by Norwood
Before you do anything else, you should find and test a bulk email sending program. Yeah, I know it seems kinda early in the process, but picking a good bulk emailer is a key element in the process, and it makes sense to have one tested and ready to go as soon as your ready to start mailing. Using a bulk email program will make it as painless as possible to send out thousands of emails to all your closest pals. Make sure to use a program that sends each mail as an individual email, rather than one which simply "cc’s everyone!
You might want to purchase a package that includes an email address extractor and/or and email address verifier. These programs find and check the validity of email addresses respectively. More on that later.
Do a google search for bulk email senders. Most programs you will find have their own SMTP engines, meaning they can send emails directly, bypassing your ISP’s email server. This is a good thing. Watch out though: most have very limited documentation, and some don’t work very well. Download and test trial versions, and be very picky. If you don’t like something about a particular program, try another. There are plenty out there, so find one that works for you.
To test these programs, use a small list of 5 - 10 personal email addresses. Use a collection of your own addresses, as you’ll be sending tons of test emails, and friends and family may get a little tired of deleting your messages. Also, get yourself a new email address to use as your sending address. This will make organizing things much easier later, and it will also help keep your main personal addresses from getting clogged.
So test, test, test. Settle on a program you like, and it’s time to start compiling an email list!
The first step in building your new email list is finding and collecting email addresses. Find one or more sources for email addresses. A source can be anything from a website to an address book or your inbox. You will want to pick a source that will provide you with relatively fresh (therefore more likely to be valid) addresses. Picking a source already in your computer is always a good idea.
Now you can decide how to get those addresses from the source you picked. To take addresses from an address book, simply export to a ASCII .txt file. You can add to this file by cutting and pasting from other programs, or by manually entering addresses, one per line.
To get addresses from other sources, such as addresses in an email program that aren’t in an address book, an email address extractor can be very helpful. These programs can search your entire computer, or just one or two files or directories for email addresses. All the addresses that are found are saved in an ASCII .txt file, which is exactly what we want! Theses programs are often bundled with bulk email senders, and the same cautions apply: not all programs work as advertised. Try out everything, and don’t settle for something that only kinda works.
At this point, you should have one or more ASCII .txt files. Combine all the files by cutting and pasting and saving as ASCII .txt.
So far, we’ve found lotsa emails and combined them into one big list. The next step is to get rid of all the junk email addresses that we can. By opening our list in a spreadsheet program such as Excel or Quattro Pro, it’s possible to search for certain keywords and delete the associated addresses. Keywords might include things like "support, which, if it was in an email address, might indicate a non-personal mailbox at some tech company. Other words you might search for could include "sales, "subscribe, "list, and any other word that would indicate the type of address that is not attached to a personal mailbox. Design a macro to automate finding and deleting many similar addresses. Always cull out group addresses!
After culling by keyword, visually inspect your shortened list. Look for keywords you may have missed, even entire domains, like ebay.com, that you might want to exclude. Weed out any obviously false addresses you see.
The list is starting to look better. Now, we have to figure out which addresses actually work. This will prevent a lot of those "undeliverable mail messages from getting sent back later. There’s really no way to perform this task manually. Software is readily available (email address verifiers; again, sometimes bundled with bulk email senders, and some work better than others!) that will pretend to send a message to every address in your list and then determine whether the address is a good one or not. The software is good at finding lots of bad addresses, but it doesn’t find them all. Hotmail accounts can’t be checked, for instance. The software wont find all bad addresses, but it sure helps.
Now for the most important part of culling the list: the opt-out mailing. Compose an email introducing yourself, explaining the purpose of your new email list, and offering to take anyone who wants off the list. Use your bulk email program to send out your email.
In your regular email program, set up a filter to put all replies in a new mailbox. I made a filter that found my bulk mail "from address in an incoming message. This is the "from address that I use just for bulk emails. This address will be included (usually in the "to field) every time anyone replies to one of my bulk emails. This address will also show up with any "undeliverable messages that come back. The filter then sends every message that it finds to a mailbox called "Newsletter Replies".
Watch the replies roll in! This part of the process is not for the faint of heart. Don’t take this personally. You’ll get lots of very rude replies. Ranging from the simple ("F**K YOU!) to more well thought out ("This is SPAM. I hope you die. People like you are SCUM and should be heavily fined!"), none of these should be taken as a personal attack. Remember that people feel anonymous and safe using email, and often say things that they would never think of saying in person.
Thankfully, the number of neutral or polite requests to be removed will far outstrip the replies of the jerks. Regardless of how the request is framed, handle all the same way: leave all opt-out requests in the same mailbox, but move any emails that are not opt-outs into another mailbox.
That’s right: sprinkled in with the hate mail will be lots of replies that are not opt-outs and that require individual attention. Known correspondents may hit "reply to the opt-out email just to say "hi. Other people might reply with questions or with opt-in confirmations. Glance at each reply to make sure it’s not something good! Move the "good messages to a different folder!
Now you need to harvest those opt-out requests. Here’s how I do it:
My email extractor program will search a single file for addresses. Each mailbox is actually a single file and a table of contents. Extract all addresses from the mailbox file that the opt-out replies are in. My bulk email program has a simple utility that will look at all the addresses in one list and take those addresses out of a second list. Use a utility like this one to strip the opt-out addresses from your main bulk email address file. Save the result and back it up: this is your master email list!
Now you’re ready for your 1st newsletter mailing! Get bizy... people are expecting to hear from you!
