Why I’m Building Mailing Lists Again
Over the years I have run quite a few mail order businesses and the success of each one was built on the quality of its mailing list.
Every time someone bought something from me or requested more information, that someone would be added to the respective mailing list. Then at regular intervals I’d prepare a mailing with new products that I hoped would interest my customers and send it off.
Within days the results of my mailing would start to come in. Before the internet, the orders would come by post or by phone, but as more and more people went online they began ordering online too. The vast majority of orders would arrive within a week of the mailing being sent and response rates could be very high, particularly with niche mailings.
The internet gives you the opportunity to build mailing lists too, but with one big advantage. Cost. Where once upon a time I would spend thousands of pounds every year printing catalogues and sending them by post, today you can send an email to customers with your latest offerings and invite them to visit your website to order – at virtually no cost.
It goes without saying then that if you have a website selling products or services then you should be asking visitors to sign up to a mailing list. You can then use that mailing list to let subscribers know of new lines, special offers and so on. Just don’t abuse people’s time by mailing them too regularly – that becomes annoying and chances are they will start unsubscribing in droves or more likely condemning any mailings from you to the deleted folder unread.
Strangely, building mailing lists is something I’ve got out of the habit of doing. No idea why. I suppose I have been so focused on increasing traffic to websites that I overlooked the obvious – sending reminders to previous visitors to drop by again.
And so my first task for February was to find some mailing list software that was easy to install, easy to use and wouldn’t cost me a penny.
Luckily, I didn’t have to look very far. Anyone with web hosting that includes cPanel will find they also have access to Fantastico, a script library that automates the installation of web applications to your website. And one of those scripts that it automatically installs is the open source and free newsletter manager, phplist (if you don’t have hosting with cPanel you can download phplist here).
My other big job for February is to complete the book I’ve been writing called Get Out While You Can. I wanted to create a mailing list for anyone interested in knowing when the book becomes available – and thanks to Fantastico and phplist, I had created a double opt-in subscription form to do exactly that in a matter of minutes. It was simply a case of letting Fantastico do its magic and then working through the php configuration options.
The only thing left to do was to work out how to integrate phplist into one of my own web pages rather than the phplist subscription page that is automatically created. This was easy too thanks to the excellent documentation available on the phplist website and in particular the Custom Subscribe Form information.
And if you’re interested in seeing the subscription page I produced for the book Get Out While You Can you’ll find it here. Who knows, you might even want to subscribe to the mailing list yourself 
As someone who isn’t a techie, I found the whole experience painless and now plan to build mailing lists for other websites in a bid to retain customers and indeed visitors who are potential customers. And I’d recommend you do the same if you’re not already doing so.
