JohnDough@MadeOfMoney.com
By Mike Banks Valentine
Posted Wednesday, November 24, 2004
If you are a typical entrepreneur online operating a small business website from your office PC there is now a very effective way to increase the visibility for your site with very little additional work. Did the title for this article catch your attention? Typical email addresses rarely grab anyone's attention with domain extensions of aol.com or mylocalISP.com and especially yahoo.com or the most common of all, hotmail.com
How do you seize the attention of jaded surfers and wrench their perception with an email address? Simple, get your free email from sites like:
(http://www.ArtCity.com)
(http://www.MadeOfMoney.com) (http://www.DoItYourself.com)
How much more likely will someone be to actually want to read your email if your email address showing in their list of received mail makes them smile or mentions their profession or their interests before they even open it?
Obviously it would serve your business to offer free email from your own domain if your domain name is generic and represents an entire industry or is funny or descriptive like those listed above. Free email accounts can be set up through several companies that provide a list of specific names they've reserved for their company, such as the lists at:
(http://www.myownemail.com/) and (http://www.netforward.com/)
There are multiple options to consider depending on how you and your free email subscribers would prefer to receive email. If you'd like a simple explanation of the three most common types of email service available online, go to:
(http://www.emailaddresses.com/guide_types.htm)
This page helps you to understand the difference between POP3 email, web-based email and email forwarding services. Each have pros and cons depending on your preferences.
If you want to set up a free email account from your own domain which will allow you to offer free email to your web site visitors try visiting:
(http://www.everyone.net)
Everyone.net lets you set up your existing domain name for free web-based email for your visitors. This has the added benefit of potential customers seeing your domain name every time a user of your free email sends email to anyone they communicate with. It also allows you to insert a line or two of promotion for your free email service and thus promote your own web site to recipients of that email.
Be aware though, that you must set aside your existing email addresses that you already use through your own site for business purposes as you set up that free email. If you forget that important step in setting up those accounts, it could be possible to lose your existing addresses to new free email sign-ups and your clients and contacts will lose the ability to contact you!
The sign-up process is fairly straight forward with most of these services and you'll be up and emailing with your new promotional tool quickly.
Now you can promote within your targeted industry with your highly targeted email address. Don't hesitate to obtain a more generic or entertaining email address than the one you use for your company or personal email. The email address you set up this way can be a secondary address for you and it's possible to set up several for different purposes. I use MoneyMan@MadeOfMoney.com for posts to the Motley Fool bulletin board and some finance related discussion lists but change to Professor@WebSite101.com for posts to small business sites and signature lines at AskMe.com and WZ.com where I discuss small business web techniques and tools for home business.
About the Author
Mike Banks Valentine
WebSite101 "Reading List" Weekly Netrepreneur Tip Sheet Weekly Ezine emphasizing small business on the Internet Subscribe address mailto:WebSite101-subscribe@listbot.com articles available: (http://website101.com/freecontent.html)
