Managing Your Email Lists

Tools such as an Excel spreadsheet or your email program's address book are ideal for keeping track of a small number of contacts, but they're poor solutions for managing an extensive number of contacts.

Your regular email service is fine for everyday mailing needs, but will likely crumble under the pressure of sending thousands of messages. What's more, many Internet service providers consider large quantities of incoming or outgoing email to be spam, and will act accordingly--usually by blocking your messages and blacklisting your mail server. Ouch!

Instead, I'd recommend choosing a reputable email distribution service--one that's been running email campaigns for years, has solid management tools, and servers with the horsepower and bandwidth to deal with thousands of emails. The best ones will provide help with email templates, generate delivery and readership reports, and even test the content of your messages to see if they're likely to be picked up by spam filters.

When you're shopping around for a solution for list management, look for the following features.

• Easy integration with your site: It should be easy to add a form to your site that's directly linked to your list management tool. Some solutions even allow you to connect with your customer database and match email subscribers with their purchase histories.
• Profiles and segmentation: It's handy to have your visitors' email addresses, but what about their age, gender, or geographic location? An efficient list management solution will let you collect this information and use it to help segment your subscribers into groups.
• Import and export lists of subscribers: It should be easy for you to add or extract email addresses en masse, ideally by importing or exporting a list from a common format such as a Comma Separated Values (CSV) spreadsheet.
• Easy unsubscribe options: You'll damage your reputation and may even be in breach of the law if your users are unable to unsubscribe in a timely fashion. A good list management system will provide this facility, and a great one will let you know when it happens.

For more information on an email marketing solution for all your needs go to: Email Marketing Power