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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Using Direct Marketing Techniques in Web Hosting

In an industry where web-hosting companies are clambering to get more exposure, reach a wider range of prospects and gain more clients; the competition seems to be only getting fiercer. That said; there seems to be no abatement in the emergence of new web-hosting companies in the industry. Now most of the hosting providers employ the regular marketing techniques in order to advertise their web hosting services. These could include hosting directory listings, banner and/or pop up ads, PPC (Pay-per-click search engine placements), link exchanges and a host of other techniques. While these strategies have proven to be considerably effective in driving traffic, it has not yet delivered optimum results in terms of the expected growth or ROI.

Amore effective approach therefore needs to be considered given the intense competition that the industry is currently subjected to. These marketing techniques could include either print advertising or/and direct marketing. This approach towards adopting a broader marketing strategy will also result in an increase of the market share. There are many online companies out there who are offering direct marketing services for you to achieve your business targets.

Direct marketing could involve contacting a targeted audience. This would comprise of potential customers who interested in buying your web hosting services or perhaps need to keep themselves abreast with the latest news and information on the web hosting industry.

The technique of sending out direct emails to a targeted audience will help you reach a potential customer base. The success of this campaign would however be dependent on two major factors:

How targeted your potential customer list is, and how attractive your offer is to recipients.

The web host needs to understand the exact needs of his customer and offer cost-effective hosting solutions coupled with value-added features.

With direct marketing campaigns, finding a suitable list of potential customers could be catchy. With over 10,000 business-to-business lists, the relevant demographics are missing from these lists and so the web-hosting firms are not equipped with enough information of their potential customer's websites.

Fortunately, recent technology can extract and develop e-business profiles from Web sites and provide hosts with important information that allows them to better promote targeted packages to the right customer base.

Fortunately, recent technology can extract and develop e-business profiles from Web sites and provide web hosts with important and relevant information that allows them to improve upon their targeted packages and reach the right customer base. This will help the web host to create a customized business list that corresponds to their technical target market criteria.

Web hosts should also be careful in considering the source of their data while establishing a direct marketing campaign. Most hosting companies rely on the WHOIS data, which is not only inaccurate but also illegal to use.

With the latest data extraction technology (for example, Netvention technology) crawls and extracts key business information (such as company name, address, phone, fax and contact names) directly from corporate Web sites.

Once the web host is equipped with accurate data, they can employ the direct marketing campaigns in order to accelerate business growth.

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Gaming Communities with Clan Hosting

Clan web hosting would be a kind of web hosting which provides the servers and software tailored for the requirements of gaming clans and guilds. It is quite different from gaming servers, as it focuses on providing the applications and tools for communication along with the other necessary components that clans and guilds require.

Choosing this kind of hosting would be advantageous for your guild or clan regardless of your group's size - may it be just a small hobby group and even if it is a large corporate organization. Gaming communities of all sizes and types consider clan web hosting to be the better networking solution compared to just trying to make another model work for them and their needs.

There are several reasons as to why you might want to think about using clan web hosting for the gaming group or community you have. Remember that it would always be easier to make use of the appropriate tool to do the job compared to making use of the wrong tool - for obvious reasons. Selecting a good and efficient clan hosting provider would mean that you would be having a hosting provider that would be able to understand exactly what you need. These service providers already understand most of the needs of gaming communities in the aspect of communications, so they would be able to make use of the right equipment and software to tailor your available hosting options.

These service providers usually offer software which is popular for most gaming group and community websites such as bulletin boards, forums, chat rooms along with other communications software that could easily be configured to the hosting package you get.

Given up sorting through the list of clan web hosting companies? Stop searching, you can relax now and go with our tried and tested affordable web hosts, the advantage being you can focus on the specifics of your business development without bothering with the finer details of server specifications and configurations on a day to day basis. We highly recommend hosting your websites, forums, scripts, blogs and business websites with hostgator - the leader among web hosting companies. You can even get discounts when you sign up for a cheap dedicated server

What is POP3?

POP3 stands for Post Office Protocol (version 3) and comprises of mailboxes for email systems so that a user can retrieve email from a central location where the email is stored. Depending on the type of hosting package preferred, most of the quality web-hosting providers offer their customers with POP3 accounts. With the POP3 accounts, users can have mailboxes on a server with their domain name. So if for example, you own a domain name (yourdomain.com); then you can receive and send emails through yourname@yourdomain.com. With POP3, users can access their mailboxes and download messages their computers in the most simple and standardized manner.

Most e-mail applications also known as an e-mail clients use the POP protocol, although some can use the newer IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). The user needs to ensure that their domain is hosted on a server, which has nameservers in order to facilitate setting up of POP3 email accounts for their domains. Since POP3 allows a client computer to retrieve electronic mail from a POP3 server via a (temporary) TCP/IP or other connection, it does not provide for sending mail, which is assumed to be performed via SMTP or some other method.

