Entries from July 2007 ↓

Earlier this week, I had a discussion with one of our clients about using their domain email accounts when sending or replying to email. (Domain email is simply an email account using a name of your choice @your domain, e.g., johndoe@yourcompany.com or info@yourcompany.com.)

Although this client uses their domain mail on their web site, many of their employees use personal accounts when communicating with clients and prospects. I, unabashedly, encouraged him to persuade his people to see the error of their ways.

Obviously, they are not the only perpetrators of this costly practice. On sites of all types, small and large, you’ll see contact email such as billybob@yahoo.com, sally312@gmail.com or something similar. Those same addresses get used routinely in emails to clients, prospects, and co-workers. And, routinely, the sender looks unprofessional.

I could rant on with all the reasons not to use personal email accounts for business, but I’ll just offer you:

Three important reasons to use your domain email.

1. Branding, branding, branding - every time a client or prospect
   receives an email from someone in your company, they will see your
   domain name (Hopefully it is your company name, abbreviation of your company name, or a product or service of yours.) in the “From:” line.
2. Get your email delivered and opened. Spam is ubiquitous, and your prospects and clients may hesitate to open an email from a toocutesy@yahoo.com, allnumbers@hotmail.com, silly@gmail.com or inappropriate@someother.com address. Deliverablity can be critical
   when you are sending a proposal or answering a specific request. Users can easily, and will, white-list email from you@yourcompany.com.
3. Look as professional as you are. You would be surprised at the
   number of people who spend thousands of dollars on web sites and
   nicely-done email campaigns, yet diminish their value by including an
   inappropriate email address.

Oh, did I mention branding, branding, branding?

Google Trends offers Today’s Hot Trends. You can see a top-ten list of what is currently being searched. It is not real-time, but the folks at Google say they update it several times a day.

But, there is more. Google Trends has the potential to be another tool for those of you responsible for search terms (keywords) for any web site. You can get a comparison of two terms (separate the search terms with a comma) to see which gets more traffic. Google Trends displays a search-volume graph and a news-reference-volume graph. You may select regions and years to display.

Unfortunately, some of the terms I tried to compare returned this message, “Your terms - search term1, search term2 - do not have enough search volume to show graphs.” Not entirely troubling, though Google has no problem displaying Adword ads for the terms (1,000s of impressions) and collecting for the clicks generated. Oh, well. It’s a freebee tool.

Read everything Google has to say about Google Trends here.

Curiosity or search engine optimization tool? It’s up to you.

Yes, that’s right. Everyone is looking to quantify their advertising expenses, both traditional and Web traffic. A quick, inexpensive way is to get a toll-free number (800, 888, 877 or 866) that you do not use anywhere else, and use that number on your Web site.

When you get your phone bill, you’ll see all the calls to that number. You’ll know that they were all generated by visits to your web site. Like any statistic, it is just another number, but if you use those figures along with other site analytics you’ll get a better idea of how your Web site is performing.

Oh, if you really believe most prospects will call if you don’t offer a toll-free number, you probably don’t have enough traffic to worry about.

An exclusive toll-free number for your site, it’s a win-win.