List Building – Post OptIn/White List

Post opt in is a process in which you have an existing email list and you import it into your email marketing campaign. In other words, these visitors did not visit your site and sign up the “usual” way. This is a common practice among webmasters who have changed websites or opened a new one and would like to begin marketing to his/her existing visitors.

White listing, in relation to email lists, is a business practice when a business has obtained email addresses of interested users from all over the Internet–usually thousands of varying websites with numerous topics. They collect all of these emails and separate them into applicable categories and lists and then sell them to other websites to use in their marketing plans.

Post opt in

Some people are skeptical of performing such a task because it’s very likely that you’re going to end up putting people on your mailing list that may not want to be there. Companies like Aweber allow the importing of email lists, but its main purpose is to provide people a means of adding large amounts of email addresses with relative ease when moving service providers.

However, it is possible to take a duplicated list that you may own and import it into another one. This is where things become questionable. For example, if you run two websites with one about cars and the other about motorcycles, you may want to integrate your two mailing lists so you can promote both of your websites at the same time. The problem is that you don’t know for sure that the visitors interested in your car content will also be interested in your motorcycle content and vice versa.

White lists

There’s a lot of debate about email whitelists. On a personal level, you may have created your own whitelist which is basically a listing of all your good emails after pruning out dead accounts or known spammers. From a business standpoint, you may be considering purchasing a white list.

Marketing firms that have harvested thousands of emails based on various topics are in the business of selling these lists to business and website owners like yourself so you can import them into your email marketing campaigns. The debate about the practice comes from the question of how these firms put these email lists together.

Some companies can be spammers themselves who have done nothing but run automated bot searches of the Internet looking for usable email addresses. Others may have legitimately obtained the email addresses, but did not disclose the fact that the addresses may have be sold to another company somewhere down the line.

With that said, you want to be careful whenever you think about adding email addresses to your email list ‘after the fact’ because you never know how those people will receive you and the worst thing that can come of this is getting marked as a spammer.

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List Building – Opt In Capture

Oh, the infamous opt in! This is the gateway to your profitable mailing list. Don’t abuse it or underestimate it; otherwise you might be in for a rude awakening. If done right, you’ll get a nice group of loyal and dedicated readers of your material and offerings. If done wrong, you can say goodbye to all the extra income you were hoping for.

The key to the opt in form is to make it accessible, but not to make it obnoxious. Feel free to promote it wherever you get the chance, but don’t force it in your visitors’ faces. You may have seen websites that throw out popup or popunder windows and you already know how annoying these are.

Proper opt in techniques

  • Static page – Create a static page that talks about your newsletter or marketing materials and clearly outline what it is someone will be getting if they sign up at your site. Link to this page from your home page as well as anywhere else you talk about your newsletter.
  • WordPress widget – There are many plugins and themes that offer you the option of placing custom HTML code in your sidebar, header or footer. Create an instant webform that asks for their name and email address so they only have to click submit to sign up.
  • Email signature – Start promoting your newsletter to everyone you email! This the best anti-spam way of letting people know what you have going on. I don’t know about you, but I always look at people’s signatures.

No matter how you promote your opt in form, the most important thing to remember is that you don’t want to spam it, force it or oversell it, which brings me to my next list!

Improper opt in techniques

  • Popup windows – Back in the old days, a popup window was used as a useful way to show someone information without having to change pages or open a whole new browser window. Today, they are the most annoying form of advertising and your opt in form should never appear on one. Besides the high probability of being blocked anyway, you’re likely to lose people just because your site looks tacky.
  • Popunder windows – A popunder window carries the same annoyances as its popup counterpart, but this one is designed to show up behind the window you have open. This way, when you’re done surfing and you start closing your browser windows, this mysterious window will be left open. While it does have some potential for catching people off-guard, it too can make your site look tacky.
  • Forced – Forcing someone to signup to your list just makes you look desperate. One way this can be done is when someone emails you to ask a question and you immediately add them to your mailing list just because you now have their email address. Remember that just because they sent you a message does not mean they want more emails from you.
  • Spam – It should go without saying, but obviously you don’t want to spam your visitors to get your newsletter. Not only does this look bad, but it’s illegal and your visitors are likely to get the idea that all of your future communications will be spam-like.

Building a list is not easy and it takes a lot of work to get it right. I’m still amazed at the amount of people that visit my site each day compared to the amount that sign up for my newsletter! However, having patience and doing it right will create a better experience for you and your visitors.

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List Building – Bounce Handling

If you send an email to someone based on an email address they gave you some time ago, but this time you receive a bounce-back message, it’s usually because that person has changed their email address or their inbox is full. When you’re running a business and a successful mailing list, you don’t want to have bounced emails.

Some mail servers are configured to delete all bounced mail automatically, but you don’t want to do that. In fact, you want to know about every bounced email your system gets because this gives you an opportunity to rectify the situation. In most cases, there’s nothing much you can do. If someone changed their email address and didn’t provide you with the new one, all you can do is prune your list accordingly.

However, this is exactly what you want to do. You don’t want to maintain a working email list with hundreds of dead emails in there because all you end up doing is wasting valuable system resources.

Bounce handling

If you’re using a proper email provider, bounce handling will usually be handled automatically, but if it’s not, it’s important to check your email lists for email address that are no longer valid or accepting your email. If you don’t, you can be marked as a spammer and this is not good.

Being labeled a spammer will not only tarnish your professional and/or personal image, but you can affect your webhost, ISP and email service provider!

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