These days I think nearly everyone is familiar with receiving spam emails for online pharmaceuticals, software, and other junk, not to mention Nigerian and other scams.
Most of us compromise these spam emails by setting our spam-filters higher, and in the process we also miss out on a lot of important mailings and newsletters that we have actually subscribed to.
Unfortunately, the same applies to your eStore newsletters that you send out to your customers, advising them of the latest specials, pricing updates and new items etc etc. Too often, your customer never sees the newsletter as it is gobbled up by your anti-spam filters as junk mail.
There-fore, it is very important to consider the layout of your newsletter just as much as the content you put into it.
1. Ensure that your eStores "from" email address is a valid one for a starter.
2. The title of your newsletter will appear as the email's subject, so make sure it reads like "Freds Online Shop Newsletter for Dec 2008" rather than "Doohickeys are only $19.95 this month".
3. Make sure you have a clear opening statement in font-size 10px and not 6px, that states that this is the "Freds Online Shop Newsletter for Dec 2008" that you are subscribed to.
4. Ensure that you have an unsubscribe option clearly positioned at least at the bottom of your newsletter, or better at the top and bottom, with a direct link to your http://www.yourshop.com/login.php. Make sure you include instructions on how to unsubscribe.
You must ensure that your newsletter complies with the regulations found here at The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy .
The three key steps involved are: - Consent - you need to have consent from the person to whom you are sending your message.
- Identify - you should clearly identify who is responsible for sending the message and how to contact them.
- Unsubscribe - your messages should contain an unsubscribe facility to enable the recipient to unsubscribe.
Notify your customers that they should check their "junk mail" box for your newsletter, and to include your sending address in the "white-list" of allowed addresses in their spam filters.
Try to make your content exciting, new, interesting and brief. If you have a new product to shout about then, run a dynamic heading for it, perhaps with a single image, a special or introductory price, and have it link to your products description page. Do NOT over elaborate in the newsletter, let them get the main story and the features list from your site.
Kepp that newsletter short and to the point, not a 1000 word boring essay!
Good Luck.
Congratulations to Tola from our accounts department, and her partner Michael, on their brand-new baby daughter Elizabeth, born 11/11/2008 at 4.14pm tipping the scales at only 4lb 13ozs. Both Mother and Daughter are doing fine!
PS. Can you hurry back to work, we all miss you!
We have stopped posting technical information and site tips at the auStores News Blog and will post it here instead. This will free up the auStores site as a source of news and updates pertaining directly to the day to day operation of our servers.
All service difficulties, updates, upgrades, and network outages will be published there. The ideal solution is to track our RSS data feed, which will always contain the top five latest articles. Windows Vista users can easily add the feed to their windows sidebar, and will see upto the minute scrolling site news and notifications. A very very handy solution for Hosting Re-sellers and business accounts.
This blog site is now fairly well established as a great source of information for webmasters and estore managers alike. One should check in here regularly to stay abreast of all the latest developments, and our tips n tricks to help improve your sites ranking.
This is a very handy site if you are looking for a few Freebies to help promote your estore.
This free online animated banner maker is fantastic. You simply select the colors, fonts etc that you want and add an effect, then hey presto, it's an instant 468x60 banner ready to save to your drive.
Here's our quickie sample:
Another very handy set of gadgets to score a lot of free back links would have to be these free plugpanels that they have on the OziFree.com site. Install one of these plugboards (There are lots of differnet sizes and types there) make a few plugs on other sites, and in no time you will have visitors plugging on your board.
Free or cheap web hosting in Australia, does it exist, and what are the Pros and Cons?
Yes it does exist. There are Australian hosting sites actually offering free web hosting right here in Australia! As for cheap Australian web hosting, a Google search will quickly reveal hosting plans for less than $5.00 a month! Just how cheap do you need!
Free Hosting
Pros:
Well you can't get cheaper than FREE!
Cons:
Usually limited in features.
Often uses a subdomain name of the parent site
Support is way way down the list
Usually sponsored by advertisments.
Mail-boxes often flooded with newsletter spams.
Cheap Hosting
Pros:
Readily affordable.
Cons:
Feature limited
Often shared hosting so down-time is imminent
Lower support priority
Slower servers
No phone support
So there you have it. I realise that there may be exceptions to the rule, how ever in the majority of cases, you will find that what i have written is about right. One only needs to read all the complaints pertaining to various hosting companies and their lack of support in the forums at webhostingtalk.com.au to soon realise that 99% of the whingers are either free or el-cheapo economy hosting accounts.
That is why companies such as auStores.com.au shy away from shared hosting, and actually own their own server boxes outright, with a direct internet connection in a reputable data center.
Just remember, you only get what you pay for, so if it's free, you cannot expect the support and features that a premium account would be receiving.
Why is it done this way? Well one of the main reasons that dollars equals service, is to help weed out the chaff from the wheat. Why waste expensive man hours working on a free or cheap business web site that will never be able to cut the mustard, as the owner is not really serious about succeeding?
Posts
