Re: Banners to capture e-mail addresses

From: James Santagata <jsanta_at_ix.netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 16:02:54 -0500 (CDT)

JIMMY WROTE:
>I publish a newsletter and I'm interested in building
>subscriptions.
>
>I would like to run a banner advertising campaign which
>allows the viewer to type in their e-mail address to
>initiate their subscription. Once captured, that e-mail
>address should be emailed to my listserv address.
>
>Is this possible technically? What technology is required?

Assuming that you want the user to be able to enter their
email address directly into the email banner, there are two
ways I would approach it.

The first and simplest way requires NO programming on your
part (other than a simple HTML tag). First create the
banner, being sure to include an image which represents an
empty formfield which will be used to "hold" the user's
email address. The end product should be such that the
user would intuitively "click" in/on the formfield to begin
entering their email address.

Next, anchor this image to a mailto: command (in your HTML),
so that when the user clicks on the formfield, the mailto:
command will be activated, launching the user's email client
and automatically populating the new email message with the
commands necessary to populate your listserv database:

<A HREF="mailto:listserve_at_tribalnoise.com?subject=subscribe
xyz"> REF. YOUR IMAGE HERE (for the banner ad image) </A>**

The user simply presses "send" when done. Their mail client
sends the properly formatted message to your listserv (via
their smtp server) and your database will be populated.

**You will need to fiddle with the mailto: command, so that
it generates the necessary information your listserv
requires. Using the mailto: you can populate to:, cc:,
bcc:, subject: and body: (bodytext) also.

The other way, requires some CGI script (probably perl) and
is less of a hack. Set up a form field <form> as the banner
or as a subset of a two-part integrated banner (image &
text). User enters email address, and then presses "submit"
button on the form (or some javascript command is used to
send the form and launch the CGI script). The script can
verify the form, process the data, prepare a properly
formatted email, and submit the email to your listserv (or
the script can directly populate the database).

Hope that helps.

James Santagata
jsanta_at_ix.netcom.com

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Received on Fri May 14 1999 - 20:40:53 CDT