Q: Hi, I currently have a new website being created for a brick and mortar children’s specialty store. I have been collecting some emails on my current website and have them stored in AWeber. I have a list of several thousands in my database in the store that I will be sending a direct mail piece to sign-up online on the new website to receive a newsletter.
Should I continue to use AWeber and have my programmer direct new leads to my current list? Or should I have my AWeber list sign up again when the new site launches? What should be my concerns about this? What should I be looking out for?
In addition, I am going to begin a X-Marketing campaign with other local merchants that already have lists and/or emails, how do I merge theirs into mine?
A: Glad to help, thanks for trying to be thorough in your questions.
1. It is very difficult to compare “storing and sending emails from whomever is hosting my site” with a service designed to send email like Aweber or Constant Contact. And storing and sending is not the difficult part – CANSPAM compliance and deliver-ability are much more crucial – and most hosts are not as focused on them as it is not the core of their business.
So given the lack of information about your host, I would stick with Aweber for now.
2. The only reason to re-sign up your current Aweber list is that when they signed up you did not offer to send them a email or a newsletter. Then you would not have “permission” and would be considered SPAMMER. So it depends on what you said on the page when you collected them in the first place.
3. Doing cross promotions is very good idea, BUT you shouldn’t import other people’s lists. Not because your can’t technically —it’s easy to do.The reason you DON’T want to do that is because YOU don’t have direct permission from the people on the list to send them anything and will be branded a SPAMMER. Additionally, I doubt if your partners would give you their lists.
What you should do is create a campaign with your cross promoters that sends email from each company individually that directs people to a landing page of yours to get a free newsletter and information about the special promotional product. Now they are on your list and you can sell or promote anything you like.
You can do the cross promotion as a simple reciprocal arrangement— i.e: you mail for me, I’ll mail for you, or mail for me and I’ll pay you a commission. If you do the later, you will need an affiliate tracking system.
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Written by W. Vito Montone
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