2 No-Cost 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:

• did not understand the power of an email
  address
• 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 web hosting 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:

https://video.about.com/email/Signatures-in-Outlook-Express.htm
Outlook:

https://email.about.com/od/outlooktips/qt/et072706.htm
Eudora:

https://email.about.com/cs/eudoratips/qt/et122701.htm
Thunderbird:

https://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!