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Resources That Can Help You Market Your Business Online

Listservers

A listserver is a software program that sends e-mail messages to Internet mailing lists. A listserver enable your Internet mailing list to grow itself. By filling out a reply form on your website, clients or customers place themselves on you Internet mailing list. The listsever then sends a note out to the client or customer confirming that their address has been added to your subscription list.

Sending a message to your entire list is as quick and easy as sending a single e-mail to someone. All you need to do is send a note to the listserver and include a password that tells the program that you are posting. The listserver understands your password and instantly sends the message to the entire list. You will then receive a confirmation letting you know that the message was sent, and how many people is was mailed to, the listserver will automatically remove any bad e-mail addresses instantly.

The ability to review the list of people on your listserver works the same way as posting a message. You send a message to the listserver with the same password for posting, but include the command "List", then the name of your list, you will automatically receive an e-mail message including all of the names on the list.

Some useful guidelines for your listserver:

  • Do not send only ads. Include something that is useful or will benefit the audience.

  • Visit some websites that sells similar products that you offer. Many of these sites have articles and news that you can use for your publication. For example, if you offer organic foods, it may be helpful to research health benefits of eating all natural foods. Just make sure you ask permission to use the information, there are copyright laws for the Internet.

  • Format of your Internet newletter is also important. To help make your newletter work for you try to include the following material:
  • name of publication
  • date and issue number
  • removal information, this is important if someone wants to be removed from your mailing list
  • table of contents, if someone is looking for something specific they can jump to that section without having to sort through the entire newsletter
  • short introduction paragraph
  • publisher and editor names
  • well defined headers that correspond with your table of contents
  • order information, you do not need to place an order form in your newletter, simply refer people to your website or e-mail address

    • When shopping for a listserver be careful of companies that charge low monthly fees. Many companies that charge a lower monthly fee will charge you for the amount of times you use the listserver and the amount of names that you have. Plan on paying $300 to $600 for annual license fee.

    Bulk E-Mail Programs

    Most bulk e-mail programs are designed to send e-mail to a list of people that you manually place into a list. Bulk e-mail programs are used on your local computer and needs to send the mail through your Internet Service Provider's(ISP) server. Many ISP's have made it so that bulk e-mail programs can not be sent through their server. Other drawbacks to bulk e-mail programs are:
  • E-mail address must be manually added or removed.
  • Bulk e-mail programs offer no way for people to get off your list automatically. If a bulk e-mail program is used, you must remember to remove any names from your list upon request.
  • Bulk e-mail programs are generally used as a one time event. If you plan on using a newsletter, a listserver is recommended.

    • Autoresponders

    Autoresponders is a software program specifically designed to automatically e-mail information a potential customer requests. Autoresponders can deliver many types of information:

    • Contact Details
    • Office Hours
    • Policies
    • Menus
    • Special Offers
    • Product Description
    • Price Lists
    • Order Forms
    • Newsletters
    • Job Listing
    • Frequently Asked Questions with Answers
    • Standard Reply Messages

    There is no limit for the type of information you can pass along through an Autoresponder.

    Autoresponders are also referred to as mailbots, infobots, or e-mail on demand. They are designed to automatically and immediately send a document via e-mail in response to a request submitted either by e-mail or through an online form. Autoresponders are nonintrusive due to the fact that it is requested information by the user.

    Autoresponders can work on two ways:

      The first way the Autoresponder works is the address you send an e-mail(can be blank) to is the command to retrieve the document that was requested
      The other way the Autoresponder works is a specific subject or body message must be supplied. With this option, you will need to provide instructions on how to receive certain documents; let the user know what has to be done.

    One of the more popular ways Autoresponders are used? When an order or a form is submitted to a company. After the order or the form is received, an automatic, standard message, is sent to the person that submitted the order or form. By using an Autoresponder, it let the client or customer know that their information has been received.