The major features of POP3 and IMAP protocol include:

Both handle mail access only. Sending of emails is handled by SMTP.

Both Support persistent message identifiers for disconnected use.

They have freely available implementations (including source) available.

They rely on mail delivery to a, usually shared, "always up" mail server.

They allow access to new mail from a variety of client platform types.

They have client implementations available for PCs, Macs, and Unix.

They have commercial implementations available.

They allow access to new mail from anywhere on the network.

Fully support the offline (download and delete) access model.

They both are open protocols, defined by Internet RFCs.

They both are native Internet protocols; no mail gateways required.

Once the user has understood what exactly are the functions of POP3 email accounts and its uses, he can choose a hosting package that offers POP3 email accounts with their respective support. It is equally advisable to first check with the web host whether these POP3 accounts are offered within the hosting package or come at an additional monthly cost. For most web masters, POP3 accounts are indispensable and therefore it becomes imperative to opt for a web hosting service that offers this feature. The company's support needs to be of high quality as well in order to ensure smooth web hosting. Any kind of laxity or errors can cost you hundreds to millions of dollars, which is highly undesirable. Some hosting packages may include "unlimited POP3 accounts" or perhaps a set number of POP3 accounts. It is advisable therefore to first determine your requirement before selecting the hosting package with its corresponding POP3 account allowance. Lap up on ample knowledge and then select a package that would befit your website requirements.

Reliable Web Hosting Providers, How Do I Choose

Are you looking to start up a website, but don't know what steps to take to get it done.

Finding a reliable and affordable web hosting provider can be one of the most important decisions you can make. Once you choose your web hosting provider, many people will not change companies if they are unhappy. Instead, they will just complain about the bad service and unreliable hosting. They figure it will be too much of a burden to change web hosts. This being said, it is increasingly important to choose a good reliable web hosting provider to begin with.

So, what should you look for?

Well, for starters you should look for reliability. Find out what the web hosting companies "up-time" is. That is the amount of time that the website will be available online. An uptime of 99.9% is obviously good, but believe it or not, 97% or 98% is not that great. 98% uptime means your website was offline for over 3 hours that week. That's three hours that a customer can't get to what you want to sell them. Think about this; have you ever tried to go to a website and had it not come up? Did you go back to that site later, or did you find what you were looking for somewhere else.

The next thing I look for is ease of use. How difficult is it going to be to host a website with that provider? Am I going to have to use my own editor and learn how to upload files and manage the pages? Or do they have a site builder, or templates I can use. How are you going to manage the website? Do they have a good control panel?

What kind of support does this reliable web hosting provider offer? Do they have 24/7 support? Is that support over the phone, or chat? Or do you have to e-mail them or put in a "support ticket" and they'll get back to you? I don't know about you, but I prefer phone support or online chat.

One of the last things I look for in a web hosting provider is price. I don't want to sacrifice any of the above for a couple of dollars a month. But, all things being equal, I don't want to pay $20 per month when I could have paid $8 per month for the same thing.

You need to be careful here, there are a few web hosts that offer free hosting. You've heard the saying "you get what you pay for". You need to ask yourself if you are going to get a reliable, easy to use hosting account that offers good technical support. If it is for free, you will definitely be sacrificing something. Is that worth saving $5 or $10 per month? Also, the free web hosts usually place ads on your site. This is putting your competition directly on the top of your website! You're going to save $10 per month in hosting fees, but what's it going to cost you in lost sales that went to your competitor?

The biggest thing I look for with price is "How much does it cost if I pay one month at a time?" Most web hosting providers offer great deals if you pay 12, 24, or 36 months in advance. You definitely should take advantage of this BUT, find out if that provider is going to suit your needs for the next 1, 2, or 3 years first. Try it out for a month at full price before you choose to pay yearly and get the discount. Or, better yet, if they offer a 30 or 45 day money back guarantee, go ahead and pay the lump sum up front if you wish. This way after three or four weeks, if you don't like the provider, simply get a refund.

Basically, you need to define what your needs are and match them with a suitable web hosting provider. Somebody that has no technical skills and only has a basic understanding of how to use their computer shouldn't be trying to design their own website on their own and uploading the files to the web hosting provider. Those people should be looking for a provider that offers a good "site builder" and templates so you can create your website easily online. Someone that has good computer skills and can use their own editing program such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver should be more concerned with the unlimited domains, and web pages.

For an informative comparison of reliable and affordable web hosting providers go to: Reliable Web Hosting Providers.

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The author of this article, Bill Alexander is the creator of Legitmate Online Business Reviews.

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Nov 26, 2008 Nov 27, 2008 Nov 30, 2008