Your own mailing list

One of the most powerful ways to market online is by having a mailing list, a list of email addresses that you can repeatedly mail your offer or information to.

There are three reasons this works. First, it often takes 5-7 impressions until somebody responds to an ad. Second, when someone hears from you often (especially if you're giving them valuable information), it builds trust -- they come to know you. And finally, when you put those first two reasons together with the fact that every 90 days, people's life situations change, by repeatedly mailing to your list, you have a high likelihood of having those people join you.

How to build a list
What to mail them
How often to mail
How to mail
Cleaning the list

How to build a list

My guidelines are these: If somebody has contacted you for information or responded to your ad, or sent you an offer, you can add them to your list.

If you have your own website, give your viewers a way to contact you for anything: a free newsletter, announcements about updates to your site, a special report (you can use one of the 6-Figure reports), et cetera.

If you're using an autoresponder when you advertise, the people who respond to your ad should be put on your list.

If you have an FFA page, you should be able to get a list of everyone who posted on your page (see Your Own FFA for more info).

I make a simple text file (using Windows Notepad) with each name on a separate line. As I get new names, I simply add them to the end of the list.

What to mail them

There are a couple of different schools of thought about this.

One school says: Mail valuable information so they learn to trust you and like you. And include your ad, somewhat offhandedly in the information.

Another school says: Just mail your ad. And mail the same ad, over and over.

A third school says: Mail your ad, but mail a different ad each time.

I can't tell you which is best, frankly. But when you can mail an ad that says "FREE Internet Income Course," it's almost like mailing information, even though it's really an ad.

Do whichever you feel right about and track the results.

How often to mail

Again, there's no rule here. I lean toward every 2-3 weeks, tops.

I have also experimented with mailing on Friday (since lots of people check their email on the weekend), Monday and Wednesday... I can't say I have better results on any day.

But again, track your results and see what happens.

How to mail

There are a LOT of ways to do this. Let me share the one I use.

First I open my list in a program called Inbox Organizer and have it remove duplicate addresses and bad addresses. Then I save the file.

Next, I use a program called WorldMerge to do the actual mailing.

I open my list in WorldMerge. I compose an email (if I'm using the same one over and over, it's already loaded), and I "broadcast send" to the list. This is the fastest way to send out a lot of email.

Both WorldMerge and Inbox Organizer come from the same company. Click here to get copies.

Cleaning the list

The last thing you want to do is mail to people who don't want to get your email or to people who might hassle you. Here's what I do to minimize the chances of that happening:

Remove Instructions - First, I include clear remove instructions in my outgoing email:

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
This is not SPAM.....You, or someone using your email
address submitted to my FFA page and, as stated on the
page, agreed to receive this email. BUT, if you would
rather not receive e-mail from me in the future send an
email to: mailto:myname@modomain.com?Subject=Remove
and you will be removed immediately!
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Exclude List - WorldMerge has a feature called the Exclude List. Anything in the outgoing list that matches all or part of anything in the Exclude list, doesn't get mailed. Let me explain:

If I put the word "test" on the exclude list, any email address in the outgoing list that contains the word "test" will not get mailed. So tester@domain.com or test@mydomain.com, or joe@testing.com will not get mailed.

If I put a complete email address in the exclude list, and that email address is in the outgoing list, it won't get mailed.

Here's what I put in my exclude list:

Email addresses from people who asked to be removed
Email addresses that were returned as undeliverable
The words "abuse," "spam," "junk" and various curse words
The words "smartbot," "myreply," "aweber" and "getresponse" -- these are autoresponder domains... so if I mail to them, I'll just get autoresponses sent back to me.
The words "hostmaster," "postmaster," and "webmaster" -- I know that sometimes these are valid addresses, but it's also likely that these people DO NOT want to hear from me. And people with those addresses are more likely to be able to complain and cots me my ISP
The words ".gov," ".mil" -- I'm not mailing to government and military addresses

So, before each mailing, I update my Exclude List, then mail again.