Mailing List? Try Yahoo Groups

Creating a Mailing List through Yahoo Groups

In this age of spam filters and other anti-spam measures, including legal action, it is important to ensure that your newsletters and other literature go only those who wish to receive them. Recipients should also be able to quickly and easily "opt out" of the list if they no longer wish to receive your emails.

I’ve found Yahoo Groups an excellent way to create your own opt-in list. It has features like daily digests (all mail from the group is sent to the subscriber just once a day in a single mail – very useful if the group becomes hyperactive and has members sending umpteen messages flying back and forth daily), spam reporting, filtering of subscribers and, of course, opt-out / unsubscribe already built-in. So for a net newby or for someone who wants to create a small list quickly, it works really well.

Here’s how you can use Yahoo Groups to create your own mailing list of subscribers who want to receive your marketing and other messages.

First, have something to offer

You must give your subscribers a reason to opt in. Promises don’t work, immediate rewards do. So create an e-book or an audio book that can be easily emailed to the subscriber. Remember to put in information about your main product and how to get it on every page of your e-book or every once in a while in your audio book.

Next, create your Yahoo Group

Go over to http://www.groups.yahoo.com and create the group within the category and sub-category you desire.
Put some information on the group homepage. Upload a picture, logo or banner if you can. Remember to state that subscribers’ email addresses will never be sold or otherwise made available to third parties. State that if subscribers choose to remain in the e-group they will receive regular or occasional emails from you about your product or service.

Tweak the Group Settings

Go to the Management section of the group and set your preferences there. You may choose to run it as an e-group, where members may post to the group, or as a newsletter-only group, where only you may send messages. There are several sub-options within these, governing the subscription procedure, administration of the group, etc. Select the ones that apply to your group.

Caution: Be very careful with options that say, "You CANNOT change this later." My advice is to leave those options set to the default.

Change the welcome message if you wish. This is the message that will be sent to every new subscriber.

Upload your "offer" to the Group

Once you have the e-group set up to your liking, upload your e-book or audio book to the FILES section of the group by clicking the (what else?) FILES link.

Make sure you set the file to be sent to every new subscriber upon subscription.

Promote your Group

This is where you actually begin to use the Yahoo Group to create your mailing list. Click the PROMOTE link and get the html code. Copy that and post it into your website to create the Yahoo Group subscribe button. Of course, you have to put in some information and make a sales pitch to motivate people to click the button. This is where you tell them about the fantabulous free offer you have and how it’s going to change their lives.

That’s it! You’re done! You now have a trusted site that generates your opt-in list.

To see this in operation, visit the Golden Voice page of my website:
http://www.freewebs.com/deepakmorris/getagoldenvoice.htm
Click the Yahoo Groups button there and see how easily you get added to my mailing list and how easily you may opt out of it at any time.

Deepak
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"The world’s a stage. What are you doing in the wings?"