5 Email List Building Don’ts

Added by on November 8, 2011
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Everyone knows that you need a “list” on your blog, a way of capturing emails from readers so you can stay in touch with them. If you are blocked from the search engines or lose all your traffic to Panda, you can stay in touch with people who have subscribed to your newsletter as well as those that have subscribed to your feed. You also have ways of getting to know your readers better, beyond your blogging activities and researching new products with their help.

Of course, when you start anything new mistakes can easily be made. Knowing about these mistakes can save you valuable time, money they can even help you avoid being blacklisted if you do things wrong by mistake.

When email list building goes wrong… 5 things you should never do

  • Offer opt-in email lists – just add everyone you meet to your database
  • Every time you come across an email address add it to your excel database, laughingly called “email newsletter”
  • Use a email provider, do it all by hand via Outlook
  • Rely only on your pop up for subscribers
  • Never emailing your email list
and these 5 are straight off the top of my head. Let’s take a look at them in more detail.
Not offering opt-in and just adding people to your list, without permission is poor marketing and very sloppy. You should always ask permission to send email to the recipient. More importantly you need to prove that you have permission if they have opted in. Aweber is one service provider that offers the double opt-in and registers people only if they have chosen to be on the list.
Collecting email addresses and adding them to your “database” again makes a mockery of privacy and data protection. Some people like to use this method as a back up to their email list provider. If people did not ask to be on this list, if you do not have permission to send them then you will find your newsletter being tagged as spam. This will start to affect your regular email getting through and you will begin to wonder why you are on spam lists.

Being given a business card isn’t permission for you to add the person to your newsletter spreadsheet. Yes, send a follow up email but don’t send your daily life tips…

Have you ever had an email from someone where your name is in the to section and 500 other people are CC’d into that email. You can see every person that email has been sent to…
Using an email service provider like Aweber makes it easier to send bulk emails to people without compromising privacy. Another to remember is not everyone is forgiving when you do something amateur like that, and other people will just rip off your data and add it to their own spammy spreadsheet. All of a sudden your contacts are now receiving floods of mail they didn’t opt into. Not only is unproductive to email by hand it’s easy to make mistakes and it’s those kind of mistakes that will damage your reputation.
Only using a pop-up for subscribers is something that I am guilty of doing.  Some people are email pop-up blind and shut them down straight-away. If they then like the site, how do they subscribe? Give your readers additional options to subscribe. (for a comprehensive review of what pop-up works best take a look at this post)
Never emailing your list is another one that I am guilty of. I have my lists segmented nicely so that someone who is interested in one aspect of blogging gets just info related to that and other lists related to other  specific niche areas. There are some people who have never had contact from me beyond “download your freebies here” :(

There are plenty more list building don’t, add yours in the comments

Sarah

About Sarah Arrow
Sarah Arrow is the managing editor of Birds on the Blog, in real life she is the communications director of a same day courier service. She is an enthusiastic UK based pro-blogger and co- author of the soon to be published Zero to Blogger
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One Response to 5 Email List Building Don’ts

  1. Pingback: Opt In Email Lists | Email Marketing

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