We have provided a few different articles on Email Testing, Email Marketing and Email Best Practices. Hopefully, since reading these articles, you have had the opportunity to test and assess some of the ideas we suggested and have experienced positive results. We've taken the opportunity to check out many of your email promotions and websites and have some further suggestions that will enhance your email and online marketing success.

We have observed that many of you do not have sign-in forms on your websites-a quick audit of a small percentage of our client's websites revealed that only 10-20% have sign-up forms. Every day your website attracts visitors, and you send visitors to your site with your email campaigns. If you put a sign-up form on your website, interested prospects choose to receive more information about your work. If you don't have a sign-up form on your site, your opportunities are floating into cyberspace. Email is still the most convenient and inexpensive form of marketing communication. And when emails are sent directly to art buyers who are genuinely interested because they signed up to receive your information, you have a good chance to determine their creative needs and demonstrate to them how you can meet them.

Tips for effective sign-up forms

Make sure people can find your form
If you are going to have an on-line form, do not bury it so deeply on your site that no one can ever find it. Test different locations for the best response rate. Because you are in the creative business, you do not want the form to detract from the visual appeal of your site so you may not want to feature it on your home page. However, you should have an obvious link to your sign-up form from your home page and email campaigns.

Address Privacy Concerns
You may not have a privacy policy on your website at this point in time. You can actually purchase privacy policy templates fairly inexpensively on-line and easily incorporate one into your website. We highly recommend that you include a privacy policy once you have a sign-up form. Also include a short statement about what will happen with their email address right where they sign-up, as a reassurance that you are going to be responsible and respect the confidentiality of their private information.

Let them know what you will be sending them
You are going to have to sell potential prospects on the value of what you are going to provide them with in exchange for signing up. We strongly suggest that you have a look at incorporating a RSS Feed-a number of artists are already offering this. A RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content using XML technology. For example, with a RSS Feed you can offer art buyers the opportunity to receive new images from you in their area of interest as soon as you post them to your website. You can check out an article on how to set this up at www.DevX.com

Even if you don't add the RSS feature to your site, you can update potential buyers on new images and projects of interest to them as they become available. You could also create a simple newsletter geared to your target audience's interests. Or offer sign-up to your blog if you have one.

Let them know how often
If you want to be successful with your email marketing, do not barrage those who opt-in, or they will be opting out soon enough. Let your leads know up front what your approximate email communication frequency will be, upfront.

Qualify your Leads
Don't make your form too lengthy but do ask for a little more information than name and email address. Be sure to ask for company name and title, and what type/style of photography/illustration they are interested in. Do try to make sure that the form takes no longer than 2 minutes to complete.

Aesthetics and Techie Stuff
Your sign-up form should have the same look and feel as your site, and should remain on your domain. Be sure to provide clear, helpful error correction messages if they fill out the form incorrectly. Before you finalize your form, make sure that you test it with a number of people-see if they can find the form on your site and ensure that it is easy to fill out.

Add Your Opt-ins to Your Contact List in ADBASE

Remember that you can go to the MyContacts tab in MyADBASE and add in these contacts so that you can include them in your print campaigns. And, with our new Emailerv2, currently in Beta testing, you can now email your private contacts as well as ADBASE contacts!

Let Buyers Reach out to You

Having an opt-in form will enable buyers to connect to you, rather than just the other way around. You can also learn more about potential clients and have the opportunity to incorporate this knowledge into your promotions.

Hopefully we have convinced you of the importance of having a sign-up form on your website and given you some helpful tips. Let us know by emailing us at marketing@adbase.com