Internet Communications

One of the best features of the Internet is the ability to obtain immediate feedback from your audience. Therefore, answering e-mail can be an invaluable tool to market your organization. If your Web site includes forms of Internet communications, then receiving and responding to these communications becomes a part of Web site maintenance. The Web manager can delegate the task of answering e-mail and other forms of Internet communications to another person.

E-mails and comment forms can be general or they can contain information that is of interest to one specific department in your organization. If your Web site has one generic form for all kinds of information, the Web manager could read through and classify the e-mails in order to forward them to the correct departments. However, if you have a form exclusively for online ticketing, for example, then all ticketing forms could be forwarded directly to the box office manager or to the box office ticketing system.

In addition, you should design some generic templates to answer common inquiries through the Internet. For example, if you have set up an e-mail account to order tickets, you can have a response template that reads: "Your ticket order has been received and it is being processed. You should receive your tickets by mail in approximately one week. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any other questions. We hope you enjoy the show!" This text can be used to answer all ticket orders since it does not contain any specific information, such as the date or name of the performance.