Your Questions About Email Marketing Lists

Jere answers:

Are you looking to improve your current email marketing? Or increase you email list? Looks like two questions.

To increase your email marketing list, include a link to a web form on your postal mail piece directing the consumers to visit that site and register for any number of reasons (sign up to receive special offers, sign up for our email newsletter, sign up for acces to XXX, etc). Once they register, they are providing you with their email address so the email is can spam compliant.

Jere answers:

I have a double opt in email list on the 4 websites and 2 blogs that I have. I don’t have one on the other websites that are optimized only for Adsense since I will not be trying to sell them anything and usually email marketing doesn’t work that well with pay per click optimization sites.

But with blogs, I think that a double opt in email list is pretty important if you have enough traffic right now to justify using one. If you have only a couple hundred visitors a month on your blog, then I would not waste my money at that point on the autoresponder program. But if you have a couple hundred unique views a day on your blog, then it may be worthwhile. You can always test it out and see if you are making up the difference for the program in the extra money you see.

Another added plus that I learned was that if you have a double opt in email list you will not have to worry about spam bots joining your email list. These bots can’t confirm the email so they never get put on the list. If you want to learn more info on email list, then I recommend you check out www.mattbacak.com. He is literally a genus at these types of lists and his informational newsletter can steer you in the direction that is best for your needs.

Jere answers:

I wasn’t aware of Feedburner email management until I read up on it:
http://support.google.com/feedburner/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=78982

It seems like a roundabout process, though it appears you can schedule daily transmissions, providing there are updates in your feed list.

More typically a marketer would use an autoresponder email management service where you could schedule a sequence of mailings in advance, most of these services require your users subscribe through their provided forms in order to maintain high deliverability and low spam complaints with the ISP postmasters. Constant Contact may be one that allows imported, Aweber is the standard used most, these services typically cost $20 a month, though Mail Chimp offers a perpetually free account for up to 2000 addresses, providing you are not marketing anything remotely shady.

Jere answers:

I would check with some of the associations, like the Writer’s Guild and see if their list is available for purchase. Many times, associations and memberships will sell their lists to companies offering services.

You may also want to find out if they print any directories w/names and addresses. It’s more time consuming but you would need to data entry/scan in the list to create your prospect list.

Jere answers:

If you are new in email marketing, you know that:

1 – People HATE spam; and sending emails to people who did not agree to receive emails from you is spamming. If you simply ask like that to provide the business emails held by other marketers here in YA, that’s spamming

2 – There’s a reason why emails are being SOLD — because it takes time and strategy to gather them. You can’t expect people to hand their list to you for free.

You are obviously very new in email marketing. I suggest you read up on the ethics of email marketing. Get a copy of magazines such as Target Marketing http://www.targetmarketingmag.com to learn about the new rudiments of email marketing and the challenges faced by email marketers.