Email Lists

[phill_ridout]

I need to promote my new website. And to get customers, i need to get buisnesses to sign up. I've got some free offers lined up to get the inital ball rolling, but i have no way of making them known. And waiting for buisnesses to find me through a search engine could make geting going real slow. So on to my question. Where can i buy email lists from? are there any good sites that people use? how do i ensure their relevant to the visitors i'm trying to attract? what are the legalitys of buying email addresses and then sending unsolicited emails to them? I know its not ideal, cus i no i hate spam!

also i guess i could go to other similar sites and coppy and paste email addresses from there. is that ok?

a mail shot would be my last resort, but then it starts getting costly!

Thanks for your thoughts

[Jutlander]

Sorry to say it, but sending unsolicited email (as you mention yourself) is considered spam by many people.

[PappaJohn]

And when they report the spam, you risk having your domain blacklisted by ISPs and email systems

[danwmr]

Hi,

As you mention buying an email list, I'll assume you have a budget. I'd recommend investing in pay-per-click (ppc) advertising. I currently use adwords, but overture works just as well. If you spend some time researching appropriate keywords (adwords have a good tool, I use wordtracker) and follow the advice and instructions you should start to see a steady flow of traffic to your site. Using something like wordtracker will also give you a good idea of the size of your potential market, as it tells you how many people are searching for your service or product.

The more time you spend researching and optimising the ppc, the higher your conversion rate will get, and the less money it'll cost you.

D...

[daemonkin]

danwmr: Does Wordtracker offer multiple accounts? I tried the trial but could not find any info. What account type are you using?

D.

[danwmr]

Hi,

I didn't rate the free trial as it's an email service, but it might give you an idea of how useful worktracker would be to you.

I have an annual membership because I do a fair bit of SEO for both my own and for client sites. Wordracker do a 1 week membership for £14, which isn't too bad (no, I'm not on commission ;) ). You can set up multiple projects within your account so that you can manage multiple sets of unrelated keywords.

The cheaper (initially) alternative is to use google's adwords service. It's free to set up an account. When you're in, click on Tools and Keyword Tool. Enter your best guess at what people might search for and analyse the results. Then look under "Additional keywords to consider" and google will list alternate, related terms that you might want to add.

You only start paying for google adwords (and overture for Yahoo!) once you switch the pay-per-click campaign on. You can pause and restart the campaign any time you like. I've found it a very flexible (but expensive) service.

The key bit really (apologies if I'm teaching you to suck eggs here), is to identify keywords that are specific enough to draw people who might actually buy your products / use your service to your site. For example, I sell clothes for big and tall men, and we have a large selection of jeans. I don't have the keyword "jeans" in my list because I don't want to pay for clicks by regular sized men and any sized women - I'm only interested in, for example "big and tall jeans".

Hope that helps.

D...

[rfresh]

@phill

There are *many* other ways to advertise and get traffic to your web site without using spam techniques which is what email lists are.

There is no easy way - marketing is just plain hard work and you have to attack it on multiple fronts - but not with spam.

[phill_ridout]

yeah i was rather against spam, the adwords sound good, trouble, its comming out of my pocket in the short term.

[danwmr]

So, there's a rule I really like which applies to many things. It goes, Good, Fast, Cheap. Choose any two..

In your case, you could optimise your site for natural searches using keyword analysis, writing blogs, posting news articles - anything sensible with your URL on it. Most SEO experts reckon on this process taking effect in about 6 months. That's good and cheap, right. But not fast.

If you want fast, pay for adwords or overture. If you've done your keyword analysis right, you'll have good and fast. But not cheap.

Sadly there's no other way for it. If of course, someone out there does know of another way. Please let me know!

D...

[Pennimus]

Did you do a search? Lots here (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=email+list) or here (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=buy+email+list), including opt-in so it's not unsolicited spam, as such.

Edit: About PPC - if your site is good your returns should be way higher than the outlay (if not it's safe to assume the site needs more work or you need a better campaign manager), and those returns will start coming in immediately, in which case it's fast, good and cheap. :thumbsup:

[rfresh]

@phill

Please don't take this the wrong way, but the mistake many first time web site owners find themselves in is that now that they have their web site done, they want 'instant' traffic. Marketing and promoting a web site takes time...a lot of time...meaured in months, not weeks and certainly not in days.

There are many ways to promote your web site for free. I would start with free classified ads on web sites such as Craigs List and MySpace to name two. Keep a record of where you post and when they expire so you can go back and renew.

And BTW, with Google Adwords, YOU can control your monthly budget with them. So if you only have 20.00 to advertise with Adwords you can set it up not to exceed that amount each month.

As I said before, this is hard work and there is no easy way around it. I work 12 hour days and often 16 hours running my web business - I can't remember the last time I had a day off but I might just take July 4th off!!