Re: Introduction to the list

From: Cliff Kurtzman <moderator_at_o-a.com>
Date: Fri 11 Feb 2005 09:28:24 -0600

Lynn Bishop wrote:

>Actually this has probably been discussed, but I was reading the other day,
>about writing good copy for websites, and one of the things he said was that
>websites are far to impersonal, and people like to feel they "Know" the
>person they are contacting....

When I ran a web marketing and design firm in the 1990s, for a time
Shell was one of our clients, and one of our larger clients at that.
I remember quite clearly how that relationship began... the
individual at Shell that found our web site told us how our web site
stood out from the others he had looked at, in particular in the way
it showed the personalities, photos, and character of the people
within the organization that he might be working with. We showed that
we were serious about what we did for a living, yet playful and
humorous in our approach.

Over time, we unfortunately found we had to reduce the amount of
staff information provided over our web site. As the Internet
marketing industry gained fervor, and our company gained recognition
for being great at what we did, the people that we featured on our
web site became targets of continual bombardment from salespeople and
headhunters, and I had to limit the featured bios to just myself and
a key business development person or two.

>I'm going to
>provide a different email address and see if people contact me personally
>for work rather than info@ address, because they feel they "know me" from
>reading the articles.

I have found that including an email address on a web site is
unfortunately tantamount to issuing an invitation to receive spam.
Salespeople find it, and I am repeatedly added to unsolicited mailing
lists, so I no longer do it. Instead, for the past two years I have
provided online contact and feedback forms (along with phone, fax and
mailing address), and ample links to allow people to find and use the
forms. I find it works very well, and I don't believe that many that
might be serious about entering into a business relationship with me
are going to be put off by filling out the form or picking up the
phone and calling. I still get some of the most bizarre form
submissions from people trying to sell me things or asking me to help
them transfer ten million dollars from their bank account in
Nigeria... but they are rare and I don't get repeatedly spammed from
the same source anymore.

--Cliff

Clifford R. Kurtzman, Ph.D.
CEO
ADASTRO Incorporated
A Starhold Enterprise
http://www.adastro.com
(281) 480-6300

Business IS Rocket Science



Received on Fri Feb 11 2005 - 09:28:24 CST