Promotion via email

At the moment, alternative, preferred strategies include:

• Posting Tables of Contents (TOC) of journals and books to relevant discussion lists. Whether this is seen as acceptable will depend on the list. For example, there was recently a discussion about this on the academic marketing list ELMAR. The consensus was that journal TOC were useful, but that the list Moderator should let through only selected book TOC. Regular 'taster' postings of news stories may also be worthwhile (eg giving a few of that week's stories, or free bulletins of headlines, with payment required for obtaining the full story).

• Making useful contributions to relevant discussion lists (ie not just hyping your services). The 'sig' (Signature: the 'business card' that you clip to the bottom of each message) provides a brief advert every time you post (though lengthy sigs can irritate). Regular contributors can also often get away with (infrequent) relevant adverts.

  For example, bibliographic software providers post useful answers and the occasional advert to the BIBSOFT discussion list. It is generally seen as acceptable to post an advert if you are providing some relevant free services or information from your Web site.

• Building up your own marketing database of email contacts. This is being done by forcing or encouraging people to register before they can search your (free) site, by putting prominent response coupons on your site or in print publications, offering free email news bulletins (sometimes advertised via posts to discussion lists), scouring archives of news groups to identify people who seem interested in your product area etc. The last named (putting people on a list without asking permission) is frowned on by many.

  The first (forcing registration) may prove to be less popular as time goes on: Hotwired has recently opened up much of its site to non-registrants. It seems likely that lots of people forgot their password and either re-registered each time they visited, or pestered the site to tell them what their password was (HotWired has a special email address for password enquiries). Additionally, many people will simply pass the site by, because they cannot be bothered to register.