Email-based Public Relations, or Mailing Lists for Web Sites
August 23, 1999
|
Email may be the most useful invention since the telephone.
Email-based mailing lists are very useful on their own
merits, and they can also be great companions to a Web site.
In this article, we'll explain the basics of setting up both
announcement and discussion lists, and share some tips for
building lists into valuable resources. We'll also look at
some ways that mailing lists can complement a Web site by
increasing visitor traffic and extending the usefulness of
the site.
|
Email is truly the "killer app" of the Internet. It may be
the most useful invention since the telephone. Many a
grandmother, who ordinarily wouldn't touch a computer with
a ten-foot pole, has taken the plunge and gotten set up with
a computer and an Internet account, once she realized that
far-flung grandchildren reply to email more readily than
to letters. It's a huge morale-builder in the military,
allowing service people to stay in touch with the folks back
home from literally anywhere in the world. The post office
tells us that the volume of paper mail has declined
substantially since email started to catch on. Email is
even good for the environment, as it means less paper is
consumed, and less oil is burned delivering the paper.
Personally, I've been a devotee of email for years. I love
how it allows me to stay in touch while on the road (I'm
writing this by the side of a mountain stream in
Switzerland), and how it lets me cut down (slightly) on
the mountains of paper that can so easily take over a whole
office. In fact, I use email for almost all my correspondence,
and am scornful of those poor souls who still piddle around
with archaic technologies like faxes.
Email will probably bring world peace and cure cancer too,
but enough praise for now. The focus of this article is how
a Web site owner can use email-based mailing lists to
improve the utility of a Web site, and increase visitor
traffic. Some writers have pointed out that, while the Web
tends to attract all the press (and investor dollars), the
less-glamorous technology of email is in fact even more
useful, and is used by even more people. But email and the
Web are simply two different ways of transferring information,
and each is appropriate for certain applications. In this
article, we'll discuss how you can use automated mailing
lists to boost your Web site traffic and make your site more
useful.
Contents:
Alias Smith and Jones
Real Mailing Lists
The Life Cycle of a Discussion List
List Administration
List Spammers
Putting Your Mailing List to Good Use
Conclusion
Alias Smith and Jones
|
