What are you doing with your business cards? Got any ideas to share?

Retail

• For every medal your country wins, offer a 5% discount (cap it at a certain level).
• How about getting behind your favorite athlete? Go Michael Phelps! If he breaks a record we break prices!

Restaurants & Bars

• If you're showing the Olympics on your TVs, make sure to send an email to your customers getting them to come back in.
• Why not have a special when your country wins?
• Offer appetizers on the house if a record is broken.
• Offer up a special Olympic concoction.
• Pasta on the menu? Have an Olympic Pasta night while the games are playing.

Salons/Spas

• Wax Your Legs Like An Olympic Cyclist! 50% Olympics Discount on Waxing This Month Only! (That's a fun one!)

B2B

• Countdown to Beijing - Discount or Bundle of the week all the way up to the Olympics.

What kind of Olympic-themed promotion can you think of for your business?

I replied that we aren't soliciting anything, we're not asking for money (the webinar was free) and we were not getting paid by Google. In fact I told them that there are a ton of Google Apps that are free. I told them that we use Google Apps and we just think that our customers can benefit from knowing about how they can use these products with VerticalResponse.

Then I found this from the Spamhaus Project:

Spam is an issue about consent, not content. Whether the UBE message is an advert, a scam, porn, a begging letter or an offer of a free lunch, the content is irrelevant - if the message was sent unsolicited and in bulk then the message is spam.

So we emailed our users about something we were doing, with Google, that they could benefit from for free. I think that's pretty far from the 100's of spam messages I get in my inbox that I never signed up for. So I told this customer if they were so offended they could unsubscribe.

P.S. I noticed this customer got a huge ratio of spam complaints on one of their mailings...now who is the spammer? ;-)

Your Homepage - If you don't have one on your home page, get one there now.

Your Sub-pages - All of them! If you don't have the space to put an actual form on all of your sub-pages, at least have a "Newsletter Sign Up" link on them.

Your Blog - Not everyone subscribes to RSS to get information from your blog, so you'll need to include an actual form for your readers to sign up, or a "Sign Up For Our Newsletter" link to it. You don't want to lose the opportunity to get email addresses from people who might be interested in knowing about your regular updates. If you use TypePad, you can get the free VR Opt-in Form Widget with just a few clicks.

Your Purchase Confirmation Page - Someone has just hopefully had a great experience purchasing from you, why not ask them to join your list right then and there?

A Pop-up Window - Include a pop-up window when someone leaves your website. You won't be able to use this with visitors who have their browsers set to block them, but you'll surely get some people seeing them. We've had thousands of people signing up through this form.

A Landing Page - If you have a separate landing page you send people to from your search engine pay-per-click campaigns, include a newsletter sign up form on it. If they don't purchase from you, they might at least sign up to your list, then you'll be able to attempt to get them to purchase later on.

The Footer of all Outbound Email Correspondence - Any email you personally send or any email your employees or customer service people send one on one, should have the link to your opt-in form.

Your Email Marketing Campaigns - We have many customers that include an opt-in form image or link inside their actual email marketing campaigns. If the email is forwarded to someone who isn't on your list you might get a new subscriber. You can also use Forward to a Friend links as well.

Offline

Your Counter - Don't forget to put a sign up book at your counter or somewhere prominent in your place of business. Then enter those email addresses quickly and send them a welcome email.

Taking Appointments - If your service business is centered around making appointments with your clients, ask them for their email addresses so you can confirm the times. Also ask if they would want offers from you and make a note of their answer.

Your Tradeshow Table - You've spent a lot of money to be at a tradeshow. If someone doesn't have a business card you don't want to lose the opportunity to add them to your list. So make sure you have some kind of sign up form or book at your booth.

All of these things are super easy to do so don't miss out any opportunity you have to build your email list. Oh and make sure you tell people what they'll get for giving you their information whether it's hot tips, discounts, special offers or invitations. Make it exciting!

What am I missing? Let me know!

To cover all of their bases, it appears that if one of their customers uses an Email Service Provider outside of GoDaddy to advertise their GoDaddy-hosted site and they get complaints from one of their customer's recipients, they could be hit with a fine or other action.

Wow. Serious Email Service Providers (ESPs) like VerticalResponse usually do this as a service to customers and won't allow spammers to use their services. But let's face it, everyone gets a complaint now and then, even customers with best intentions. The difference is that serious ESPs want to help their customers learn best practices about email marketing and not turn complaints into a new revenue stream.

If you use GoDaddy to host your website be careful. And any time you're looking for a serious ESP, make sure you ask if they have a deliverability and abuse department - most serious ESPs do, looks like GoDaddy might not.

IMO, GoDaddy should stick to what they're good at, being a registrar. Leave the email marketing heavy-lifting to those who "want" to do it and help businesses grow.