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| eMarketing Tips and Tricks - September 16, 2003 |  |
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Today's Article: Your Traffic Building Checklist: Part 2 Today's Ask Dr. Ebiz: White Lists and Blacklists
Your Traffic Building Checklist: Part 2 By Alexandria K. Brown - "The E-zine Queen" When many of my clients first come to me for coaching, they share that one of their biggest challenges is getting enough visitors to their site. Attracting traffic isn't a cut and dry process - there isn't one perfect way to do it. But there are many ways that, when used collaboratively, will build you a nice stream of visitors. To get your marketing wheels turning, check out these 15 simple ways to attract new visitors to your site. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but it will give you several fresh ideas to try. Now, remember - you don't want to expel effort in getting just anyone to visit your site. You only want people who would likely be interested in what you have to offer. So before you read on, answer this question: "WHO are your target clients or customers?" Are they men, women, or both? Do they own a certain type of business or work in a certain profession? Are they young, old, or middle aged? Are they left handed? Do they own pets? Can they juggle? I hope you see where I'm going here. The more you know about your ideal clients/customers, the better you'll know where and how to find them . So ... keep that information in mind as you consider the remaining of my 15 traffic-building tactics. (See Part 1 for the first 7!) ___ 8. Recommendations by E-zine PublishersDo
you know anyone who publishes an e-zine for the same target market
as yours? If you're not direct competitors, ask her about cross-promoting
each other. Example: My friend Wendy Weiss, "The Queen of Cold Calling,"
publishes a great ___ 9. Recommendations by Other Site OwnersSame idea as #8. Many sites offer a "recommended resources" page, so why not get listed on them? Find sites whose target market matches yours and ask if they'd recommend your site. You'll get more yeses if you offer to list them on your site as well. (This strategy used to also be very powerful to help increase your search engine rankings, but not so much anymore.) ___ 10. Affiliate ProgramsGrow your own sales force by offering a handsome commission on your products and services. While this requires you to give away some profits on those sales, they're sales you would not have had otherwise. Right now almost HALF of my sales come from traffic sent to my site by my affiliates. Best of all, you can track and pay your affiliates automatically using programs like ClickBank (electronic deliverables only) or KickStart Cart (a superior version of1ShoppingCart, which handles both electronic and physical goods). ___ 11. Your Email Sig FileYou're probably familiar with e-mail signature (or "sig") files - they're the few lines of contact information that many of us put at the bottom of every e-mail we send. Add a few additional lines to your sig file that give us a reason to visit your site. Perhaps you're having a special sale now or you're giving away a free report, e-book, or e-zine subscription. Remember, e-mails get forwarded around all the time, so take advantage of this free exposure. (For more tips on sig files, see my article "Make Your E-mail Sig File Work for You ". ___ 12. Exposure in Print, Radio, and TV You can drive hundreds or even thousands of new visitors to your site with the right media exposure. Again, no matter how great your interview or article is, people need a kick in the pants to visit your site. So give them something free that they have to come GET at your site. For help in generating publicity at $0 cost to you, check out veteran broadcaster George McKenzie's Get Free Publicity program. ___ 13. Speaking to Groups Nothing leaves more of an impact on people than an in-person presentation. At each appearance, collect your participants' e-mail addresses by offering something free (your free report, e-book, or e-zine subscription). The day after the event, send them a reminder to visit your site to pick up their free gift! My friend Tom Antion's site - offers tons of advice and resources on speaking for exposure and profit. ___ 14. Postcard MailingsOne of the most overlooked tactics in today's marketing world is the humble postcard. Postcards are a fast, easy, and reliable way to increase visitors to your site. Best of all, they're the ideal way to break through the online clutter and get your prospects' attention! For a failsafe, step-by-step postcard marketing plan, look to my own marketing mentor, Alex Mandossian. He offers a wonderful tutorial package called Marketing With Postcards . ___ 15. Sheer ShamelessnessIf you live in the Los Angeles area, there's a good chance you've seen "EzineQueen.com" whiz by you at speeds in excess of 70 m.p.h. Why? It's emblazoned across the back of my black SUV in large, lime-green letters! At least once a month I get a friendly e-mail from someone who saw my giant URL and, out of curiosity, visited my site. A few of them have even turned into customers. Lesson learned? Think out of the box! For help in this area, see Debbie Allen's "Confessions of Shameless Self Promoters " series. (c) 2003 Alexandria K. Brown ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen," is author of the award-winning manual, "Boost Business With Your Own E-zine." To learn more about her book and sign up for more FREE tips like these, visit her site at http://www.ezinequeen.com.
"Dr Ebiz" "How do we go about getting "whitelisted" with the major ISPs? Is it worthwhile to try? Or do most ISPs just check a mailer's IP address against a blacklist and block the message even if you appear on a whitelist? If we find ourselves on a blacklist, how do we get off?" -- Karen Fegarty, Mailworkz Blacklists, of course are lists of known or suspected spammers that include their IP addresses and perhaps their domain name. Whitelists, on the other hand, are lists of trusted, opt-in emailers. ISPs are all struggling to deal with the deluge of spam that comprises at least 50% of the e-mail messages they handle. Spam wastes their precious resources. Some operate with real fairness, blocking only known spammer IP addresses. Others will shut down e-mails from an entire block of IP addresses if only a single one is identified with. It's hard to generalize about them. You can employ companies like Assurance Systems (www.assurancesys.com) to monitor delivery to major ISPs, screen your outgoing messages for words that might trigger spam filters, let you know if you appear on blacklists, and assist you in getting off blacklists, if that seems worthwhile. You can monitor some of the most widely-used blacklists yourself, such as MAPS Realtime Blackhole List (http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/) and SpamCop (http://spamcop.net/bl.shtml). Open RBL (http://openrbl.org) checks multiple blacklist databases to see if your domain or IP address appears on them, though the results may be cryptic to the uninitiated. Some e-mailers besiege the major ISPs with requests to appear on their in-house whitelist. Another approach is to subscribe to a certified sender program that identifies your e-mail as coming from a permission-based e-mail sender. I use Habeas (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/habeas.htm) for this purpose. They maintain a whitelist of member IP addresses that is accessible by ISPs. Finally, you can actively encourage your subscribers to whitelist you in their own system. I now include a pop-up message after a person subscribes to remind her to add my e-mail address to her "good list." I include instructions on how to do this with AOL and Hotmail. "Copyright 2003, Ralph F. Wilson. All rights reserved. Used by permission."
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