From the Blog...

I launched the new Site Street website and my father's memorial site on Monday night.  Since the launch, the memorial site has had over 5000 hits in just four days!  Building the site was both a tribute to my father as well as therapy for me.  I didn't really have any expectations of traffic levels... I just wanted a place for people to remember him and for those who could not attend the service, to listen to what people said and contribute their own.

When I analyzed the website statistics, I realized that this traffic was generated from an email I sent two days after the site launched.  This is the magic of a targeted email campaign.  Even for a memorial site, which has no commercial objective, generating traffic follows the rules of a well-crafted email campaign:

1. Create your email list - My father was a successful business consultant with many contacts.  Just browsing through the contact list on his PDA generated a good sized list.
2. Create content people want to receive - My father was loved and respected not only by family and friends but also by the people he met through his consulting business.  This news, while horrible and tragic, is information the people want to receive.  Every person on that target list will read the email.
3. Write concise, accessible content - Good content is worthless if people can't understand it or if it gets you blocked by a spam filter.  While highly formatted emails can impress, they also run the risk of being blocked.  For the memorial site, a simple and short email was all that was needed.
4. Track your success - The single email campaign was the only "advertising" done for the site.  In the first two days of launch, the site generated almost 1000 hits.  In the two days since the email campaign, the site generated almost 5000 hits.

Clearly, the email sent about my father's memorial site was not "crafted" as an email campaign.  There was no business planning or clear goal setting.... none of the steps normally taken in a successful email campaign.  But the message is clear... email is a powerful medium when used correctly.