"The Desktop Global Marketer" (tm)

   A free on-line newsletter of Sidereal Designs, Inc.,
   for Internet Entrepreneurs, and those who are
   considering becoming one.
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                    March 21, 1999

In this issue:

"In addition to putting your pages on the web, your web site
may offer you other marketing tools. These include not only
basic e-mail and mail forwarding, but other things such as
autoresponders, distribution lists, form mailers, and list
servers. People starting or contemplating web sites often
are not clear about what all of these things are and what
uses they have."
_____________________________________________________

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   	http://siderealdesigns.com
_____________________________________________________

In 1998 the United States Postal Service delivered 186
billion pieces of mail. In that same year the Internet
delivered 618 billion e-mail communications.  (See
http://www.emarketer.com/enews/032299_icono.html) Moreover,
54% of e-mail users report responding to an e-mailed
business offer.

Many people are a bit confused about the relationship
between e-mail and web sites. The reason is that most web
sites also offer, and integrate, significant e-mail
resources. Since both web pages and e-mail are important
components of any virtual marketing effort, it's important
to understand the differences - and to take full advantage
of the strengths of both.

In addition to putting your pages on the web, your web site
may offer you other marketing tools which include not only
basic e-mail and mail forwarding, but other things such as
autoresponders, distribution lists, form mailers, and list
servers. People starting or contemplating web sites often
are not clear about what all of these things are and what
uses they have.

Let's start with a quick look under the hood (or bonnet
depending on your geography.) A web site and e-mail services
are both programs that can be run on a computer where you
have an account. Usually this will be the computer of the
person (Virtual Host Provider) who leases you the right to
set up your web site on his big machine with good Internet
connections.  The people who lease you the privilege of
setting up your web site may offer you more or less in terms
of other things they'll let you do on their computer, and in
particular more or less that you're allowed to do with
e-mail.

To run your web site you put your pages in a special
directory (folder) in your account on that machine, and the
owner of the machine runs a program called a 'web server'
that fetches them and sends them out over the internet to
any other computer that asks for them (usually to someone's
computer running a browser program such as Netscape or
Microsoft Explorer.)

There is a similar 'mail server' program that sends out
e-mail from your web site's machine and accepts it from
other machines. If you have e-mail privileges with your web
site account, the mail server accepts outbound mail from you
to send to other machines and puts your inbound mail in
another special directory called your 'mailbox.' You can
then retrieve it with your mail-reader program. (Many people
use the mail-reader program built into their web browser,
others use a separate piece of software.)

New web site owners are frequently confused about the
distinction between e-mail on their web site and e-mail in
their own, regular, personal mailbox. The answer is that you
can have a mailbox on any computer. Where before you had
only one - on the computer of your Internet Service Provider
(ISP) who gives you your local dialup connection to the
Internet - you now have another one on the computer that
hosts your web site as well. Moreover, mail can move from
one to the other.

This piece of the puzzle is 'mail forwarding.' You can read
your e-mail directly from the mailbox directory on your web
site. However, many people prefer instead to have it
automatically forwarded to their regular personal mailbox
which is located at the machine of their local internet
service provider where they dial up to log on to
Internet. The mail server on the web site can be instructed
to do this automatically so that the e-mail sent to your
account at your web site appears in your regular e-mail to
be read. Then to you the two mailboxes appear to be one.

Usually you can have as many different e-mail addresses as
you like at your web site, all of which actually wind up
being forwarded to the same place. This lets you have
addresses for different purposes: contact(at)mywebsite.com,
complaints(at)mywebsite.com, order(at)myswebsite.com,
information(at)mywebsite.com or whatever else you'd like to use
to separate mail for different purposes, and all of it
eventually comes to you. (Some small companies use this to
give the appearance of being large companies with many
employees and departments :)

How does all this e-mail capability relate to your virtual
marketing and your web site? Well, first of all it lets you
collect information from people who visit your web
site. Your web page may have one or more forms for people to
fill out. These can be used to ask for information, to
subscribe to your newsletter, to give you their postal
address or any other purpose. What really happens when they
hit the 'enter' button on the form is that a special program
called a 'form-mailer' is activated by the web page, and it
puts the information into the form of an e-mail. It then
sends it to the mail server, addressed to you. Then e-mail
takes over and the information is eventually delivered to
you as an e-mail message.

