Ease of Access. One Step Closer.
Note 1: If you do not have any time to savor this piece of writing in its entirety, its conclusion is that having live, working hyperlinks in your email letters, bulletins and solicitations will greatly increase the rate of clicks, website visits and reader subscriptions. Readers like to point, click and go. They just seem to dislike copying and pasting website or blogsite addresses.
Additionally, it is worth mentioning that shorter urls with recognizable names or words in them, i.e., http://twitter.com/douglascastle, seem to be user-friendlier than long, complicated ones without recognizable subject matter or person's names in them...you know...those long strings of letters, signs and numbers that look cold and uninviting.
I received tremendous responses when I used an url re-routing service to hyperlink to my article...I chose http://twitlik.com/BloodyFootprints. Tasteless? Of course! But recipients were clicking on the hyperlink in very high percentages. -------
Dear Readers:
I believe that most people spend their lives alternating between moments of walking sleep and sensorial overload. Everyone, it seems, is either multi-tasking (and getting very little done), or in a dreamlike trance (and getting nothing done). This vacillation, which is a sort of "lose-lose" bipolarity, is making it increasingly difficult to communicate with anyone. People are becoming an increasingly elusive target, dodging from one emotional state to the other.
Marketing anything to anyone is becoming a daunting challenge, whether we are just trying to propose an idea, sell a book, or win the business of a prospective client. Engaging people is tough.
We "network" (which can mean anything from loudly broadcasting over the social media bullhorn chorus, to having group meetings with a great deal of frenetic handshaking, head-nodding and business card exchanges), but most of that activity is either superficial, where nobody follows through, or one-sided, where everyone is selling and nobody is actually buying.
Marketing requires some artful, targeted networking to open doors and to create enough of a disturbance that people know that we're there, and available. Job One is to Get Out There.
But the other steps up the ladder that take us from making a first, tentative attempt at contact to a productive and profitable business relationship require that we get people to respond to us. We must make ourselves easily accessible -- some prefer the term "user-friendly" -- if we want to make measurable progress.
I received a terrific email from a business acquaintaince yesterday. This energetic woman is running a dynamically-growing company which provides advice, forums, services, products and publications to the growingly active target social and business market sector comprised of women aged 40 and over. I believe that this niche market will make the greatest entrepreneurial strides and make the greatest impact on commerce during the course of these next several years...they are advancing in increments, but they are advancing steadily and relentlessly. As a male, I am just a bit envious.
My new acquaintance, Sandra, is the Founder, CEO and Editor of a very promising new e-magazine, launched recently in conjunction with her organization. You will be hearing a great deal about her in the immediate future, although I will neither mention here last name here nor will I divulge the name of the publication. My ethics, when I am not misbehaving, are exemplary.
In the correspondence which she sent to me, a hyperlink wasn't working. As it turns out, this was due to a problem with certain browsers and certain types of email filters -- my IT expert said it was some kind of intermittent incompatibility. Regardless of the technical explanation, I wanted to bring her attention to this slight annoyance because she does extensive emailing to a growing list of subscribers, and also because I wanted to show her just how observant I am (as my ego is always in need of reaffirmation).
My correspondence to her follows, and it is of significance to every single business person who uses email to deliver information to a large audience:
A Brief Letter to Sandra
Dear Sandra:
Greetings to you of the gentler gender, and thank you, as always, for keeping me on your distribution list as a "minority representative."
A quick comment: The attached email (sent from your e-mail list manager to your subscribers, among them myself) contains the address for access to the magazine, but the address is not hyperlinked. It might be a problem on my end (in which case I'll see either my computer administrator or a proctologist), or on yours. I point this out because conspicuous hyperlinking increases response rate.
Although it is easy to paste an url into a browser, you would be amazed at the number of people who will either (a) click on the address in the letter, find it non-functioning, and just press "delete," or who will (b) know precisely what to do, but will just be too darned lazy to do what is required.
Bottom line: Everything and anything that you do in order to make you more "reader accessible" is a boost to subscribership.
Faithfully,
Douglas
p.s. Your content and approach are very exciting and your look is extraordinarily professional.
p.p.s. My wife has advised me, despite your recommendations, not to go out and have a "fling" in order to find "that special someone" for me. She believes that she is sufficient for my needs at present. She has also commented that I use "quotations" and italics far too frequently.
Links, terms, references and things to search on Google relating to this article, as well as a few which things which are completely irrelevant but which may prove interesting nonetheless:
http://kalon-women.com/magazine/magazine.html , http://kalon-women.com/ , LINKS 4 LIFE , Braintenance, Lingovations, Buzz-To-Brand, Brangelina, Haiti, Piracetam, The National Newspicker, Sarah Palin.
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