Do You Stay In Touch?
By Mark Idzik
Do you regularly stay in touch with your customers and
prospects?
While being very important, it's hard to do on a regular
basis. Not only does it take time (how much of that do
we still have!) but it also takes some technical experience
if you plan to use an email list management system.
Most successful internet professionals agree that
staying in touch with their prospects and customers on a
regular basis pays off in multiples. Visit any major site
and you'll see at least a few methods of gathering email
addresses. They may be by running contests, mailing lists,
"special offers" lists, free accounts or free reports.
These sites have realized that it's easier to get you to
buy, or take action, by emailing you on a regular basis.
Chances are that if you keep your web site address in front
of your customers and prospects, they'll come back to visit
you and hopefully they make money on showing advertisements,
or do business with you.
This method of staying in touch has proved successful over
the years not only on-line, but in traditional direct
marketing also. Direct mail companies have know for years
how to "work" a list and have made millions in the process.
So why don't more sites utilize this very successful
technique?
One of the reasons may be that establishing and maintaining
a good and *effective* email list takes a lot of work! There
are a lot of programs and services that allow you to
maintain a list, but most are difficult to use, have
advertising in your messages or on your web pages, or are
just too expensive.
I've reviewed most of the online mailing services and
perl scripts available. I was so frustrated with the
unprofessional results and technical drawbacks that I
decided to create my own ezine email service to make
sending and creating ezines and announcements easy.
We call it EzineMail.
Once this service is online, it will provide all the tools
that any web site would need to *easily* maintain an email
list. Just place a short HTML snippet into your web page
and your visitors can add or remove themselves from your
list. When you want to mail a message to your list, just
sign onto your account, cut and paste your message, and
hit send! Of course most businesses would also want no
advertising, importing of your current list, up-to-the-
minute list statistics, a complete ezine creation system,
ability to send personalized email to your list, automated
subscribe and unsubscribe code attached to each email,
professional subscribe and unsubscribe email confirmation
notices and a strict opt-in email policy.
We're still in the BETA test phase, but this issue of the
WEBBIZ Toolbox was sent using EzineMail. If you'd like to
get on our mailing list for updates on the system just
visit: http://www.ezinemail.com/
Regardless of what system or method you use, keeping in
contact with your prospects and customers on a regular
basis will always be a good investment for your business.
Good luck and don't forget to "keep in touch"!
Peace.
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