07 Nov 09 Email Campaign Software: Where to Put a Sign Up Form

Email campaign software is one of those important tools that are used by companies that are deeply involved in internet marketing. Internet marketing that uses the email route is called bulk email marketing. Unfortunately, this type of marketing also involves spamming. Spamming is the method of marketing whereby a large group of email addresses are acquired using dubious means like spider software and CDs that contain email addresses. These addresses are then mailed marketing offers. This practice is still widespread and if not deterred by the actions of spam filters can end up clogging many a mailbox.

Campaign software can also be used for spamming but fortunately, the entire philosophy of being a spammer negates the use of using campaign software. Campaign software basically consists of a database, which is acquired from permission lists, and a mailing application to send specific mailers to. The most important part of this equation is acquiring the mail addresses. Unlike spammers, serious email marketers actually get their email addresses after people sign up to receive updates and promotional offers. This places a very special impetus on where to keep the opt-in information for the user to sign up.

Sign-up forms are usually best placed as part of the user registration forms that can be found on most websites that require memberships. Ideally, the sign-up form should be placed as the last step of the user registration procedure. This means that your site has to have a lot of people that want to be a part of it. However, if your site is not one of these then it doesn't mean that you will not have any addresses to add to your email campaign software. All that this means is that you need to reach out to your prospective users.

This can be done in a variety of ways like forming partnering tie-ups with other internet entities whereby you can leverage their customer bases. A typical example of this can be a networking site. Most networking sites tend to fight shy of most marketers but you can overcome this by creating fan pages or microsites of your own entity and then get the following from there. Once you create your microsite, all you need to do is to place a sign-up form for people to sign up with.

There is also the offline world. Never underestimate the power of feedback forms as a source for email addresses to add to your email campaign software. Of course, this will involve some good old manual data entry and some elbow grease but at the end of the day, an opt-in is an opt-in.

These are some of the more general guidelines but for all useful purposes, you can pretty much put your sign-on form at any place on your own or your partner websites. The trick however is to make the correct partnerships that can work. It might even be a costly exercise but your objectives would be met.