Recently I’ve been doing some online research for projects. If a website has content that seems to have value, I’ll normally check to see if they have a newsletter that will benefit me in the future as a way to stay in contact with the site (in addition to RSS feeds). I subscribe to a lot of enewsletters. I don’t read them all as they come in, but I do glance at them and file them appropriately (if only I could keep all aspects of my life that organized). Typically, I have all of these enewsletters and correspondence set up to go to my personal e-mail address. Due to corporate e-mail retention policies, I found it easier to manage in my personal account for archival purposes.
Recently, I was on a marketing website which required a corporate e-mail address to allow me to sign up. Required?! By restricting to “corporate only,” this company was ignoring large portions of its potential client base, or, at the very least, partners for projects. It’s only an e-mail newsletter, after all. Why not expose your brand to as many people out there willing to accept it?
Here’s who they are neglecting:
- Freelance community – Well connected individuals who have the ability to forge and develop new partnerships.
- Entrepreneurial community – Although they often have not established “corporate” e-mail addresses, these are regional movers-and-shakers.
- Business community – Just because they may prefer to give their personal e-mail, doesn’t mean they don’t have professional jobs. The possibilities are endless.
With filtering features available in e-mail marketing software across the board, there’s no viable reason I can think of for a company to restrict e-mail addresses.
Don’t restrict your e-mail acquisition fields. You may be neglecting a large segment of your audience. You never know where your next lead will come from.
We all know someone who is a “financial consultant” …someone who has tried to get us to buy their mutual fund or buy their better life insurance policy. I’ve had several of these “consultant” types contact me — normally because a friend, acquaintance or coworker passed along my name as a “person of interest”.
He then pulled out a list of my personal contacts asking me if he can use my name as a reference for contacting any of the individuals he swiped from my connections…
With the holidays winding down, time is finally becoming available to reflect on the whirlwind that was the end of 2009. With the economic downturn and nonprofits stretching for every possible dollar, there’s one thing Holiday Season 2009 manifested…a great deal of solicitations for donations.
I recently attended a seminar on a specific state energy efficiency grant which was released. The audience was primarily local municipalities looking for guidance on how to submit the grant application and ways they can benefit from the grant program. Others in the audience included contractors and energy auditors who were there to partner (or have already partnered) with municipalities to offer services for which the grant covered. The contractors and auditors who were there came for two reasons: 1) to understand their role in the grant, and 2) network with potential clients to build business relationships.
So I wonder what THAT headline looks like in a feed reader? I feel like I need a disclaimer to this post. In reality, though, this is a great example of viral marketing efforts around a very serious cause.
So…it has been a while for posting. Despite being 
