Design Notes: A CSS Web Designer’s Blog

5 Reasons to Email Your Past Customers

1. One-to-one conversation is one of the most powerful forms of communication. Email messages can be personalized easily to tap into relationship building potential. Email remains a dominant form of communication on the Web.
2. Email can renew customer relationships. Customers who have forgotten about your business, or who have stopped visiting your Web site because it never changed can be enticed to return. Do you have a long list of dormant customer names and email addresses? Sending a special offer or newsy blurb about what’s happening with your business may be exactly what you need.
3. Broadcasting a professional email message is almost free. It’s worth taking a risk when the stakes are low.
4. Email messages generate an immediate measurable response. Good email broadcasting services provide statistics about open rates and link clicks that can help you estimate the effectiveness of your email design, content, and delivery.
5. Email marketing requires less frequency than content publishing strategies. In fact, email marketers should beware of sending a message without a compelling message. If you aren’t sure why you are sending the message, imagine how your recipient will respond.

2 comments June 11th, 2007

SEO Is Not the First Step in Online Marketing

On occasion, I talk to prospective clients who have a relatively low amount of cash flow. Some of these are ready to spend many hundreds of dollars on Web site re-designs, SEO experts, and pay-per-click campaigns. If you are becoming desperate at the lack of growth in your sales base, here’s what I suggest you do before you start throwing money into risky SEO, Pay-per-Click and re-design projects.

1. First, evaluate what contacts you have made with customers and prospects. Do you have a database of customers who have already purchased from you? Do you have names of prospects collected from a newsletter sign-up script?
2. Second, plan some basic content for a 4 paragraph email with or without images that solicits these contacts with a special offer and a request for referrals to friends
3. Use a handy email broadcasting tool such as Constant Contact, Vertical Response, or Aweber.

Stick at the email campaign effort for several months by watching response and adjusting your offers or email design accordingly. If there is a market for your product, this approach should have a measurable effect and should begin to raise cash flow. After you’ve learned about your market and expanded your income by taking this approach, you will be in a better position to evaluate SEO, Pay-per-Click, and re-design services.

3 comments June 9th, 2007

Quick Tips on Learning to Design with CSS from softwaredeveloper.com

These guys pulled together most of the current information on CSS tools, tutorials, templates, and more in and excellent CSS beginner’s guide. Take a look if you’re just beginning Web design.

June 4th, 2007