2 Free Email Marketing Secrets That Will Drive Traffic to Your Site

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!

About the Author:
Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business
Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals
learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their
expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To
claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing
Toolkit, visit her site at http://www.onlinebizu.com/ . Ask
Donna an Internet Marketing question at
http://www.askdonnagunter.com/ .

John V
http://urlfreeze.com/JCV/EmailMarketingSecrets
http://urlfreeze.com/JCV/BlogProfitsBlueprint/

John C. Vincent/CEO/The Opt-In Magic System
http://YourBloggingLessons.blogspot.com
http://Blog-4Dollars.blogspot.com
http://Opt-in-Magic.blogspot.com