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Online Marketing for Book and Publishing Web Sites:
Step 7, Signature File

By Virginia Lawrence

Although there are many ways to market a Web site, creating the signature file is the last of the seven marketing basics we have been discussing since December. After we have built a Web site, whether the site is an informational site or a direct sales site for our books, we want to be sure that every communication from our office gives our Web site address and a short summary of our business.

Our letterhead and cards will, of course, include the Web site URL (address.) The e-mails we send should also include that information, and it's easy to set up a signature file to be automatically appended to every e-mail.

Signature File Contents

A signature file should include a tag line for the business, plus contact information. Here's one of the signature files I use:

Virginia Lawrence, Ph.D., SPAWN Technical Internet Editor mailto:virginia@cognitext.com
CogniText: Information Architecture, Print and Web
http://www.cognitext.com 818-886-4281
Small Publishers, Artists, and Writers Network
http://www.spawn.org

We want to make it easy for our e-mail recipients to e-mail us and to visit our Web site, so we format our e-mail address and our URL carefully. Note that the e-mail address virginia@cognitext.com is written as mailto:virginia@cognitext.com in the signature file. Adding the mailto: tag makes the e-mail address clickable in most e-mail programs. Similarly, writing the full URL, http://www.spawn.org, makes that URL into a clickable link leading directly to the Web site.

Creating a Signature in Outlook Express

From the Tools menu, select Options, then select the Signatures tab. Click the New button, and you will be prompted to enter the text for your new signature.

Creating a Signature in Eudora

From the Tools menu, select Signatures. You will see a screen displaying existing signatures. Right click to bring up the right-click menu, and choose the New option. Enter a name for your new signature, then enter the information to be included in the signature. Eudora lets you have several signatures so that for any e-mail, you just choose the appropriate signature for the recipient.

Just as our letterhead and cards represent us to the world, so do our e-mails. Every e-mail should have a signature file to bring people directly to our Web site.

~ Virginia Lawrence, Ph.D., SPAWN's Webmaster and Technology Editor, is an Information Architect who publishes both in print and online. Contact her at virginia@spawn.org or visit her Web site at http://www.cognitext.com

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