Email Marketing - Creating a list

[dailypress]

Hello all,

I just created a MailChimp account and have about 15-20 people signup everyday. (Total of 51 so far. I started 3 days ago) It's my first time starting an email marketing campaign/list and was wondering if you can give me some tips and advice.

A few questions:

1- Whats a good conversion rate to have people sign up?
2- Whats a good number of subscribers to have in your list to consider a decent milestone to make a decent earning ($5k/month)? Number of subscribers: 5K, 10K, 20K ? Any tables or numbers you can share Subscribers VS Earnings?
3- Do you embed the signup widget or use a pop-up or both? Which converts better?
4- MailChimp has a long process of having the member verify their email address etc... Any other tool that simplifies it a bit more?
5- Do you require the First Name, Last name? Or only add an Email field to speed up the process?
6- Can you sell the email list? And if so where? Is it true that they say each email is worth $3-4 dollars?
7- Any mistakes/suggestions/stories you'd like to share where it would help me and the WW community/newbies? :)

thanks in advance.
DP

[engine]

Lots of questions, and I don't know the answers to many of them. In part because so much is dependent upon the type of business or industry of list you're building. Some have much lower responses than others.
They key is that people actually want the e-mail newsletter, and more importantly, the content.

I always prefer to have first and last name, too. It means addressing can be done far more elegantly.

Selling a list is a tough one. If you make it clear in the terms of service when people sign up then it'll be acceptable. In my experience, when a client has sold a list elsewhere, if the e-mail changes from what the users signed up for, the list ends up being worth considerably less.
If your email has ever been sold on you'll know what I mean.

The best way i've found building a list is giving something they value, for example, an e-book, whitepaper, or voucher. It encourages sign-ups and you can then build from there. Do expect unsubscribes all the time, too.

[dailypress]

thanks for your comment.

You're right the quality of the list matters but unfortunately my site draws in several thousand people a day from a specific region but I am not able to categorize them because of the context of my site.

If your email has ever been sold on you'll know what I mean.

Yes I do. I always unsubscribe from those random spam emails.

Due to the traffic my site has, my list is growing at a decent rate IMHO. Im more worried what to do with the list and how to monetize it. Affiliates, Links to other websites, Selling Products, Selling email ads...

[not2easy]

The MailChimp site offers all kinds of information for how to get started and have a successful list. Some things depend on your location and the location of your list members for legal limitations. For example if your list includes people in the USA it needs to follow the FTC's CAN-Spam act guidelines: [ftc.gov...] that are generally good practices for long-term success.

MailChimp is strict about compliance because some of the things you mentioned can get you blacklisted and/or cause low delivery. On the other hand, their statistics give accurate information you can use and they have good delivery rates. You would be responsible for monitoring whatever service you use to make sure they aren't using your list unethically.

There isn't a one stop place for all the information you seek due to the variations in privacy/email issues around the world. In general - don't send emails you wouldn't want to receive yourself, keep newsletters newsworthy, build value and trust and develop monetization strategy around the topics of your newsletter.

[dailypress]

thank you :) The list is mostly in the Middle East region and not the US. By the way, how do you make sure your email doesnt get marked as SPAM. Should I use a GMail, Yahoo ... account or does it have to be myemail@mydomain ?

[engine]

how do you make sure your email doesnt get marked as SPAM.

Pretty much impossible to guarantee that 100%. Follow the all guidelines for creating an e-mail newsletter that minimises the possibility. Top tip: Look at any spam e-mail, and don't do that. Ideally, non html is more likely to get through, although, if you make it a quality document the HTML should be ok.

Remember, some e-mail clients automatically put newsletters into a separate mailboxes and users may never see them, even if they are subscribed.

Subscribers should have opted in to avoid reporting the news as spam. If it gets reported too much it'll get IPs blacklisted.

Consider using a quality e-mail service as the service provider would have the knowledge to help raise the possibility of the list becoming a success. MailoChimp was mentioned, and i've found that to be pretty good.

HTH

[dailypress]

Thank you.

Yes, they opted in and should receive the emails in their inbox. I'm trying to increase my list to 2000 people for now since the MailChimpis free up to that limit. In the meantime I plan to research email marketing tips a bit until I get the hang of it.

[piatkow]

By the way, how do you make sure your email doesnt get marked as SPAM. Should I use a GMail, Yahoo ... account or does it have to be myemail@mydomain ?

Emails using Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and Hotmail/whatever Microsoft are calling it now will promptly get rejected by many recipient service providers if they don't come from those servers. They won't even get delivered to the recipient's spam filters.

The fashionable spam indicators will change over time and may be taken from message titles or even content, You need several test accounts to receive copies of your newsletter including one or two of the popular webmail providers as these have the most agressive filters.

One service provider was caught out quite badly when notification of a major change to the ToS wasn't delivered to any customers using Yahoo accounts.