Many organizations operate white lists. White lists are approved email addresses. Emails coming in from unapproved senders end up in the spam or junk filter. All it takes is one complaint to an internet service provider and you can have your site black-listed. It can take months to clear such a listing.

Needless to say, annoying your prospects with unwanted emails is not the best way to launch a new relationship.

Build your email opt-in database through approved communications channels such as media advertising or approved opt-in mailing lists offered by publishers or trade associations. Give your prospect the opportunity through a non-invasive communications medium to decide if they want to receive messages from your company or not.

For your online marketing to be effective you need to consider the following:

• Goal - Establish a goal for your web presence; don’t just create a web site without specific directional guidelines. Your web site is quite often the first thing that your potential customers look at before they decide whether or not to call. Ask yourself some questions: will your site serve as a lead generator? Provide specifications and other details to shorten the sales cycle? Offer customer support? Permit sales transactions? Test the viability of new markets? The point is to decide what role your web site will play in your company’s overall marketing strategy.
• Design - First impressions count. If your web site looks like an amateur creation, then it’s tough to convince prospects that your company is a quality business. Give your company a first class send-off into the world. Make your web site’s design distinctive and easy to use so that customers will enjoy their visit and your site will be remembered for the right reasons and hopefully even bookmarked for future visits.
• Content - Get professional help in organizing and developing the content for your site. Content is extremely important; it is not only what you say on your site, but also how you say it. A professional writer will present your message in simple, every day language and not get caught up in jargon and cliches. Also, include information that has value to the potential customer other than your product information. Educate your customers to help them become more discriminating shoppers. Keep it simple. Encourage and facilitate two-way communication. You want visitors to feel glad they found you, and to bookmark your site because you have made them a smarter buyer. They will come back if you reward them with new, useful information. The focus should be on what your visitors can gain. Don’t sell to them, let them buy from you.
• Marketing - According to recent statistics, Google searches billions of web sites from around the world. So, how will prospects find your site? That’s where marketing comes in. Your site will do very little for your business unless you actively market it. No matter how beautiful and impressive your site looks, or how good the writing is, or how valuable the content or how fantastic your products and prices, without marketing it is simply a billboard in the outback of the Internet. Marketing gets you onto Main Street and into the right neighborhood.
• Administration and Management - It takes time, effort and know-how to properly market a web site on the Internet. The creation of a great web site is only a the very first of many steps to achieving marketing success; you have to work at it every day. You need to track your progress over time. Gather the information, interpret it correctly and translate those results into necessary adjustments to keep you on course to your goal. And don’t be afraid to make changes to your goal when needed. In the world of marketing, nothing stays the same for very long.
• Budget - Be prepared to spend some money. Too many small to mid-sized companies want to do marketing on a shoestring. They grossly under-fund their marketing effort and subsequently set themselves up for failure. The result is that they come away from the experience disappointed and convinced that marketing is a waste of money.
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