Using an email address that contains your domain name and appending an email signature to all of your email correspondence are two free, easy and effortless ways to promote yourself, your website, and your products or services. Here's how you can incorporate these strategies into your email marketing:
Copyright (c) 2007 Donna Gunter
At a conference I recently attended, I met many people and collected many business cards. As I perused the cards and spoke with the participants, it became glaringly obvious to me that many in this group:
a. did not understand the power of an email address
b. failed to promote themselves in their routine email correspondence via an email signature file
These two free email marketing strategies are at the fingertips of most business owners, yet many fail to take advantage of either. Here's how you can make the most of these two free strategies:
1. Use an email address containing your domain name. Don't give AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Earthlink, GMail, etc. any more free publicity by giving others your email address from one of those services in business settings. Create and use an email address at your business domain name and post that on all of your marketing materials and use that in all of your email correspondence. Many times the only two pieces of information I have about a person are a name and email address. I'm just nosy enough to go and check out the website listed in the domain name just to find out a bit more about what the person offers or does for a living. It becomes much more difficult to determine if I want to do business with someone or get to know that person better if all I have is an AOL or Verizon email address, however.
Why do smart business owners with a website and a domain name fail to use the corresponding email address on a day-to-day basis? Primarily because they don't know how to set it up.
In order to use your domain name's email, you'll need to use an email client, like Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, or Thunderbird to send and receive email. You'll also need to log into your webhosting controls for your website hosting account and set up a POP3 email account. Once you have logged in, set up an address, like info@ or yourname@, as well as a password. Your host will also provide you with the incoming and outgoing mail server info. The incoming mail server info will usually be something like pop.yourdomainname.com and the outgoing mail server will usually be something like smtp.yourdomainname.com. If you have difficulty with the setup of your domain name email address, most hosting companies will provide assistance with setting up this email account in the most commonly used email clients or will provide a tutorial on their site.
2. Use an email signature file. Every email program offers the ability to format what's known as a signature file, or a short block of text that is appended to an email that gives the recipient some information about the sender. This is a powerful marketing tool that can be used free of charge and with absolutely no effort, once it is set up correctly. At a minimum, your email signature should contain your name, title, phone number, and website. The effective email signature files contain a compelling offer to drive someone to your website. For example, you might note your free giveaway in your signature file, or invite someone to sign up for your newsletter, or let a recipient know that you have a blog. Most online business owners create multiple email signature files and use different ones depending on the nature of the audience or person with whom they are corresponding. For marketing via online discussion lists and forums, you may need to create a shortened version of your signature file, as many online networking groups restrict email signature files to 3-5 lines of text.
Just like with your business email address, you'll need to use one of the email clients mentioned above in order to set up and use your email signature files. Here are some resources to help you create your signature file in various email clients:
Outlook Express: http://video.about.com/email/Signatures-in-Outlook-Express.htm
Outlook: http://email.about.com/od/outlooktips/qt/et072706.htm
Eudora: http://email.about.com/cs/eudoratips/qt/et122701.htm
Thunderbird: http://opensourcearticles.com/introduction_to_thunderbird_3
Using an email address that contains your domain name and appending an email signature to all of your email correspondence are two free, easy and effortless ways to promote yourself, your website, and your products or services. Once both are set up in your email client, you can use them daily to market yourself without even thinking about it!
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