How To Build An Email List

Anyone who runs a website should be building an e-mail list.

For all the problems with e-mail, it's still the #1 way for you to keep in contact with your subscribers, visitors or prospects.

The benefits are obvious:

1. You can use your list to inform people of new content at your site.

2. You can promote sites and products to your list.

3. You can provide information to your list, and

4. You can form a community, through your list.

If you run a hobby site, a marketing or business site, a blog, or a fan site an e-mail list is a must.

Once you've decided to build an e-mail list (as you should!) it's time for you to decide what process to use.

In the early days of the Internet e-mail lists were created manually, by adding subscribers and friends to an address book and e-mailing them through copious use of the CC or BCC function in most e-mail software.

Thankfully, times have changed!

Today lists are build through automated systems.

You have a number of options:

1. You can use a third party e-mail list provider.

There are a number of these, including such big names as Constant Contact and Lyris.

These will keep a database of subscribers on your behalf and allow you to contact them.

This means you simply provide a form on your website, or specify a special e-mail address such as subscribe@whatever.com. The list service will then manage all aspects of your list such as unsubscribe requests, bounces (where the e-mail is undeliverable due to a bad or full e-mail account) and change details requests.

Because the list is held by a third party, it means you can "broadcast" messages to your list without using your own bandwidth.

This is an important feature, because even if you have your own hosting account, many hosts use different criteria for e-mail bandwidth to website bandwidth.

Another benefit is that e-mails are usually more deliverable from third-party providers because they have agreements with spam services and webmail services to ensure e-mails are not flagged.

Another popular form of third-party list service providers are autoresponder services. These allow you to accept and manage e-mails as well as setup many different lists, and setup sequential e-mails.

This means an e-mail series, such as an course, can be created that will, for example, send out 8 different e-mails over 16 days.

The downside of these services? Cost. You usually have to pay a monthly fee - and there may be limits on the amount of subscribers you can hold and the amount of e-mails you can send.

2. Installing your own script.

The main benefit of running your own service on your own domain is that you have full control.

That, and the fact you usually only pay once for the script and licence (or even get it free).

Again, as mentioned above, you may need a special e-mail friendly hosting account.

And you'll have the inconvenience of installing and maintaining the script - unless you have a third party to do this for you.

There are a number of scripts on the market.

Autoresponse 3 is a popular autoresponder script that is very powerful and can handle almost anything you throw at it.

This benefits from the support and updates from a professional company.

There are cheaper scripts available, such as PHP Autoresponder and Profit Sponder that are usually aimed at marketers.

And then there are free e-mail and list management scripts, such as Dada Mail, Autoresponder It!, and PHPMyList - some of which are pretty powerful and may suit your needs.

Just remember, with your own e-mail list you need to ensure you have adequate hosting, can handle installation and maintenance, and can ensure your domain is not blacklisted in any way.

Unfortunately it is very easy for a user to flag your e-mail as spam - even if they are "mistaken".

Once you have your e-mail list service of choice it is time to focus on building that list.

The easiest method, and the one I least recommend, is to purchase a pre-built list.

There are a number of reasons I wouldn't recommend you follow this path unless you are sure of the lists quality.

First, the people on the list never actually subscribed to your service, and as such you can be accused of spam.

And secondly, these lists are often of a very low quality, with many dead addresses.

It is far better to build your own e-mail lists.

To do this you have to convince people to add their addresses to your list.

Whatever your mailing service, it should have the function to give you a HTML form you can use.

You should then place this on your website(s).

To get someone to subscribe, you should give them a reason.

Free gifts are the tried and tested method. By offering a report, an ebook, or some software in exchange for entering their e-mail you should get many subscribers.

It is a simple matter to provide the gift: just give the URL of the download in the first e-mail message that is sent out.

Once someone subscribes, many list services will have a "double optin" feature. This means the new subscriber has to confirm that subscription, so the first message is actually a request to do this.

This enables you to ensure e-mail addresses are correct, and that the e-mail addressee is actually the one who tried to join.

The downside is many people won't actually confirm - so it's up to you whether you want to enable that feature.

Providing gifts can help convince a potential subscriber to enter their details but then it does also mean if that's the only reason they joined, will they stay?

Unfortunately there's little you can do about that except provide quality content or give them a compelling reason.

Another way to get subscribers is by using a service model.

If you run a membership site, a forum, or some kind of social site then a new member can also be a subscriber.

And if they unsubscribe, they lose their membership.

Another popular method to gain new subscribers is to use squeeze pages.

These are pages that are little more than a e-mail opt-in form and some graphics or text about a site.

There is no way into the site, unless the visitor subscribes. In effect, the site itself is the gift.

And finally, you can gain new subscribers by using specialised exchange services.

For example, there are services where you promote the list exchange (as do thousands of others), and in return you get your list advertised in the service.

Another form of that are co-op services, where your list is advertised along with other sites after someone signs up to a list.

These usually take the form of a quick message such as: "Thank You For Joining. Please Consider xxx".

Having a form on your website and a compelling reason to join is of course only half the battle.

You'll then need to get visitors to this page!

Once you've built your list, it's time to use it.

While this is outside the scope of this list-building article it's worth learning about Copywriting, and how to write with the intention to sell.

I recommend Recipe For Riches by Jo Han Mok as an excellent starting point.