Don't send email to anyone who hasn't requested it. Period. If you want to do email marketing, create a FREE downloadable ebook or other offering and get people to SIGN up and agree to receive your emails. Then, send VALUABLE emails with more content, help, tips, information that they will find valuable. DO NOT SEND THEM "BUY MY STUFF" emails. Think of selling anything via email as you would approach someone at a great party. Do you walk up to a new person, introduce yourself and say, "I'm Ted, and I sell insurance. Can I talk to you about your insurance needs?" Of course not. The person will get pissed, tell you off, walk off, complain to the host and you won't be invited to future parties. Instead, you talk to the person, get to know them, find out what their needs are, and once you know how you can help them specifically, you say, "You know, I hear you saying you're worried about the upcoming costs of your son's car insurance rates. My company has a new program we're rolling out that could help you keep those costs down. Let me know if you'd like to hear more."
Email marketing is a RELATIONSHIP with people who want to hear from you, not people you think you can get money out of.
I also use Mailchimp. I have used it for a long time and now this year I decided to sign up for the Pay section which is only $9.99 a month and gives you a lot of different templates and help. I also have a list I keep on my computer that is broken down in two sections. The top is for free announcements and the bottoms is for the paid ads. Each time I have a new book out, I go down the list and slowly each day try to get something out on it, especially on the free ones, such as: Linkedin, my own FaceBook, Tweet, Post to Goodreads, and on any of the areas that I am a member of. I also offer a free book to anyone that would like to be on my newsletter if they send me an email address.
My best suggestion is to create a double-opt-in mailing list. I've used MailChimp in the past for this. It's free up to a certain number of subscribers, but I'm not sure what that cap is. The benefit to double-opt-in is that your provider can verify that the subscriber did, in fact, pro-actively join your list, which negates spam complaints. I'm sure others can suggest additional providers and offer more suggestions.
Yes I have mailchimp. I need to learn it better. I assume the only way to get a list is to advertise on FB etc. I do some things well. Marketing isn't one. :)
Many of the authors I work with use giveaways to generate mailing list sign-ups. Of course, people can always unsubscribe after the contest ends, but most of the authors are happy with the number who stayed.
I use Mailchimp too. I only add people who sign up at book conventions or newsletter promotions or free book promotions I run. I haven't had any trouble with spam.
Gathering and managing email lists for marketing purposes can be a tricky thing. People don't like being repeatedly sold to. Email marketing is most effective via e-commerce ... i.e. someone comes to your online store and signs in - you send them a welcome email, followed by some helpful information, followed by a discount code, followed by free gift, followed by... etc. it is a way of engaging your customers. Email marketing is also useful for checkout drops - people have loaded an item into the cart but did not complete the order. If you are planning to operate an enewsletter or ebulletin or ezine, your email list can be very useful... but you must have the time to provide a lot of quality, interesting, useful and non-selling content in those publications. Using the list to spam people about every little media appearance is not helpful to anyone. However if you are using email addresses for networking... well now you are getting somewhere.
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Don't send email to anyone who hasn't requested it. Period. If you want to do email marketing, create a FREE downloadable ebook or other offering and get people to SIGN up and agree to receive your emails. Then, send VALUABLE emails with more content, help, tips, information that they will find valuable. DO NOT SEND THEM "BUY MY STUFF" emails. Think of selling anything via email as you would approach someone at a great party. Do you walk up to a new person, introduce yourself and say, "I'm Ted, and I sell insurance. Can I talk to you about your insurance needs?" Of course not. The person will get pissed, tell you off, walk off, complain to the host and you won't be invited to future parties. Instead, you talk to the person, get to know them, find out what their needs are, and once you know how you can help them specifically, you say, "You know, I hear you saying you're worried about the upcoming costs of your son's car insurance rates. My company has a new program we're rolling out that could help you keep those costs down. Let me know if you'd like to hear more."
Email marketing is a RELATIONSHIP with people who want to hear from you, not people you think you can get money out of.
I also use Mailchimp. I have used it for a long time and now this year I decided to sign up for the Pay section which is only $9.99 a month and gives you a lot of different templates and help. I also have a list I keep on my computer that is broken down in two sections. The top is for free announcements and the bottoms is for the paid ads. Each time I have a new book out, I go down the list and slowly each day try to get something out on it, especially on the free ones, such as: Linkedin, my own FaceBook, Tweet, Post to Goodreads, and on any of the areas that I am a member of. I also offer a free book to anyone that would like to be on my newsletter if they send me an email address.
My best suggestion is to create a double-opt-in mailing list. I've used MailChimp in the past for this. It's free up to a certain number of subscribers, but I'm not sure what that cap is. The benefit to double-opt-in is that your provider can verify that the subscriber did, in fact, pro-actively join your list, which negates spam complaints. I'm sure others can suggest additional providers and offer more suggestions.
Yes I have mailchimp. I need to learn it better. I assume the only way to get a list is to advertise on FB etc. I do some things well. Marketing isn't one. :)
Many of the authors I work with use giveaways to generate mailing list sign-ups. Of course, people can always unsubscribe after the contest ends, but most of the authors are happy with the number who stayed.
I use Mailchimp too. I only add people who sign up at book conventions or newsletter promotions or free book promotions I run. I haven't had any trouble with spam.
I have a list of friends and families' emails. I also use Mailchimp. I have not encountered any problem so far with Mailchimp.
What kind of spam issues are you experiencing?
I use Mailchimp for my newsletter. The cap for free usage is 2000 subscribers. I'm nowhere near that.
Gathering and managing email lists for marketing purposes can be a tricky thing. People don't like being repeatedly sold to. Email marketing is most effective via e-commerce ... i.e. someone comes to your online store and signs in - you send them a welcome email, followed by some helpful information, followed by a discount code, followed by free gift, followed by... etc. it is a way of engaging your customers. Email marketing is also useful for checkout drops - people have loaded an item into the cart but did not complete the order. If you are planning to operate an enewsletter or ebulletin or ezine, your email list can be very useful... but you must have the time to provide a lot of quality, interesting, useful and non-selling content in those publications. Using the list to spam people about every little media appearance is not helpful to anyone. However if you are using email addresses for networking... well now you are getting somewhere.