Mailing List Management

Creating a mailing list helps you to get people to come to your web site more than once by reminding them that you exist through regular emails. You can give them the latest news about what's changed and what's been updated since their last visit.

One of the best ways to do this is to collect email addresses and use them to create a mailing list. But how do you collect these email addresses and how do you send out emails to so many people all at once?


Collecting the Email Addresses

Getting people to give you their email address is easier than you might think. People on the web are used to giving their email addresses in exchange for a report or guide etc. In fact, they usually have an email address specially for this purpose.

An easy way of collecting email addresses is to simply include an opt in box at the top of each web page. This gives your visitors the option to sign up to your newsletter entirely voluntarily. This means you will get a smaller list but it will only have the most enthusiastic people on it.


What to Write in Your Mailing List Emails

If you want people to read the emails you send to them then they can't just be the latest dull news about your technical website features that no-one even cares about. You need to provide information and updates that are useful and relevant to the person who's going to be opening that email.

If you just write in corporate speak and don't say anything that's going to be useful to real people then your email is going to be going straight into their junk mail.

You should take some time over your emails. Make them something that their recipients are going to want to keep and refer to more than once – often-updated, time-sensitive information is best, if you have access to it.

Apart from that, make sure to include links to the latest things on your website, as well as a few older things that are still popular. If you sell anything, you should work in a link, but don't be too obvious about it.

A good way of doing things is to include a tip or two with potential uses for a certain product (making them look like they are intended for people who already own the product), sparking the reader's curiosity enough to click through and consider buying it.

The Technical Side

Once you've got a mailing list and you've written the first email you want to send to it, the next step is to set up the technical side of things. Surprisingly enough, you can just use a normal email program like Outlook, if you paste all the email addresses into it.

If you do this, though, you need to make sure that you use the Bcc (blind carbon copy) field for the addresses, to avoid sending out a copy of the mailing list to everyone on it!

Alternatively, there are specialist programs you can get that are devoted to bulk mail. You should investigate email management programs like Eudora or autoresponder programs such as Aweber.

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