Business and Investment Center

Question #1 Is my membership site protected by copyright?

In theory, web pages are protected by copyright as soon as they are created. However, in the U.S. your website will need to be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office within three months of publication for you to bring a case against someone that copies it. Once you have registered your web pages, you are legally protected if someone should decide to copy your page word for word. It is a good idea to post a copyright notification on each of your web pages. This is not necessary to bring a copyright law suit, but it will help your case if you show the person that copied your work was aware it was protected by copyright. It may also scare some people into not using your working.

Question #2 How do I deal with the issue of spam?

The flood of unsolicited e-mail arriving in inboxes worldwide has led to the introduction of harsh measures to combat spam. Even newsletters that your customers have requested are likely to be treated as spam unless you take preventative action. Ask your members to white-list you and follow the guidelines as set out by the Can Spam Act. Use a method of encrypting your members’ personal details, especially their payment details. It is reassuring for your members to know that you do this, so you could either mention it on the page where they input their details, or have it as one of the questions on your FAQs page.

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Contextual marketing opens up opportunities for companies that, for various reasons, can’t form the ongoing digital relationships that are the lifeblood of a successful destination Web site—for example, makers of consumer packaged goods, single-product companies, and infrequent service providers. The most innovative of these companies are already adapting their marketing strategies to take advantage of the ubiquitous Internet.

The ubiquitous Internet will vastly expand marketers’ opportunities to reach customers. At the same time, it will destabilize the “four Ps” of traditional marketing: price, product, placement, and promotion will all be thrown into constant flux, depending on the customer and the context. The marketing goal will be the same as ever: deliver the right product to the right customer at the right time. Companies will still have to form a deep understanding of their customers’ needs and desires. But in many cases, instead of owning customer data or individual customer relationships, successful contextual marketers will borrow them.

Even companies with flourishing destination sites can benefit from contextual marketing. Dell Computer, whose own site is an e-commerce leader, recognizes that most on-line computer shoppers bypass Dell’s site and go straight to ZDNet and CNET for in-depth product information—combined, those two sites have almost ten times the number of site visitors that Dell has. So instead of using costly and ineffective banner ads to divert sales prospects to its own site, Dell posts its detailed product information on ZDNet’s and CNET’s sites. Visitors at those sites can then compare the latest offerings from Dell and Compaq, pick the Dell machine, and launch the ordering process directly from the CNET or ZDNet site. By piggybacking on CNET’s and ZDNet’s relationships, Dell has significantly improved its customer acquisition economics.

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