Paula G. Web Design

With email marketing it can sometimes feel like you spend time crafting your articles, bless them, send them off,and then wonder if anyone is every opening or reading them.  How can you know?  If you’re using a professional email publishing system you have easy access to basic statistics about your broadcast.

Information you will want to know about each broadcast includes:

• # of emails sent
• # and % of undeliverable emails
• # and % of people who opened your email

Any system you use should also automatically manage any undeliverable emails.  For instance, attempting to deliver the message a certain number of times before it considers it a “bad” email address.

As with any statistics, they are a benchmark, not an absolute. For instance, I use Aweber and while they can tell me the open rate of my broadcast, they cannot track this figure for emails that are sent plain text (vs HTML).  So, I can usually assume my open rate is “at least” whatever percent it is showing in the report.  I always include a plain text version of my HTML newsletters for people who either choose to receive plain text only or for email programs that do not support HTML (or have the settings turned off). Read the rest of this entry »

Do you have a professional email address with your own domain name? If you don’t you may be harming your business’ image. Even if you plan on doing minimal Internet marketing, rest assured in this day and age people expect to be able to contact you via email. As a result, you’ll undoubtedly have it on your business card.

If you’re using a free or personal email address for you business, stop now. I can’t tell you how many cards I get with “SoandSo123@yahoo.com” or the like. My immediate impression as a prospect or possible consumer is that they couldn’t even take the time and spend under $10 to use a professional address. Remember everything you do in your business - in person, in print, and online is a reflection of you and your business. You only get once chance to make a first impression so make it a good one.

So, how do you do this so easily and cheaply you ask? It’s simple. Go and register a professional sounding domain name if you haven’t already. You can do so for just $9.99 at GoDaddy . Buy a domain name, create a free email address something like “yourname@yourdomain.com” or “info@yourdomain.com” and then have it automatically forwarded to your personal email account. You don’t need to do anything different to receive this new email. No new accounts to set up, no new places to check your email. It simply automatically forwards all mail that comes into that address to the email address you specify (your personal address).

Voila! A professional image with your email address for all your communications for under $10.

Note — with this setup, you won’t be able to send email from this new business address. To do that, you would need a basic hosting account at which time you could set up an email address that would allow you to both send and receive email from that address. That is only minimally more expensive (approximately $10 for the domain and then $4 a month for basic hosting) and requires a few extra steps to set up and retrieve/send your email from your favorite web based or regular email program. It is worth the extra effort and expense…