Bulk Email

[tomj]

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I'm looking at various ways of website promotion now as I don't want to rely on ppc and seo.

Does anyone here have any experience with OPT-IN bulk mailings they would like to share?

either companies they have used, or techniques and response rates.

Also any systems which they use, with proper opt out facilities etc etc

[Supercod]

LOL another joke post, very good

[tomj]

errr, i'm not joking. I know a few people on here have quite large mailing lists.

I'm looking into it.

[Supercod]

No one here is a spammer, well not the people I know. I do know many people have big mailing lists for the opt-in/double opt-in members of their sites and services. Maybe you just phrased your question all wrong; cause no one going to give you advice on how to be a spammer.

[tomj]

yep, my fault for wording my thread badly.

i've changed it

[ianm]

As Clarke has indicated there is a big difference between building up your own mailing list through users of your site subscribing and purchasing a mailing list.

If you go for the latter route then you might earn a few £, but you might also find that your affiliate accounts are closed by the networks.

Whenever I receive spam that has affiliate links in it I now report it to both the sender's ISP and to the network concerned.

[EDIT]You edited your message while I was writing this - so just to say if you decide to go for purchasing an opt-in bulk-mailing list then make sure that you check that it really is opt-in. If you want an example of this then do a search for bessdeals on this forum (or on Google newsgroups) - they claim to be opt-in but seem to get a remarkably large number of complaints[/EDIT]

[tomj]

yeah, i've seen those warnings too so am thinking about just linking to my home page in the email.

that way I avoid those problems.

[ianm]

Originally posted by tomj
yeah, i've seen those warnings too so am thinking about just linking to my home page in the email.

that way I avoid those problems.

You could still end up with your ISP pulling the plug on you if they get loads of complaints - far better to make sure you are watertight before you do the mailing.

[tomj]

cool, what do I do to make it water-tight?

[smn2]

Hi,

cool, what do I do to make it water-tight?

Well, you put your mailing through one of these spam-checkers
(see Google search below).

Trouble is, the people that use these the most are probably
spammers! Ah, well!

Google Search for "spam checker"

Steve

[rogerlittin]

Don't buy a list unless you want to risk being bombarded 500 times a day with junk mail. A high percentage of names on a lot of lists out there are autoresponders setup to send you back 10 emails for every 1 that you send them.

If you want a list then do the work and get people to sign up to your list because they want to.

After you have written your mail send it through a good spam checker to test it. Like Steve says some of the online spam checkers are run by spammers so be careful. You may be giving them your email address and also worse a copy of your message that they can modify and send out to loads of unwilling recipents. Use an offline checker if possible.

I use SpamAssassin http://au.spamassassin.org/index.html

Easy to configure and gives you a good report in the message headers.

Other bonus is it checks all your other mail as well.

Roger.

[tomj]

Thanks for the info guys!