Basic Rules To Using A Mailing List – FIVE Never To Be FLOUTED Rules
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by Marsha Maung
Nov 25th, 2008
Mailing lists or newsletters is an extremely useful method of online promotion…not to mention that they’re free, of course. This form of marketing was aggressively used by viral marketers back in those days when I first started out online businesses. And I thought it was an amazing way to market myself to a group of potentially interested people who MIGHT think of my content, products or services useful.
As with anything free and online, there are unwritten rules. If you’re new to online marketing, it’s easy, WAY EASY, for you to unwittingly flout these unwritten rules and get yourself banned.
One good example would be this. I am in the midst of moving home and frankly speaking, I don’t have a lot of spare time to speak of as it is. I check my emails very quickly, answer the important ones VERY quickly but politely, and then proceed with my work. There are mountains of other stuff to do, you see, and it irks me to come home to a mailbox full of email messages from a Yahoo Groups! moderator belonging to a group that I’ve not only never heard of, but selling products I am absolutely and totally not interested in.
There’s nothing wrong with the products they were selling, they’re just…NOT FOR ME.
Now, this moderator did not only send me one email asking me if I was interested in joining their mailing list, the owner of this mailing list sent me a total of 13 messages, not counting other ‘follow-up’ messages that sent me bouncing from wall to wall. I did not hesitate to click on the ‘report’ button to Yahoo Groups and also made sure I marked every single one of the emails as ‘spam’.
So, if this is not the way to market your mailing list, what are the rules and what is the right way, you ask?
Mailing List marketing rule No.1 – Ask and then give people the option of saying NO, THANK YOU!
If per chance someone HONESTLY thought that I would be interested in their products/services, it would be nice of them to add me to their mailing list without my permission. The very least they could do is to allow me to opt out. In the above instance, there was no such option.
Mailing List marketing rule No. 2 – Don’t send 13 messages in one single day, for heaven’s sake
The mailing list ‘send’ button should be used SPARINGLY. Organize your mailing list in such a way that messages are sent out once a week or twice a week. In fact, I use my mailing list so sparingly that I send out messages only twice a month! The reason? I don’t like people spamming my email inbox and I don’t like doing it to others. Period.
Mailing list marketing rule No. 3 – If you’re hiring people to do this for you, hire the right people
With the state of the current economy of the world, it’s no wonder that people are getting a little desperate and are more willing to try out alternative methods of marketing…which includes using the internet. If you’re hiring people to do your online marketing for you and they have included ‘mailing list’ marketing, please, please, PLEASE find out more about how these people are going to go about it before you hire them. At the end of the day, if they do things wrong, you are the one who is going to be burnt, not them. It will BE YOUR name, YOUR company, YOUR products, YOUR credibility that will be on the line. Not theirs.
Mailing list marketing rule No. 4 – Try not to attach documents because it could be dangerous for the receivers
My email address, especially those that I use for work, is something that I guard with my life. I am quite sure many of you are quite protective of yours as well. If you want to highlight a new product via a downloadable brochure or ebook, provide a link instead of attaching the whole document along with the newsletter! If we’re interested, we’ll click on and find out more information about it and download it ourselves, thank you very much.
Mailing list marketing rule No. 5 – Aggressive is good but try to be a little subtler, please
People who subscribe to mailing lists like it short and sweet. While this means that you can be aggressive in a short and sweet way, it doesn’t mean that you can go for the hard sell all the way, every single day of the week, blinding firing off round and round, not caring if you’re hitting the right people or innocent bystanders. People take these things (online marketers like me, especially) quite personally and we will not hesitate to get your website or group banned and we’ll make sure it happens.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marsha Maung is a Malaysian-based freelance web copywriter with two kids. She spends her time ferrying her kids around, watering her plants, writing web content, SEO stuff, ghostwriting books and also indulges in the occasional Facebook-ing. Visit her blog for more dirty details on the life and times of a mother, writer, designer, housekeeper, coffee-maker, poop-wiper, chef...and just about everything else under the sun.
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Listen up! I am a very nice person, if you think this article is neat and you'd like to publish it in your website, all's cool with me but with one condition. Only one and from the bottom of my heart, I wish that you would, in all sincerity, allow me my one single wish....to place the following codes into the your website at the END OF THE ARTICLE. It's not going to disrupt much, so please do it?
Either paste the above ABOUT THE AUTHOR stuff into your website (with links included) or copy the following codes into your website. That's it! Thank you! *muax*
<b>Marsha Maung</b> is a Malaysian-based <a href="http://www.marshamaung.com" target="_blank">freelance writer</a> with two kids. She spends her time ferrying her kids around, watering her plants, writing web content, SEO stuff, ghostwriting books and also indulges in the occasional Facebook-ing. Visit her <a href="http://www.marshamaung.blogspot.com" target="_blank">blog</a> for more dirty details on the life and times of a mother, writer, designer, housekeeper, coffee-maker, poop-wiper, chef...and just about everything else under the sun.
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