Have you  seen the new look and feel of Shopit?

They’ve done a major reworking of the site to make it more appealing and provide better functionality.  As a result their blog has been issuing posts to pass on tips and tricks, as well as advice on how to get the best from the cross network social shopping platform.

Their first tip ran like this -

Bulletins: Can I still send to these to my network? Where do I send them from? What the heck is a bulletin?

A bulletin is a one-time message that is sent to your entire network of friends on Shopit. Bulletins are an awesome way to let everyone know about sales in your store, new items, promotions, etc.

However, be sure they are geared towards a general audience, because a bulletin does get sent to everyone you know And yes, of course we still have this handy little sales tool for you!

You can find the option in your Inbox under ‘Compose New Message‘. There is a little check box that allows you to ‘Send to all your Friends.’ Click it and your bulletin is locked and loaded to be sent to your entire Shopit network! (so make it a good one!)

Also, we think bulletins are such a great tool to market your store, that we’re currently working to expand this feature even more for you. Soon you’ll be able to use filters to best target the customers you are trying to reach. You can sort by age, by location, by gender, and most importantly by a user’s interests.

That way you can get your message directly to those who want to hear about it! Of course, we’ll let you know as soon as that product hits shelves.

…Stay tuned as we’ll have daily, or maybe even a few times daily, updates and tips about the new Shopit! Again, we’ve made this new site version based on your requests, feedback, and emails, so keep em’ comin!

Original story : ShopIt Blog

Essentially, this feature is similar to eBay Store owners Email Marketing, but with greater flexibility and remember it is multi-platform for all your social networking site memberships – e.g. facebook, MySpace, Ning etc. therefore you can reach a far wider audience than with eBay email marketing.

Caution #1 - remember the SPAM problems – try to restrict your emailings to people who have opted into receiving your bulletins, and don’t make them too frequent – keep them relevant, with interesting news and advice or opinions that will appeal to your readers.

Make your bulletins engaging and fun, as well as informative and an attempt to sell your wares.  Doing so will retain subscribers and capture more repeat sales.

Caution #2 - For several years now, both Ed and myself have been extolling the virtues of moving your eBay stores subscription to one of the sites such as Singapore, in order to minimise subscription fees, while still being able to list internationally.  We’ve commented from time to time that the main disadvantage is not being able to use the Omniture stats package to monitor traffic levels and sources.

That still applies, but we also forgot to mention that while SG has a store email marketing feature, the ability to write custom news content has been broken for at least three years.

Despite frequently reporting this, it is still not fixed, and in my own case, all my newsletter still publish with the last message I input before migrating the store from the UK subscription – something about “still time to buy before Halloween”, or some such silly nonsense that doesn’t apply for eleven months of the year.  Apologies to all recipients for this – it’s not my fault honestly, and at least the latest products part does refresh correctly each month.

Nice one eBay – you really know how to help sellers make more money for you, don’t you?

Gaz

More Information : BuildaSkill’s Social Commerce & Networking Tools discussion forums