I have been online now for over 8 ½ years. I have seen a great many things change
with regards to email but one thing remains the same: Email is the foundation for
global communication and it remains virtually free.
If you are not using email to do business online that your approach to doing
online business is all wrong.
It is absolutely essential that you do business online via email and that you
do it in a legal, non-spam manner.
The best way to accomplish this task is to establish your very own, in-house,
email list.
So how do you establish your very own email list?
Perhaps the best tried and true manner is by starting your own publication thus
establishing a legal basis to email your subscribers list with a daily, weekly or
monthly newsletter or ezine.
I long ago compiled a list of resources to help anyone interested in starting
their own publication and you may receive it, free of charge, via our auto-responder:
mailto:report@emailexchange.org
The nature or content of your publication will greatly determine how often you
can send it out to your list and how successful it will be with your subscribers.
Obviously, if your emails are just a collection of ads and you do not deliver
anything of substance or worth to your readers, you will not long have a list to
which you can email because they will all quickly un-subscribe.
Another important, and ongoing, aspect of your email list is how to get people
to subscribe, thus giving you the permission you need to send emails to them legally.
You can start with whatever list of emails you already have on file and build
from there.
Just email those people with which you have had contact in the past, let them
know you are starting a new publication and that you would like to invite them to
subscribe.
Next, add a subscribe address in your signature file so that each and every email
you send out has it included.
If you have a web site, you will find it is one of the best ways of getting people
to give you their email address.
It helps if you give people a reason to register, such as a free email course,
free e-book, etc.
Also, those placing the email registration in the visible section of the web
site when it first loads, find the greatest amount of success in getting people
to register.
And, historically, the center or the right side of the web page is the best spot
to place your request for subscribers.
For those of you that can figure out the coding involved, pop-up boxes requesting
a name and email are extremely successful for gathering new subscribers.
People do HATE pop-up ads but it is clear that they do not mind pop-ups when
entering in their name and email address.
In a method I helped to establish years ago, ad swaps with other publications
for the express purpose of increasing your subscribers is still an excellent way
to add to your list.
The great thing I discovered about using this method is that you do not even
need to restrict it to like-minded content for it to be a success.
These are just a few of the methods you can employ to establish and build your
own email list.
The important thing to do is to actually start your list and continually invest
some time and building it even bigger.
The larger your list the more successful your mailings.
