Episode 17
In this week’s show I discuss mailing lists (well strictly speaking e-mail lists) using services such as Mailchimp and AWeber.
As I was struggling to get my own e-mail giveaway working (due to some kind of javascript issue the sign-up form didn’t work) I thought that I had never actually discussed e-mail lists in any detail on my podcast.
In its most basic form it is a list of e-mail addresses that you can send an e-mail to all at once. Services like Mailchimp also let you ask for a name which can be used to customise each e-mail.
So an e-mail like
Dear Sir/Madam,
Please buy our stuff. Please.
Yours Megacorp.
can be changed so that it is
Dear Tim,
Please buy our stuff. Please.
Yours Megacorp.
Based on whatever name you gave in the First Name section when you signed up. Depending on the level of service you pay for, you can also do things like send out a sequence of e-mails after someone subscribes (Autoresponders), or to particular groups of your subscribers.
I warn against some cheaper services that just provide a way to blast out e-mails. These more established providers have made efforts to restrict the Spam sent out from their servers. If you go with a cheap-and-cheerful service then chances are you will share a server with someone sending spam and the site will get black-listed and your e-mails won’t get sent to people on big e-mail providers like Gmail or Outlook.
I also discuss “double-opt-in” e-mail lists (this is what I use). This is where when an e-mail address is given in a form, that e-mail address gets sent an e-mail which the customer needs to click on to get added to the list. The reason for doing this is to stop people being signed up by other people who know their e-mail address for things they don’t want. In Canada this is going to become mandatory for all lists signing up Canadian citizens by 2017. In my mind it is worth starting to do this now, even if it does affect sign-up rates.
Finally I discuss reasons why you want an e-mail list in the first place – the prime reason being that you can build up a group of people who may buy books you produce as soon as you tell them. This means that you can achieve a spike in sales needed to get you into an Amazon chart. They also provide a great source of potential reviewers.