Another denizen of your web site is a program called an
'autoresponder.' The autoresponder program has its own
e-mail address at your site. If your web site was
GreatWidgets.com, you might have an autoresponder with an
e-mail address such as 'catalog(at)GreatWidgets.com.' This
autoresponder would have a copy of your widget
catalog. Whenever anyone sent e-mail to
catalog(at)GreatWidgets.com, the mail server would send it to
the autoresponder named catalog, and it would notice the
address of the sender (but disregard any message in their
e-mail.) Then it would immediately mail back to them a copy
of some text which it had stored for the purpose -
presumably in this case the widget catalog.

The text that the autoresponder sends back can be changed
easily and you can have as many autoresponders as you
like. They are useful for many purposes such as current
schedules, catalogs, background documents, questionnaires,
order forms, and in fact just about anything you might want
to put into the hands of someone who requests it. We can add
a twist and have the form-mail program send e-mail to an
autoresponder when someone fills out a form on your web
pages. Then people can get the autoresponse mailed to them
by filling out the form on the web page as well as by
sending e-mail directly to the autoresponder's address.

Another utility that lets you send things to people is
called a 'distribution list.' Like an autoresponder, it has
its own e-mail address on your web site. However, unlike an
autoresponder, it doesn't send anything back when it gets
mail. Instead it forwards whatever it gets to a list of
e-mail addresses that it has been given. It keeps the list
(which you can change or add to whenever you please) and
simply duplicates whatever message you mail to it and sends
a copy to everyone on the list. This might be a list of your
customers, your colleagues, your friends and family, or any
other group of people to whom you frequently send mail. You
can have as many different distribution lists as you like,
each with a different list of addresses.

Distribution lists are most valuable for sending mail to
groups whose membership doesn't change often, such as your
coaching clients or the editors to whom you send your press
releases. For more volatile lists of addressees you probably
want to use a 'list server.' A list server is a major piece
of software something like a mail server. You may have seen
the names of some of the common ones such as 'MajorDomo',
'SmartMail', or 'ListServe' if you have ever been subscribed
to a mailing list.

From your point of view your list server works just like a
distribution list. That is, you send it e-mail at its e-mail
address and it forwards a copy to every address on a list
that it has. The difference is that it automatically
maintains its own address list. Such mailing lists are
usually set up so that people are able to subscribe or
unsubscribe themselves from the list.

Some list servers have two mailing addresses; one to receive
e-mail messages that you want them to send out to everyone
on the list, and one to receive subscription and
unsubscription requests. Others have only a single address
and look to see what kind of request has been sent to
them. In either case, we also often set up another form-mail
program that allows people to enter subscription or
unsubscription requests in a form on a web page as well. The
form-mailer then simply e-mails the request in the
appropriate format to the list server which adds (or
deletes) the name on its list.

If you are using your list server to send out an e-mail
newsletter, you probably will have it set to distribute only
e-mail it receives from you. On the other hand if you are
running an e-mail discussion group on some topic - or a
public question and answer forum for all interested parties - 
it can be set up to forward the e-mail it receives from
anyone to everyone else on the list. It can be set to do
this automatically, or only after a list 'moderator'
approves the message.

Either way, e-mail newsletters and discussion forums are
powerful and dynamic means of developing and maintaining
interaction with your clients and potential clients. The
Internet has given everyone the power of the press,
previously reserved to the wealthy and to large businesses.

Strategies for content and management of your virtual
marketing via e-mail in all its forms are topics for another
day, but I hope this overview of the possibilities has
already set you thinking about the uses to which you could
put them in your enterprise.

Kind regards,

Jamie

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"Sidereal" is pronounced sy-DEER-ee-all, and means "of
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______________________________________________________________________________
Sidereal Designs, Inc. "Making The Web Simple."   http://siderealdesigns.com