Your site should always have an e-mail list sign-up. This is a very useful and important marketing tool. Giving an incentive to sign up can be a good way to encourage more sign-ups. Incentives might include free shipping on their first order or a promise of special offers for list members only.
Managing Your List
Most hosting companies provide some sort of basic mailing list management. At the very least you should be able to send text-based e-mails to your list after the mailing list is set-up. For more advanced features such as sending HTML e-mails there are two options:
1. Install software on your server: List management software can be installed on your server that allows you to collect e-mail addresses and send HTML e-mails. Examples include: SendStudio by interspire.com, ListMessenger.com and many more
2. Hosted solution: Companies that store your list for you and provide and interface that you can use to manage the list and send HTML e-mails. Examples include: ezinedirector.com, constantcontact.com, gotcorp.com, verticalresponse.com, campaignmonitor.com
Measuring an E-mail Campaign’s Success
Most hosted solutions will provide useful statistics on the number of e-mails sent, received, opened, bounced (not delivered) and the number of clicks for each link in the e-mail. If your site is equipped with an advanced statistics program such as Google Analytics, you will be able to track the effectiveness of the campaign from a revenue perspective. These programs allow you to set up campaigns, and measure sales, ROI and conversion ratio for the specific campaign.
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