Mass Emailing / Opt In Email Lists

The other day I received a great question via email from one of our readers. They want to know how they can offer promotion via email and offer it in various HTML / Plain text copies.

His question was if I had a walk-through of how to begin being an e-mail marketer. A couple of the main questions were how to get email lists, how to format the message so you don’t get fined, what are the exact limits you can push through your isp before its considered spam. He also asked if it’s possible to get kicked off your web host for mass mailing like this.

I first want to go on record by saying I am by no means a pro Mass E-Mailer, but I do have some experience in the field and have done it for many sites with 100’s to 1000’s upon 1000’s of opt in emails.

So let’s dissect the first question a bit more. He asks how to begin being an e-mail marketer.

The first step is learning how to obtain the list of E-Mails you are going to send your deals to, you don’t want to just grab all the emails you can via software and spam them with deals unrelated to what your offer. So your best way is going to be either buy a opt in email list for your niche, or compile one yourself by personally emailing everyone you know in your niche and asking them to tell at least 2 people about your site and ask them to signup as you have.

As mentioned in other articles Word Of Mouth spreads like wildfire and is your #1 way to get the word out.

Ok so you have the Op-In email list, but how and what do you send the emails out with? Another point that I want to bring up is that you should never send emails out through your ISP without checking with them and letting them know you have an email list of this size that are all 100% Opt-Ins and you want to know if it’s ok to send through them. If they say no or you will need to upgrade to a business line to send these mails out, then do it! Don’t just send it out as you could lose your internet connection altogether and then you wouldn’t even be able to read this blog! Be smart!

About the programs to use, I have only ever used 1 actual program to send out emails and that was Desktop Server 2000, it’s pretty old but it always worked well for me and my list of 2,000 or so people at the time.

Desktop server is just one of the many Safe Mass / Bulk email programs that are out their today. I no longer use programs to send out my email lists, instead I collect emails through the Feed Burner service and I find it to be a lot more professional as it sends every person on the list a email as soon as you post on your blog.

That brings me to a work around for the first step of getting the Opt-In list, I suggest putting up a blog that you call newsletter on your site, unless your site is a blog which in my case it is!

Then signup to the http://www.feedburner.com website with your RSS feed. Once you have done that you can set the email field like I have here on InfectedByBugs to the side of your blog or any blog / site for that matter and allow people to input their emails that way.

When you start getting signups even if its just 1 you can start sending out a weekly, monthly or however often you want newsletter. The newsletter should always end asking them to do something which keeps them interested in coming back to the site / product or service your now offering. Use your own judgment when it comes to this sort of thing; don’t be afraid to tinker either. Play around with the letters you send and see what works for your niche!

Ok, so that was my workaround for having to use programs to send out emails. The reason I prefer that over programs is because feed burner sends out the emails for me, all I have to do it sit back and enjoy while making new posts / newsletters and they send them out and my ISP is ok with it even on a home line if I had that.

Another great thing about using either Desktop Server or a similar program or a service like Feed Burner is the emails are HTML ready or text ready depending on what the user’s system prefs are. I don’t have to worry about having two separate lists like I did in the past as its all done automatically now.

That brings me to another point that I believe is important to know, if you plan on using a program like Desktop Server get ready for a headache, I cannot tell you the horror stories I have had when using programs like them.

For instance, I have lost my email lists and had to get backups off cds, I have sent out the wrong letter to the wrong people as well. Unlike programs feed burner is separated by blog RSS so you could have several RSS feeds even from the same site with just different blogs / offers and you will never lose a list or have a mental breakdown because you sent the wrong thing to the wrong people. Trust me it’s worth it to start a newsletter blog just to send out your emails

Well that about sums up this basic overview of Mass Email / Opt-In Lists!

I hope you enjoyed it and I would love for you to comment and tell us what ways you send out emails or if you have any tips to help us and the other readers improve how they email there customers / readers!

[tags]mass emails, opt ins[/tags]

Filed under: Personal Posts

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