Spread the Word with Mailing Lists
By Alan Schwartz
Email is the most powerful communication tool available on the Internet today, which makes mailing lists a prime marketing tool. Nearly everyone online receives email, and most people read it regularly. Messages are easy to create and inexpensive to deliver, even to people with low-bandwidth connections.
But taking full advantage of mailing lists requires forethought. Businesses must choose the right equipment or outsourcing company, build a subscriber base, learn to phrase informative messages, and track the effectiveness of their efforts. If you approach a mass-mailing project wisely, your care will earn you a more dedicated clientele and perhaps the opportunity to sell advertising to other businesses.
Mailing List Mechanics
As you probably know, a mailing list is a group of email addresses of people who receive the same messages. You send a single message to everyone, and your mailing list software sees that the message is delivered to list subscribers.
Mailing lists have been around nearly as long as email, and they're especially valuable to businesses. You can promote your business via email by sending out announcements, press releases about upcoming products, periodic newsletters, or updates on improved services, or even by hosting user discussions about your offerings. I'll focus on mailing lists designed to promote one-way communication from company to customer—but you can apply the ideas here to lists designed for communication among your customers (or your customers and your company) as well.<>
