Many people seem to think that they can get into email marketing and make money. Of course the people who sell email lists to unsuspecting Internet users out to make a quick buck do make a lot of money off email marketing scams. Legitimate email marketing however, is a means to an end, not the end itself.
First, you must have some reason to send email to people. Buying a list of names and emailing them will not only get you blacklisted, it will make you worse off than you were before. Your email reputation will be tarnished. Once you are on the blacklist's radar, it is harder to stay off the lists. The best way to get people to give you their email address so that you can continue to email them is to give them something valuable.
The value might be information, it might be a free download, it might be advice on how to email people. Whatever it is, they must actively want to receive this information from you. Make it easy for them to sign up. You can start blog like this one and give them RSS feeds. RSS makes it nice and easy to get content off the web, but for selling, nothing beats email.
Find out how to make a simple subscribe form and point it to a database that you manage. Most web hosting companies let you configure any number of databases like MySQL or PHP. Collecting email address via a webform is pretty easy. You can collect all sorts of information on your subscribers, but it is best to make the form short and sweet so subscribers don't feel like they are getting the third degree.
Most importantly, confirm the subscription, this protects you from signing up bogus emails, and the subscriber from having someone else who is pretending to be them from signing up. Hopefully, you will take things slowly and actually think about what you have to offer before you try marketing it to people.
Copyright 2008, Pathfinder Email Consulting
rohtang snow point manali
2 years ago
Posts
