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E-MAIL SIGNATURE
WHAT ARE E-MAIL SIGNATURES?
e-mail signature is a very useful
website promotion tool that produces great results
and it requires no effort to use it, and e-mail
signature files are a non-aggressive form of site
promotion, and in a way this is their most valuable
feature, because the person that reads it don't
consider themselves the recipient of an advert.
You, as most of us, probably send
a lot of e-mail, so why settle for just one brief
line with expressions like "Warm regards" or "See
you later" followed by your name?
People use to hand out their easy
home business card to almost everyone they meet,
why not do the same with e-mail? Instead of just
signing with your name, why not include a commercial
message at the end of every e-mail your send? This
message is what it's called an e-mail signature.
The beauty of e-mail signatures is
that you do not have to say anything about your
own site, in the body of your letters... unless
it's relevant or appropriate. You can even e-mail
someone telling him how much you enjoyed HIS site...
you don't need to mention your own site... your
e-mail signature will say it for you.
And an e-mail with an e-mail signature
instead of just a letter, becomes a traffic generator!
It's difficult to say what your e-mail
signature should content. Because signatures are
as different as people are. If you are a teenager
promoting your site, you would hardly want to use
the same e-mail signature than an entrepreneur trying
to get visitors to his online easy home business.
Think about the people that you usually exchange
e-mail with.
Try to figure out what these people like.
If you aren't sure of what kind of words fit better,
go with a formal style (don't use marketing hype)
Remember that the signature represents you, so
don't spoil your reputation with unprofessional
or tactless messages.
CREATE A GOOD
E-MAIL SIGNATURE
Add your title
(if appropriate). If you own a site you can rightfully
call yourself a "Webmaster"!
Brief descriptions of
your site. People needs to know what
your site is about
Encourage people to visit
your site. But don't try too hard.
Put a link to your site.
A good description is nothing without it. Remember
to use the full link: . http://www.yoursite.com/
instead of www.yoursite.com.
Be concise. A generally accepted rule
is that your signature shouldn't exceed four lines
in length. If it's too long, people won't take
the time to read it, plus some places actually
request signatures to be under a certain length.
Check for spelling error
and bad grammar. They can kill your
message
If your site is giving away something free, it
would definitely be a good thing to mention it.
OK, lets see some e-mail signature
examples..:
Dr. Roberto Bonomi
Author of How To Sell on the Web available at:
http://www.easy-home-business.com/how-to-sell.html
---
Make your signature short, go right
to the point, and deliver accurate information about
who you are, where your site is located, and how
the receiver might benefit from visiting it.
If you want to add a bit more "hype"
to your signature, feel free to do so, but don't
overdo it.
HOW TO USE
E-MAIL SIGNATURES
Once you create your e-mail signature,
you have to add it to your e-mail program so that
you don't have to type it again every time you send
out an e-mail.
How this can be done depends on the
program you use. The signature features in America
Online 5.0 and Microsoft Outlook Express are both
good examples of how easy it is to set up and use
e-mail signatures.
In aol 5.0,
you can create and save up to five e-mail signatures
per screen name. Each e-mail signature must have
a different name for quick retrieval and you can
designate one as the default.
The default e-mail signature is
the one that's automatically inserted in each
e-mail screen. You can also select a signature
from your library by clicking on the Insert
Signature file icon.
In Outlook Express, click on Tools
| Stationery | Signature (or Tools
| Options | Signature, and choose
Add).
You can type in the e-mail signature
text, designate a computer file, or select your
business card format from your contact database.
You can ask Outlook Express to automatically
insert your e-mail signature or you can click on
Insert | Signature from the Compose
menu when you want to.
In Eudora Pro,
you set up an e-mail signature by selecting Tools
| Signatures and choose New from the
right-click menu of the Signature window.
E-MAIL SIGNATURES
IN THE DISCUSSION FORUMS
Discussion forums are a
bit different from e-mail, although the same basic
principles apply, e-mail signature advertising in
the discussion forums differs from the use of e-mail signatures
in e-mail.
The discussion forums are places where everybody
talks with everybody, it could get noisy and confusing
from time to time, but it is a great opportunity
to exchange information. E-mailing only involves
two persons, so it is more personal.
Discussion forums have a specific
topic and if you decide to post a message, it has
to be related with it, while in e-mail, you can
talk about anything you want.
If you use the discussion
forums only occasionally, you may post your message
with your e-mail signature at the end of it, and
not worry about these differences. But if you use
them frequently it's worth to fine-tune your strategy.
Warning!
The first thing you should do is to verify if
the forum you are posting to, allows the use of
e-mail signatures, because some of them completely
forbid the use of e-mail signatures.
If you are posting to a discussion forum, using an e-mail
signature of four lines or less is OK
Before posting, look for the FAQ (Frequently Asked
Questions) and read about the rules they have
about using e-mail signatures. If there's no explanation
about it, you post and ask what the rules are
(or you can guess it for what others are doing)
Do not post rubbish just to get your signature
displayed. It is not worth the bad reputation
and angry e-mail you will get from it.
Nevertheless, most of us have also
other hobbies and areas of interest in addition
to the one our site covers.
E-MAIL SIGNATURE
ADVERTISING STRATEGIES
Even while the discussion forums divide their newsgroups by
topic, your e-mail signature can be off topic,
as long as the message itself is on-topic, because
most of us have more than one hobby or area of
interest.
An e-mail signature that has something to do with
the forum's theme gets more attention than a completely
irrelevant one. So try to adapt your signature
to match the topic of the newsgroup.
If you cannot create an e-mail signature that
matches the forum's theme, it's better to use
your standard one, than to not use it.
It's wise to have a special e-mail signature for
the discussion forums, created using words that are know
to draw attention or some capitalized letters,
or else the readers might just jump to the next
message without reading your signature.
If you regularly visit the same group, as the
time passes by, you'll start receiving less hits
from your signature, because many of the people
who follow the newsgroup have seen it, so it is
a good idea to create a completely new signature
every now and then.
FINAL WORDS
The proper use of e-mail signatures
WILL work well and give you some nice extra traffic
to your easy home business site.
Written by Dr. Roberto A. Bonomi
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