E-mail marketing

[Brian Turner]

So...I bought Arelis, and then sought some link partners for my comparative religions site. I want to increase my visibility you see.

So I set up a search and got just under 1000 search partners listed. I skimmed through the list and removed a couple of major religion sites I didn;t expect at all to reciprocal link.

Then sent them all (one by one! ).

Thing is, I discovered from the replies that I should have checked the list much more closely!

Somehow, for a link partner search - via Google - for the search terms "religions of the world" and "christianity", I ended up e-mailing 123-reg and the Whitehouse, amongst others.

I was pretty horrified, actually, to read the auto-reply from whitehouse.gov, about how George W Bush takes the concerns of his citizens seriously. I guess a reciprocated link to a UK religions resource site is out of the question?

Anyway, I think my first foray into e-mail marketing - limited though it was - is very clear: be very careful who you are sending to!

Obviously, if you don't target your e-mails properly, it's your own time you're wasting as well.

[Owen]

Spamming the whitehouse eh? tut tut

[Brian Turner]

Well, somebody's got to do it.

[altyfc]

How do you rate Arelis, Brian...? I'd wondered about it but decided against it because of Google's apparent increasingly neglect of reciprocal linking.

Aaron

[Brian Turner]

I don't actually see Google slamming recip linking - so long as it *isn't* part of an automated link-sharing scheme. There have also been reports that files named "links.htm" and similar are also devalued. So I guess it's a case of choosing carefully not simply your links partners, but also how you do it. Considered manual set up seems safest.

My reservations with Arelis are a couple fold - firstly, there's no mass e-mail option, so far as I can tell. So you have to click to send every single e-mail. As link exchanges requests normally have a very low respond rate, you really need to send volume. For my religion directoy I sent 980 requests - for my sci-fi directory the figure will likely be much much bigger.

The second issue I have is that it uses IE by default to search for the pages in questions. As IE already has serious security concerns raised - not least the way it allows sites to run scripts - I am actually very concerned that running Arelis will open a PC to serious security threats - if it connects to sites with auto-install of spyware, viruses, and trojans, etc, then will use of IE with Arelis therefore allow execution? I guess it's simply a case of setting IE to the highest security levels, and hope for the best.

A potentially very useful feature of Arelis - certainly in SEO terms - is the automated building of static HTML links pages. That may certainly be useful for client sites looking for SEO recip liking. Also, as general spider food, it should be a very good way to create lots of keyword-focussed pages for domains created simply for promoting client links. It's a feature I haven't tried yet, but will do very soon.

[David Hazzard]

If you have a need to complete some serious email marketing could i suggest looking at DestiNet's NewZapp.
Its really easy to use, aimed at marketing and business rather than the IT departments. Its the principal means London Irish contact their 10,000+ subscribers at least weekly.

Provides phenominal stats backs on who read the email, click thru's and bounces.

[Brian Turner]

Also note that as David is part of Destinet, his opinion is a little biased.

[altyfc]

Always nice to have such impartial recommendations.

Aaron

[David Hazzard]

All are welcome to signup for a 30 day demo and make up your own mind, click on NewZapp for more info.

After this perhaps we could have some meaningful discussion on email creation and delivery speeds, read rates and click thru's.

I was at a meeting with a potential customer last week, quoting me 2 hours to send to 10'000 email addresses. When I said we could create 10,000 emails and deliver these in 10 minutes, I had to pick him off the floor.

[Brian Turner]

Actually, e-mail marketing is something I should know a lot more about - I'm actually developing a major new site where any writings on this subject would be greatly appreciated, in return for higher PR backlink credits. If you're up for that then you're welcome to PM or e-mail myself with any suggestions.