Using Safelists to Your Advantage by Denise Nuttall
A safelist is a group of people who have agreed to receive messages from one
another. It is an off-shoot of opt-in lists that were prevalent in the early
days of the Internet. There were numerous opt-in groups in which members agreed
to send to and receive emails from other members. Most of these emails were
commercial in nature. As the Internet expanded the people started abusing this
system. They started giving junk-mail addresses or non-existing addresses.
Frequently an autoresponder address was given so that as soon as a message was
received, another message was sent to the sender immediately. Abuse of opt-in
lists rendered the system meaningless.
Safelists have overcome the weakness of the earlier system. The purpose of
using safelists basically remains the same - members agree to receive
information from other members. But this is done more effectively.
The safelists are generally operated from a web site. If you wish to send your
message to other members of the safelist you will have to go to the web site
and post your message there. This ensures that someone personally sends the
message. The frequency of sending message is regulated so that members do not
overload other members.
The safelist management takes proper care to maintain their list of email
addresses. Whenever there are incidents like bouncing emails, full in-boxes or
spam filters by which emails are not delivered, such email addresses are
properly dealt with. All members are registered by double opt-in method. The
safelists take particular care to maintain valid email addresses.
As a member of the safelist you can be reasonably certain that your message
will be delivered where intended. You do not have to worry about spam
complaints. Your messages are delivered without "send to" address - the
recipient of your message will not be able to send instant reply to you by
hitting reply button.
You will get your messages from the safelist and not directly from other
members. Since you are interested in getting your message delivered to other
members you will ensure that your in-box is not full and you receive the
messages sent to you. But how many of them you will read is another matter.
You may receive hundreds of messages every day. This will depend upon the
number safelists you have joined, their policy and the number of members they
have. It is unlikely that you will read or even open all the messages. This may
not be physically possible and you may also like to see that your in-box is not
full. Therefore you will be in a hurry to delete those messages and keep room
for the next lot. Over a period of time you may not even feel the moral
obligation to read the messages sent to you. Just remember that other members
will also be passing through this phase.
Safelist marketing is really a game of numbers. You may not be able to read all
your messages, but you will possibly see some of them. Likewise you can expect
other members to read just a few of the messages they receive. Your message is
sent to untargeted recipients - you are not aware of their profiles and their
interests. Some of your recipients may be interested in what you have to offer
and some of them may be tempted by your subject line to open your letter. The
more the number of recipients you have, the more you are likely to reach the
persons interested in your offer. The headline or subject line of your message
plays a crucial role in drawing the right persons.
Many people have reported substantial success with safelist marketing. As noted
earlier it is a number game. If you seriously wish to benefit from this source,
you have to be consistent. You can join several safelists and send messages
every day in rotation to these safelists. It is important to keep up this
schedule, send message to several hundred or thousand recipients a day, and let
the number work out its magic. A compelling headline in your message will be
most useful in attracting attention. The body of your message should attract
the reader to click on your link. It is estimated that by sending message to
50,000 or 100,000 people, you can expect to find one or two subscribers or
customers.
There are free as well as paid safelist services. The paid services will give
you some advantage over a free service, such as higher frequency of posting,
composing your message in HTML etc. You can join safelists as a free member,
analyze the results you are getting from each safelist and then decide to
upgrade in the safelists which are giving better results.
Safelists are not considered among the top marketing methods such as PPC,
article marketing, solo ads, ezine ads etc. Yet they are thriving. Clearly
people are getting benefits out of them. You will know how effective safelists
will be for you only when you try them. You can try free for a few weeks and
see the results. Then you can make a decision about continuing with it.
When you decide to use safelists, you should resolve to give them a fair trial.
Only then you will be able to make a good judgment about them. Just remember
the punch line when using safelists - be consistent.
About the Author
Denise Nuttall owns the "Home Business Resource Directory" where you can find
everything you'll ever need to start, run and grow a home business at:
http://www.djnuttall-enterprises.com
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