If you are sending out a periodic email newsletter, no doubt it contains links back to your Website. These links probably take the responder to a product promotion, a featured offering, a contest sign-up location, or essentially any offer which is a means of gaining new clients or increasing your sales. What happens all too often, however, is that the person responding to your link wanders off somewhere else on your Website or else quickly leaves your site for other Internet destinations. Once you entice a newsletter recipient to visit your site, it is critical that you carefully guide him or her to take the actions you wish.

The best means to accomplish this is to set up a "landing page." This is a special Webpage constructed solely to handle promotional responses. It is not reachable through your main Website (unless you want it to be). Here, motivating text steers the buyer to take a desired action. The links on a landing page are thus limited to those that you want the prospect to follow.

Implementing landing pages will significantly improve the success of your newsletter promotions. This technique also allows you to capture important metrics to gauge your success. Since the only visitors to a landing page come as a consequence of your newsletter promotion, you can easily determine two critical measurements:

1. The number of click-throughs from your newsletter for this offer, and
2. The sales conversion rate among those who visit the landing page.

After putting all the effort into preparing a newsletter promotion, complete the process by creating a special landing page. This simple step will boost your sales and give you the data you need to refine campaigns.

Al Kernek is a real estate broker and author of "Creating E-Mail Newsletters ? A Practical Guide for the Real Estate Community." To learn more about increasing sales using low-cost, effective Internet marketing techniques, visit http://www.renewsletter.com