show, a special event you are hosting, an
award your company has received, or other marketing-focused information.
Sig files are readily accepted online and, when designed properly,
comply with netiquette.
Always remember to place http:// before Web site URLs and mailto:
before e-mail addresses to make them hypertext links. This allows the
readers to click on the links to take them directly to a Web site or to
e-mail you without having to copy and paste the address in their browser
or e-mail program.
How to Develop Your Signature File
In preparation for designing and developing your sig file, you should
decide what information you want to include and what you want your
e-business card to look like. Depending on the e-mail program you use,
you can create your sig file using Windows Notepad, Microsoft Word,
or any other processor and save it as a text file (with a .txt extension),
or you can create your sig file within your e-mail program.
If you are using Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape
Messenger or AOL, take the following steps to develop your sig file:
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Microsoft Outlook 2004
1. On the menu bar, click “Tools.”
2. In the drop-down menu, click on “Options.”
3. Click the “Mail Format” tab.
4. Click the “Signature Picker” button.
5. Then click the “New” button to add your new signature.
6. Enter a name for your signature, and select the “Start a new
signature” radio button and click next.
7. Enter your signature and click “Finished.”
8. If you have more then one signature, pick one that will be used
as a default.
9. Click ok, then ok again.
Microsoft Outlook Express 6
1. On the menu bar, click “Tools.”
2. On the drop-down menu, click on “Options.”
3. Click on the “Signatures” tab.
4. Click on “New” to create your sig file.
5. Type in your sig file contents.
6. Make sure “Add sig file to all outgoing messages” is checked
under signature settings.
7. Click “Apply.”
Netscape Messenger
1. Create your sig file using any text editor and save it as a .txt file.
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Utilizing Signature Files to Increase Web Site Traffic 179
2. On the menu bar, click “Edit.”
3. Select the “Mail & Newsgroups” category.
4. Go to the folder named “Identity.”
5. Click on “Attach Signature.”
6. In the “Signature File” text box, enter the location and name of
the signature file you saved earlier or use the Open dialog box
to browse through your folders until you find the location of the
file. When you find it, select it and then click “Open,” returning
you to the Preferences dialog box. Click “OK” to return to the
Messenger window.
America Online
1. Click on “Mail Center” on the toolbar.
2. Select the “Insert Signatures” file icon with the picture of a pencil
and click on “Set Up Signatures” on the drop-down menu
that displays.
3. Click on the “Create” tab on the “Set Up Signatures” display
that appears.
4. Type in a name for your Signature file in the “Signature Name” area.
5. Under the “Signature” area enter your signature information.
6. Click on the “Insert” signature tab on the toolbar on your write
mail display to add your message, which will be placed on your
e-mail.
The Dos and Don’ts of Signature Files
It is a good idea to develop several signature files to use with different
groups of recipients. You can use an appropriate sig file for each different
group you are targeting. You should update your sig file often to
reflect current marketing-related information.
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Some e-mail programs allow a maximum of 80 characters per line
for sig files. You should design your sig file to fit well within the limits
of all programs. Use no more than 65 characters per line to be assured
that your sig file will be viewed as you have designed it no matter what
reader is being used. As a matter of fact, the fewer characters the better
to ensure that what you have on one line appears on one line (and not
two) in your viewers’ browsers. Sometimes people open and view their
e-mail in a small window and not the full screen.
Some people get really innovative in the design of their sig files.
They often include sketches, designs, or logos developed by combining
keyboard numbers and punctuation. Including graphics in your sig file
is not a good idea. This might look quite nice on your screen, but when
you send it to other people who have a different e-mail program or are
using different screen resolutions, it could look quite different on their
monitors. You should also stay away from using icons or sketches in
your signature files. Check out sig files attached to messages you receive
or those posted to newsgroups to see what you like, what you don’t
like, and what suits you best. You can always build it, test it on your
colleagues, and then decide whether you should use it or not.
The use of sig files offers a number of benefits to your company. If
you use sig files appropriately, you promote your company and your
online presence in the following ways:
• The use of sig files increases your company’s online
exposure. By merely placing a sig file at the end of a posting
to a newsgroup, you ensure that your company name
will be seen by thousands of people. A great tag line with
a call to action encourages people to visit your site.
• As with any advertisement, the design and content of
your sig file can be used to position your business and
create or complement a corporate image.
• Using your sig file can enhance the reputation of your company
based upon the e-mail that it is attached to. If your postings to
newsgroups and mailing lists are helpful and continually appreciated,
this will become associated with your company name.
• Using appropriate sig files signals to the online community that
you are a member who respects proper netiquette.
Tag line
Advertising message,
usually included in
your signature file
attached to an e-mail.
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Utilizing Signature Files to Increase Web Site Traffic 181
Sig file Dos Sig file Don’ts
Do list all appropriate contact information. Don’t list prices of any kind.
Keep it short, say four to eight lines. Don’t use a sales pitch.
Keep it simple. Don’t use too many symbols.
Provide an appropriate and Don’t list the company’s
professional tag line. products or services.
Sig Files to Bring Traffic to Your Web Site
The major benefit of sig files is that they can attract visitors to your
Web site. Use your signature file as a mini-advertisement for your company
and its products and services (called sigvertising). With sigvertising
you can go beyond offering the basic contact information. Use your sig
file as a tool to bring traffic to your Web site. Instead of simply listing
your company’s phone number and URL, give the reader some insight
into your company and a reason to visit your site.
One of the most important elements of your signature file from a
marketing perspective is the tag line. Your signature file should always
include a one-line tag line or catch phrase. A tag line is a small sentence
that is used in branding and is often recognizable without even the mention
of the company or product name. Does your tag line give the reader
a real and compelling desire to visit your Web site?
Do you recognize any of these tag lines?
• “We try harder.”
• “It’s the real thing.”
• “Like a rock.”
• “Just do it.”
• “Kills bugs dead.”
A catch phrase might be something that catches the reader’s attention
and intrigues her to find out more. You should include a call to
action in the catch phrase wherever possible to have your reader take
action. I often include the catch phrase “Check out our Web Site Report
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182 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
Card” in my signature file with a hypertext link to my Web site, with
positive results. The recipients often do check out our Web site report
card, ask for additional information, and often become clients. It works!
Consider some of the following tag line or catch phrase possibilities
to increase the traffic to your Web site:
• Announce a sale or special offer. Briefly mention that your company
will be having a sale, or inform people that there is a special
offer available on your Web site.
• Offer something for free. Inform readers of free information or
samples that they can access if they visit your site.
• Announce an event. If your company is organizing or sponsoring
a special event, inform people through your sig file, and invite
them to your site for more information.
• Announce a contest. If your site is holding a contest, tell readers
that they can enter by visiting your site.
• Announce an award or honor. If your company or your Web
site has received special recognition, tell people about it through
your sig file.
Sig files are accepted online in e-mail, newsgroups, mail lists, and
discussion groups. However, be cautious when developing your sig files
to ensure that they will be well received. Sig files that are billboards, or
sig files that are longer than most of your text messages, are to be avoided.
Sig files that are blatant advertisements definitely are not appreciated.
The online community reacts unfavorably to hard-sell advertising unless
it is done in the proper forum. Here is an example of a sig file that
might offend Internet users.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Are you in need of a reliable vehicle?
If you are, come on down to Sunnyvale Volkswagen!
We have the best deals in town and will beat any of our competitors’
prices on new and used cars!
Money-back guarantee!
Great deal on a 2001 Diesel Jetta . . . . $6,995.
TEAM