A safelist is a group of people who have agreed to send and receive email messages
from one another. The fact that everyone agree to receive these emails makes it
safe to send them. All safelists today are opt-in meaning people choose to receive
your messages.
This means they can also opt-out and choose not to receive your messages at anytime
The main benefit of opt-in safelists means you can get your message out to thousands
of people everyday without being accused of spamming.
In the early days of email marketing safelists were abused which created a black
eye for safelists as a form of marketing. Safelists have overcome the weakness of
the earlier system. Today safelists are generally operated from a web site. If you
wish to send your message to other members of the safelist you will have to go to
the web site and post your message there. This ensures that someone personally sends
the message. The frequency of sending message is regulated so that members do not
overload other members.
As a members of the safelist you can be reasonably certain that your message will
be delivered where intended. You do not have to worry about spam complaints. Your
messages are delivered without "send to" address - the recipient of your message
will not be able to send instant reply to you by hitting reply button.
You will get your messages from the safelist and not directly from other members.
Since you are interested in getting your message delivered to other members you
will ensure that your in-box is not full and you receive the messages sent to you.
But how many of them you will read is another matter.
You may receive hundreds of messages every day. This will depend upon the number
safelists you have joined, their policy and the number of members they have. It
is unlikely that you will read or even open all the messages.
Safelist marketing is really a game of numbers. You may not be able to read all
your messages, but you will possibly see some of them. Likewise you can expect other
members to read just a few of the messages they receive. The more the number of
recipients you have, the more you are likely to reach the persons interested in
your offer.
Many people have reported substantial success with safelist marketing. If you seriously
wish to benefit from this source, you have to be consistent. You can join several
safelists and send messages every day in rotation to these safelists. It is important
to keep up this schedule, send message to several hundred or thousand recipients
a day, and let the number work out its magic.
There are free as well as paid safelist services. The paid services will give you
some advantage over a free service, such as higher frequency of posting, composing
your message in HTML etc. You can join safelists as a free member, analyse the results
you are getting from each safelist and then decide to upgrade in the safelists which
are giving better results.
The thing about safelists is they have been around for a long time and appear to
actually be thriving. Why is that? Could it be that if done properly safelists actually
work. If you decide to use safelists as a e-mail marketing method work it hard for
awhile and make up your own mind if it is working for you. Be consistent for a period
of time and watch your traffic numbers.
