Managing Your List: Paid List Servers Vs. Free List Servers

This week we will be discussing how to manage your email lists. It can be a big job but we'll discuss how you can get a handle on it with minimal fuss.

As you build up your subscriber list, you're going to find yourself with a problem. Whichever mail program you're using, whether it's Outlook or Eudora or something else, it's just not going to be set up to deal with the kind of mass mailing involved with newsletters.

If you have more than 50 people on your list—and that will probably take you less than a week—you'll need to use a listserv. Don't even try to do this by yourself!

My hosting company organize this for me. They have a mail server that handles all the mail. I just send them the newsletter and they send it out. Alternatively, you can use a professional listserv such as Microsoft's List Builder or Sparklist.

There are free list servers available too. While you can use these if you're on a really tight budget, I don't recommend it. First, they stuff their own adverts onto your newsletter. That doesn't just reduce the effectiveness of your brand, it draws attention away from your own ads—provided you can persuade people to advertise on a newsletter like this. But their privacy policies have also come under a lot of criticism lately and even some of the biggest companies have been found to have used their clients' lists to market their own goods.

If you're going to do a newsletter—and you should—it's worth investing in a professional service. That is, after all, what you're offering.

In conclusion, newsletters then are one of the most effective ways to keep customers, and keep your revenue flowing in. They remind people you're still out there, provide news about deals and bargains, and give customers the confidence to buy. You can put them together in a snap, or even pay someone a pretty small fee to do it for you. If you sell advertising space on your newsletter, you'll even find each issue will pay for itself.