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ASK MR. INTERNET
Michael Russer answers your Internet marketing questions
| They take more effort
Bring AOL Users into Your Marketing Plan
Can you afford to let 50 percent of your Web business slip away on a technicality? | DEAR MR. INTERNET: A lot of my online clients and prospects are America Online users. Exchanging e-mail with them seems to be different and more problematic than when dealing with users of standard Internet e-mail. Do you have any suggestions? Doug Preston Arvida Realty Services Weston, Fla. DEAR DOUG: AOL users . . . you've got to love them. Because if you didn't, you'd have to put up with the aggravation of text hyperlinks that don't work and attached files that routinely get garbled. Are AOL users worth it? A significant portion of your U.S. online business will likely come from AOL members. In fact, of the 10,841 visitors to Judy McCutchin's Web site in December 1999, at least 55.6 percent of them viewed her site with AOL. Judy closed more than $11,000,000 in online-generated business in 1999. So it pays to make sure your e-mail is AOL friendly. Give them something to click on In my September 1998 Ask Mr. Internet column, I discussed the importance of creating text hyperlinks within your e-mail message or signature. For example, if you put http://www.yoursite.com somewhere in your e-mail message, you automatically create an active hyperlink--appearing blue and underlined--that most recipients using standard Internet e-mail would be able to click on to immediately view your Web site. Likewise mailto:jane_agent@yoursite.com creates a hyperlink that when clicked on, opens a new e-mail message window with your e-mail address already in the TO: section. These hyperlinks are useful because recipients are only one mouse click away from viewing your site or sending you a message. Unfortunately, this linking method doesn't work for AOL users. They're part of a proprietary commercial service that doesn't follow standard Internet e-mail protocols. To make links work for them, you have to insert a bit of HTML code. The image below shows how you create a link to a Web site within e-mail messages sent to AOL recipients. Although more complicated than using http:// in front of the Web address, the method offers the advantage of allowing any text—not just Web addresses—to show up as the hyperlink. You can create an e-mail address as a hyperlink as well by substituting mailto:jane_agent@yoursite.com for the Web address in the image above. Note that the hyperlink text "Click Here" is just an example. It's more beneficial to use your full Web and e-mail addresses as the hyperlink text. That way, recipients get a chance to learn them by heart. Power tip: Create a separate signature targeted just for your AOL clients and prospects that provides links to your Web site and e-mail address in the way described above. Don't attach--let them retrieve Attached files sent to AOL users are also subject to the differences between AOL and standard e-mail account providers. Often times, the files either don't show up or end up garbled. But there's a clever way to circumvent this, completely eliminating the need to send attachments. Through Click2Send, a free service that lets you create online "safe deposit boxes," you can upload any file through a Web browser. Here's how you'd use it to send files to your AOL clients: Suppose you need to send a CMA report to a prospective seller. Create a Click2Send safe deposit box, upload the file through your browser, and Click2Send will e-mail your recipient saying that there's a file for them to pick up at a particular Web address. The recipient simply goes to the link address and downloads your file through their Web browser. The sheer number of clients and prospects who use AOL can mean a gold mine of online business for you, if you eliminate their frustration: Make it easy for them to interact with you via e-mail. |
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