Mailing Lists

Sooner or later you will want to send out newsletters to your customers, and this is generally done by the way of online mailing list providers. It’s best to use one of these providers, rather than your own personal email account. This is due to the fact that if you send out mass emails (emails to many recipients at once) via your ISP, then your email address can get blacklisted by other ISP’s for sending spam. And if that happens, none of your customers are going to get their emails/newsletters, and then you will have expended a lot of time and energy for nothing–including the time it takes you to get un-blacklisted.

The following is a list of some popular mailing list providers.  Some are free, some are free up to “X” number of emails sent per month, and some have fees regardless. Shop around to find the one that will best suit your needs and budget.

And don’t forget that if you have a blog and burn its feed, you can also use your blog as your newsletter, since people can subscribe to it via email just like any other newsletter. Read our blog post for more information:

Use Your Blog as Your Newsletter

MailChimp

iContact

ConstantContact

Sparklit

YMLP

MyNewsletter

Once you’ve gotten your mailing list provider, be sure to use the following guidelines for sending newsletters and other correspondance via email.

  • Don’t subscribe anyone to your mailing list/newsletter without their express permission to do so. FYI: it’s illegal, and rude to boot.
  • Don’t inundate your customers with too many emails; one or two per month should be the maximum.
  • Don’t include too many links within the body of your email. Spam filters being what they are nowadays, it’s common for emails with too many links inside of them to get tagged as spam. And those tend to end up in spam folders or deleted all together.
  • Do include your full contact information (Name and Full Physical Address), along with information on how to Unsubscribe from your newsletter in every single email. This is required by law, according to 2003’s CAN-SPAM Act.

Follow the link above to information provided by the FTC on the CAN-SPAM Act. And for a little more information, follow the link below.

What Is the CAN-SPAM Act?