Web Mailing List

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If you want to clinch a sale with your website visitor you need to follow up and remind him of your product, ideally with a sequence of automated messages.

Before hiring an expensive autoresponder service check out the offer in The Ultimate SuperTip for an autoresponder tool and an ebook explaining the art of writing follow up campaigns.

Web Mailing List

Why have a web mailing list?

An opt-in web mailing list is another tool to promote your website. Opt-in means that your subscribers have chosen to be on your mailing list.

If you have a web mailing list you can send out a newsletter, product announcement, price change information, or just a keep-in-touch mailing - to people you know are interested in your site. It helps them to keep your website in mind.

Of course you will have links to your website in each email to make it easy for them to visit you again.

Advantages of running a web mailing list

Your web mailing list helps you to keep in touch, and build your relationship with old and current customers as well as potential customers.
Because you keep in touch with them, subscribers will visit your website more often.
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Emails to your mailing list subscribers give you a quick indication of how much interest there might be in a new product or service. Email feedback is generally fast (within a week).
Emails are very cost-effective compared to any other mailing and also compared to most kinds of advertising.
Emails to subscribers, who have opted in to your web mailing list, are a highly targeted form of marketing. Most subscribers are there because they want to know what your business can offer them, so they are very receptive to your news, products, offers and information.
As a web mailing list grows it becomes a valuable asset in its own right, able to generate revenue from product sales. Another potential revenue source is from advertisements, placed in your newsletter by external advertisers, who wish to reach the same kinds of people.

Disadvantages of running a web mailing list

Maintaining a web mailing list can take a lot of time, depending on how much help you get from your mailing list maintenance software.
A web mailing list has a potential for irritating your valuable customers and prospects if it is handled carelessly.
If you write a regular newsletter (for example, weekly) you will have to find or produce interesting content for each issue.
Creating your own opt-in mailing list using desktop or remote hosted software requires a high level of technical expertise.

How a web mailing list works

You generally have a page on your website dedicated to collecting names, email addresses and whatever further personal information you require. Other pages on your site will link to this subscription page.

Visitors to your website subscribe, and are added to the mailing list (sometimes an email letter is first sent to the subscriber to enable him to confirm).

The mailing list itself (a database of subscriber details) may reside on your local computer or it may be hosted on a server.

You create emails from time to time, and send them to your subscribers.

You have to handle changed email addresses, unusable email addresses (your email "bounced"), and list members wanting to unsubscribe.

The whole job can be sub-contracted to an email marketing service. They charge a monthly fee, based on the size of your mailng list. This way you can avoid most of the technicalities. The service company also hosts your subscriber database.

Mailing list management software

If you wish to run your own mailing list you still have to decide what software program to use, whether it should be remote hosted or local (PC-based) and how much you want to pay for it. Free offerings are also available.

Remote hosting allows your website server to despatch all the emails.

When a new subscriber signs on from your web page, the mailing list management software must be informed. The software needs to know about changes to subscription options too (e.g. opting out of the mailing list). In each case the mailing list database will need to be updated.

These might be fully automatic processes, or they may require manual intervention, depending on the software and how it is set up. For large mailing lists, a high degree of automation is desirable.

The mailing list management software (often referred to as an autoresponder) also allows a list manager to access the mailing list database for pruning, manual updating, and perhaps downloading of the database.

Sending out email letters

The mailing list management software may handle the sending of your email letters, or in some cases a separate software product (bulk email sender, or mail server) may do this.

When you want to send out an email letter, you first create the email (some software products offer templates and other aids to email composition), then instruct the email sender program to send it to your mailing list members.

The sending process is controlled by the email sender program. If an email "bounces", the mailing list manager program must be alerted and may automatically remove the member from the mailing list.

Choosing mailing list software

Because of the variety of programs, you will want to choose carefully. Make sure the software has all the features you require, and that you understand where the software will be installed (local PC or remote-hosted) and where your mailing list will be held.

Some of the best mailing list manager programs are purchased or rented, but there are some good free offerings too. Sometimes the free software requires you to include an advertisement with each email.

Your website hosting service may offer mailing list management software (remote hosted), and this might be a cost-effective option.

Remote-hosted software may provide a closer integration of the required functions with your website and mailing list database, than local PC software.

Tips for effective website mailing list management

You can offer a free download of an article or e-book to encourage people to subscribe, but don't go overboard. You want subscribers who really want to be on your mailing list.
Consider using a double opt-in subscriber system (where subscribers first opt in, on your web site, then respond to an email to confirm their intention.)
Don't allow your web mailing list to be used for any unauthorized purpose.
Allow subscribers to unsubscribe, quickly and easily.
Write (or obtain) great content so subscribers will want to remain on your web mailing list. But include "teasers" to whet their appetite, and invite them to visit your website for more information.
Don't email your list members so often that you irritate them.
Limit the amount of advertising in your emails.

This brings us to the end of this tutorial on web mailing lists, and of the series of tutorials on building website traffic .

Next we turn our attention to various ways you can make money from your winning web site.

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Links / Resources

Web mailing list hosting services:

Top Ten Reviews

Emailbrain

PC-Based mailing list management software:

Handymailer

GroupMail

Free bulk email send software:

Sendmail

Sendblaster

Remote Hosted mailing list management software

ApplyLeads Email List Manager

Mail Machine Pro

Free remote-hosted mailing list management software:

Dada Mail

Phplist

More articles on how to write email letters:

How to write effective mailing list email

A beginner's guide to effective email

More articles on web mailing list management:

Using mailing lists to communicate with customers

Marketing via E-mail newsletters and mailing lists

Mailing lists for websites

emailbrain articles

Wikipedia: Electronic mailing List

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Create and build a website mailing list to bring repeat visitors to your site