This week we will be discussing how to manage your email
lists. It can be a big job but we’ll discuss how you can
get a handle on it with minimal fuss.
As you build up your subscriber list, you’re going to find
yourself with a problem. Whichever mail program you’re
using, whether it’s Outlook or Eudora or something else,
it’s just not going to be set up to deal with the kind of
mass mailing involved with newsletters.
If you have more than 50 people on your list—
and that will
probably take you less than a week—you’ll need to use a
listserv. Don’t even try to do this by yourself!
My hosting company organize this for me. They have a mail
server that handles all the mail. I just send them the
newsletter and they send it out. Alternatively, you can use
a professional listserv such as Microsoft’s List Builder or
Sparklist.
There are free list servers available too. While you can use
these if you’re on a really tight budget, I don’t recommend
it. First, they stuff their own adverts onto your
newsletter. That doesn’t just reduce the effectiveness of
your brand, it draws attention away from your own
ads—provided you can persuade people to advertise on a
newsletter like this. But their privacy policies have also
come under a lot of criticism lately and even some of the
biggest companies have been found to have used their
clients’ lists to market their own goods.
If you’re going to do a newsletter—and you should—it’s worth
investing in a professional service. That is, after all,
what you’re offering.
In conclusion, newsletters then are one of the most
effective ways to keep customers, and keep your revenue
flowing in. They remind people you’re still out there,
provide news about deals and bargains, and give customers
the confidence to buy. You can put them together in a snap,
or even pay someone a pretty small fee to do it for you. If
you sell advertising space on your newsletter, you’ll even
find each issue will pay for itself.
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