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Frequently Asked Questions
1.
What exactly is MERLIN Affinity email?
2.
How does MERLIN
Affinity benefit my organization?
3.
How can we
contact our members?
4.
How does MERLIN
Affinity benefit our existing or future affiliate members?
5. What
are the advantages to having a MERLIN web-based email
account?
6.
Will our website traffic increase once
we become a MERLIN Affinity valued customer?
7.
Can I see a demo of a MERLIN email
account?
8.
Does MERLIN handle
our customer service membership issues?
9.
What is the
average term agreement for a new MERLIN Affinity email
account?
10. How do
we sign up for a MERLIN Affinity account?
MERLIN Answers
1. What exactly is MERLIN Affinity email?
MERLIN Affinity is a direct marketing email solution.
Organizations, such as yours, pay a minimal monthly fee, per
email account, to
give their members (customers, fans, club members,
etc) the opportunity to have "free" web-based email
accounts. After your organization enrolls as a MERLIN
Affinity Valued Customer, your members will be given
the ability to sign up for personal email addresses that
contains your companies name or slogan.
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2. How does MERLIN Affinity email
benefit our organization?
One of the most powerful and cost effective marketing tools
being used today is email marketing. It is being used by
organization to "quickly" and "frequently" target and
communicate with groups of people. Below are examples of how
your company benefits from offering MERLIN Affinity email to
your members:
-
Brand Name Awareness -
Your members will be using an email address with your
name or slogan (ie. -
name@organization.com). Every time they give out their
email address they will be spreading your name, thus
creating regular brand awareness for your company.
-
Brand Name Ownership -
your members will be retrieving their emails from your
selected domain name or slogan. From the get-go, the
member will be building a feeling of name ownership.
-
Brand name Distribution -
Your members will send thousands of emails to friends,
family, and co-workers ..... advertising your companies name with
every email they send.
-
Revenue Generation -
promote items and events
within the site or in promotional emails
-
Brand Attachments -
As a standard policy, your organization's brand name/logo will be attached to the bottom of each email your
members send. (i.e. - Proudly sponsored by "Your
Organizations Name."
-
Banner Advertisement -
If you wish, you can place your own banner advertisement
with you branded site. All forms of advertising within the
email environment are owned and controlled by you. There is
no additional pricing for the use of banner
ads.
-
Increased Web Site Traffic -
If you choose to add MERLIN Affinity email to your
home page your members will return to your home page
each and every time they want to check their email! All we
do is add a log-in/sign-up box or button on your website's
home page. Depending on the member, you may have this
member return to your website multiple times each day or
week.
-
Affinity Email = Stickiness -
As
the concept of free email is slowly disappearing, (both
Hotmail & Yahoo! are starting to charge from many of their
services) consumers will remain loyal/sticky to
organizations that are willing to give them a "free" email
account.
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3. How can we
contact our members?
Integrated into your MERLIN Affinity Email account
is a customizable email messaging system. We have
structured it so that you or someone in your organization
can send emails to your members as often as you wish.
As an email administrator, you will be able to:
-
send standard "broadcast" emails
-
customize standard auto-mail scripts
-
automatically appended your brand name and logo to every
e-mail sent by your email users.
-
customize your own tip of the day, which appears on an
e-mail user's home page.
To send a message to your members all you have to do is:
-
Log into your MERLIN Valued Customer back office
-
Go to
"Send Mail"
-
Select "All" accounts or "Select" only specific email
accounts
-
Type your email (you may add an attachment if you wish)
-
Click on Send
If you would prefer, you can
also opt to have MERLIN handle your email messaging system.
In this case all you would need to do it send us the digital
content of the email, and we will handle the rest.
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4. How does MERLIN Affinity email benefit our
existing or future members?
First and foremost your members benefit from being
associated with your organization. Following that, they also
receive:
-
A "Free" private email account -
which gives them the
ability to send unlimited emails to their
friends, family, and co-workers.
-
A web-based email account -
which is convenient, easily accessible, and
user-friendly. Having a web based email means that they can
retrieve their emails from anywhere in the world. All that
they need is Internet access. Merlin lets them store all of
their email messages on the Internet, which leaves more room
on their' hard drives for other programs or files.
-
Front-of-the-line status
- With Merlin mail you can let your affinity members be the
"first" members to know about special promotions
offered by your organization.
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5. What are the advantages to
having a MERLIN web-based email account?
Having a web based email means that your members can retrieve their emails from
anywhere in the world. All that your
members need is Internet access with a recent browser. Here
are more benefits,
they can:
-
Store email messages
on the Internet - which leaves more room on their
hard drives for other programs or files,
-
set a SPAM control
- to avoid unwanted junk mail,
-
Store their address book on line -
which means they no longer need to worry if they
are on vacation and forgot their hardback address book or
palm pilot. And if they have their address book stored
within MS Outlook or Outlook Express, they can easily import
their address book to MERLIN,
-
Send reminders - to
themselves or to others notifying them of an important
event, birthday, or anniversary,
-
Delayed Mail - allows
you to write an email now and have it send it at a later
time and/or date,
-
Search for emails -
throughout the In Box, Trash, Folders, etc.
-
Sign up quickly
- We've made it easy for your members to to
sign-up for an email account. All your members need to
do is to answer a few short questions and they are up and
running in no time at all. There is no installation or
configuration required.
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6. Will our website
traffic increase once we become a MERLIN Affinity valued
customer?
The option is yours. If you would like to increase
your home page traffic, we can set it up so that each and every time
they check their emails, they will have to
return to your home page. We will
either design an integrated log-in/sign-up box that resides
on your website's index page or design a log-in/sign-up
button that will take them to a separate page.
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7.
Can I see a demo of a MERLIN email account?
Absolutely!
Click here to go to the entrance page. Then use the following codes to enter the account:
User Name:
demo
Password:
demo
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8. Does MERLIN handle our customer service
membership issues?
MERLIN Affinity handles all administrative related customer
issues, including:
-
Technical support issues
-
Security and reliability
-
Spam filtration -
incoming, as well as, out-bound spam control
-
Database
management
-
Version enhancements and
upgrades
-
Monitoring of your site
Unless otherwise negotiated, your organization will handle
direct communication with your members.
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9. What is the
average term agreement for a new MERLIN Affinity email
account?
The average term of a MERLIN Affinity account is 2 years.
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10. How does my
organization sign up for a MERLIN Affinity email account?
To sign up you can either speak directly with one of our
Account Executive, by calling
858-569-2900 or if you would like for us to
contact you - simply fill out our
contact form.
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