WEB Pages and E Marketing

Ali Meller is a driving force behind the Intl 505 fleet. Ali spoke about Screaming Plane Web Pages. Ali wrote 2 to 3 Articles per WEEK for the 50 web site in the early days. His advice NOW is Keep it Simple cause your techie’s (and you) will burn out… and you have to keep going. He strongly recommends a system where LOTS of people can contribute to the web site. He suggested using Wiki or Post Nuke as the engines for your framework because they deliver lots of bang for the effort and allow the community of 505 world wide to contribute, he noted that 505 sailors, are a self professed anarchist group and to keep the energy going this system works for them. Their web site is updated Daily and he does not write 3 articles a week anymore. Dues come in ONLY when you want to race at the event… then you pay your dues.

CUT the cute crap…. Make sure contact info is always easy to find… don’t drill down for info more then 3 deep.

He also noted… Disk Space is CHEAP… don’t trust somebody’s filing cabinet. Keep all your stuff on the web! When sailing causes the divorce… she just might throw stuff out. (He actually said…. Loose it in the move… sorry about that).

He highly recommended www.sailingsource.com as a provider of great service to sailing clubs at a GREAT price.

Joe Costa of US Sailing noted… that SPAM FILTERS probably swallow many of your blast emails… 30 bcc’s will target your email and you won’t know it! Format your communications for the lowest common denominator… eg 800 x 600 17 inch screens.

Plain text… RTF formats are suspect for virus and won’t go through to some people.
Keep it simple stupid was the message from both speakers.