From: Candice C.
Subject: Delivering my e-newsletter
Well Jim, I've taken your advice and started offering an email newsletter at my site. So far I have collected 390 email addresses. Now I'm ready to start with my first issue.
Can you tell me the cheapest way to deliver my e- newsletter? Also, as my list grows, what are the best ways to "scale up" my delivery methods?
jim@bizweb2000.com wrote:If your list is still very small and you want to try managing/mailing to it without paying a penny, here's how...
- Get Eudora email program from www.eudora.com - it is easier than Outlook for this task.
- As new subscribers sign up, use Eudora to filter the incoming subscribe messages into a separate mailbox.
- Before you mail each issue, open the mailbox where all your new subs are and select all messages. Next, click "special" and then "make address book entry". (name it by date)
- Then you'll find all those addresses under one listing in your address book.
- Simply open that listing then click BCC and all the addresses will be in the BCC (blind carbon copy) field of a new outgoing message. Next paste in your newsletter, a subject and a "to address", then send.
As you can see, this can get time consuming as your list grows, since you'll have to do it multiple times and wait for each list to mail out.
This method is also subject to your ISP -- some will not allow BCC recipients totaling over 25. Check with them.
You may also want to get a free demo of Juggler, a tool that can help you manage your list as it grows, including merging two lists, subtracting one from another and purging duplicates.
Yes, this ezine management and delivery method is more time-consuming than others but it is virtually free. And it works. I used this simple method even as my list grew past a few thousand subscribers.
Once you get to a few thousand subscribers delivering manually can be time-consuming. To scale up your email list management and delivery you can do one of two things. You can get a script installed at your site or use an email list service.
A script like SubscribeMe found at http://cgi.elitehost.com automates just about everything and is a fine solution until your subscriber base grows to several thousand.
Once you hit the 6, 7 or 8 thousand subscriber mark, you may find that many script based solutions become troublesome. Your next scale up move would be to use the services of an email newsletter hosting company. There are plenty available on the web and although this is more costly than the previous solutions it's the way to go when your list gets large. I use a company called SparkList and their service pretty much does it all for me.
Well, I realize this was quite a long reply but I wanted to cover all your bases. Have fun publishing!
* Article by Jim Daniels of JDD Publishing. Jim's site has helped 1000's of regular folks profit online. Visit http://bizweb2000.com for FREE "how-to" cybermarketing assistance, software, manuals, web services and more. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to their Free, weekly BizWeb E-Gazette: mailto:freegazette@bizweb2000.com