Back to basics: How to organise your mailing list system

Many businesses use Outlook for their email campaigns, but there are inherent problems with using Outlook for bulk emails. The main issues are that you can overload your server, your IP can be blacklisted for sending spam, and there are no metrics in Outlook to track the success of your campaign.

It is a much better idea to use an email platform that has been designed specifically to handle mass mailouts, and has the inbuilt metrics you need to measure your performance and return on investment.

The benefits of using third party email service providers

Some of the most popular bulk email providers include MailChimp, Aweber, iContact and Campaign Monitor. Most include reasonably generous free plans and then scale up in price based on mailing list size, but the benefits of using them, as opposed to Outlook and other desktop programs, far outweigh any costs involved.

1. These email service providers are whitelisted: Since their bread and butter business is sending out millions of emails every day, they have the capacity and the servers to support this type of activity. So their servers never become overloaded and your messages are much more likely to arrive in the recipient’s inbox, rather than going into Junk or not arriving at all.
2. They adhere to standard protocols: This means that your emails will not be treated as spam and you will not be blacklisted for sending out masses of emails to customers and potential customers on your email lists. One of the protocols (in fact, it’s a law in Australia) which they adhere to is to include an “unsubscribe” link on every email, so the recipients have the option to unsubscribe from receiving any more emails from your company.
3. They provide lots of design templates: Whenever you set up a new email campaign, you can design a complete set of emails for your business, all at the same time with just a few clicks. This keeps all of your emails looking professional, reflecting your brand and speeding up the entire campaign process.
4. You can easily setup automatic scheduling: Create your emails, schedule the mailing dates and then just let the email service provider do all of the work. You don’t have to keep remembering mailing dates anymore; it’s all completely automated for you.
5. Find out who has subscribed to your mailing lists: Email providers create lists of all of your subscribers, so you can easily see how many new people have subscribed to your mailing list and also if anyone has unsubscribed.
6. Easily measure the success of your campaigns: If you don’t have any hard data on the success of your email campaigns, then you could be repeating the same mistakes with every mail out. These third party email providers include reports and metrics, which help you to access your ROI and plan your next campaign.

So if you want to set up a cost effective marketing campaign or you need advice or help with improving your current mailing list system, call GO Creative on (07) 3333 2932 or request a free quote online.