How much time did you spend on deciding on the appearance of your business cards? Or your letterhead? Why was it so important to get them just right? Were you trying to present a professional image? Now, how much time did you spend on the appearance of your email address? Did you give it the slightest thought? Judging by the emails I get from countless colleagues in this business, few do. There are two parts to an e-address, just as there are to your postal address: who you are, and where you are....

To read farther

We know that email marketing is a cheap method to reach our customers, prospects and subscribers. However, the increasing amount of unsolicited commercial email is clogging up the inboxes of everyone. So how do you improve the chances of making your email stand out from junk mail? (And I'm assuming you're not sending out unsolicited email. If you are, shame on you.) First, you want to make it easy for your subscriber or prospect to quickly identify that it's from someone they know -- "you....

To read farther

Your e-commerce website relies on its customers to become returning customers in order to develop a successful business. The question you might be wondering, however, is how to make your customers become loyal to you and return. There are plenty of ways you can increase customer loyalty, and the use of email autoresponders is but one. *Automatically Send E-mails When you have an email autoresponder, it sends an e-mail immediately to any individual that clicks yes to receiving e-mails and additional information from your company....

To read farther

You're probably familiar with e-mail signature (or "sig") files -- they're the few lines of contact information that many of us put at the bottom of every e-mail we send. Most e-mail software programs allow you to create and use sig files -- even AOL. I've heard some people who don't use sig files defend their position by saying, "All my clients know my info -- I don't need to remind them with every e-mail." Stop! You're missing a perfect opportunity to promote your business, as well as do your clients and prospects a favor....

To read farther

Whether a company sells light fixtures to large corporations or provides stock analysis to CEO's they should all be using the power of email on a daily basis to: 1. Create customer loyalty 2. Improve customer satisfaction 3. Retain loyal clients 4. Educate prospects 5. Communicate with large accounts 6. Improve brand awareness Why? Email brings businesses into contact with customers for less than it cost to send out any print media or to call clients and prospective clients. Hands down, email is one of, if not the, most powerful form of business communication available right now....

To read farther

The neurophysiological dynamics of understanding each emailmessage are very complex. From that complexity, three basicphases float to the top that you will want to becomefamiliar with. I like to label these: (1) the associationphase, (2) the connection phase, and (3) the reaction phase. Let us look at each of these, and how the writer and readercan assume a more active role. In the Association Phase, the sender's words are read andconverted to an image in the reader's mind, optimally thesame image the writer held in his mind....

To read farther

The internet seems to be full of hyped up business opportunities. What evidence there is to support the feasibility of a business opportunity is often anecdotal - or we may be asked to take the word of a well known internet guru when he tells us that this is the "next big thing". Sometimes he/she will be right of course (that's how they get to be gurus). And make no mistake about it - we are equally to blame for this hyped up culture. Let's face it, it's so much easier to read or listen to a well presented collection of projected possibilities than it is to do even a little spade work and unearth a few hard facts....

To read farther

Do you give web site visitors the opportunity to download a free trial of your product or service with the intention that they will come back and purchase? How are you following up with these visitors? Asking them to fill out a form and immediately giving them the download on the next page is not the best way to generate a quality opt-in list. Collecting accurate opt-in information from these visitors is essential to follow up education and making the sale. The Wrong Way A visitor comes to your site and they fill out a form to request your free download....

To read farther

You can re-use your old articles by transforming them into another form of promotional tool. And one way to re-use them is by turning them into e-mail courses. By doing so, you'll be able to offer a new product that will help you establish your credibility as a business owner, e-zine publisher or web site owner. Even though you'll make use of old articles, you won't be offering a re-hash. Why? Because once you transform your old articles and gather them together to form an e-mail course, you add a more focused learning dimension to them....

To read farther

Did you know that one of the major purposes of a website is to capture visitor information and create an effective prospect list? Do you also know you could write a newsletter or email broadcasts with important announcements and send it out to thousands of people in an instant without spamming anyone. Did your web designer tell you the method to do it or provide the software for it? The most neglected aspect of millions of websites is an effective strategy to capture the details of the visitors and following up with them frequently and convert them to sales....

To read farther