Mailing Lists

A good alternative to spam mailing is a subscription based mailing list. Do you have some knowledge or expertise that other people would be interested in? If so, then why not offer a weekly or monthly mailing list that features your expertise?

There are many people out there who are highly offended by spam (unsolicited commercial email). If you start a mailing list, you will have the ear of a large number of people that are interested in what you want to say. Some of those people are bound to buy your products. If not, you will have made a large number of contacts who feel they know you intimately. You never know when some of these people can help you in one way or another.

Once you have selected the content, schedule and format of your mailing list, you will need to begin soliciting subscribers. In the previous chapter we mentioned that you can solicit subscribers in conjunction with your online contest. In my experience, the vast majority of subscribers to my mailing list have come this way. However, don't let this stop you from using other methods. You should ask just about every contact you make online if they would like to subscribe to your FREE mailing list that offers all this great information. Most people will take you up on it.

There are a number of ways to manage the list. The most efficient is to use a mailing list server like Majordomo. You ISP may be able to help you here. The benefit of this type of automated list manager is that people will be able to subscribe and unsubscribe automatically. Not only does this feature give your list an air of professionalism, but it is also very convenient for the subscribers. Whether you you use this method or not, it's essential that you respond to subscribe and unsubscribe requests promptly and courteously.

If you don't use a mailing list server you can always maintain the list manually and then use a multiple mailing program to send out your messages. You should be able to find any variety of mass mailing programs to choose from. This program will run on your home computer and will not allow for auto subscribe and unsubscribe since it's not tied into the internet constantly like Majordomo.

For some good stand alone email programs, please check out the Internet Marketing ProShop.

And for further study on how to manage an email list please visit the Internet Marketing Library.

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Further Study

For more great stuff, see the Internet Marketing Library and the Internet Marketing ProShop.

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