Mailing lists

Have you ever tried to promote your sites throught a mailing list?

I know that mailing lists are something like "key to success" stuff but I really don't know much on the topic.

Right now I own two mailing lists from thetopsites.net.

The first is the statistics mailing which mails to every user that wants the statistics of his / her sites to the directory(about 1000 persons). This mailing does not contain any article, but it is a good source to make my users remember the site and come back. I can't really check the conversion of this, but every time I send it (first of every month) it seems that the site's user area has some traffic, so I suppose it is working.

The second list is for those that want to recieve webmaster offers, and it only has 400 members. I used it before some time to promote affiliate programs, and it doesn't worked well, so I suppose that there must be thousands of subscribers to produce a good conversion.

Today I sent a mail about this site, as it is the most easy to monitor.

Do you have any experience on mailing lists? Can you give any advice or resource on this way of promotion?

I have 5500 unread messages in my mailbox.  It takes a lot for me to open an email, there has to be something good in the subject otherwise its just going with the other 200 mails a day.

I am on the same situation, but there are some mailing lists that I occasionally read.

from experience as both a webmaster and a user, i never read newsletters sent to my email, usually junk filters catch it, otherwise, i automatically delete it if its easily noticable.

I get about 80-100 emails a day and I usually get mailings from forums I joined up with (more or less recently). If the subject line is to the point and doesn't beat around the bush, I'll read it. If not, they get the bin.

So, VERY IMPORTANT: make your title appealing and catchy. You might get back a few inactive members.

That's a very good tip.

Thanks :)

Putting a ! in the front of the message will put your message first for those who list their emails in alphabetical order.

but most ppl like myself see those characters at the beginning of emails and automatically assume its an email we wouldnt want.. like it wasnt from a friend or a website were familiar with such as emails with this subject

###Some Headline
!!!Some Headline!!!


etc etc.. i very, very, very rarely open newsletters.. i only open emails from sites that make me click on an activaton link or give me password details etc

Hi,

I have but it did not work, People felt like it was SPAM so it caused my site to be the target of hackers etc. But i also do not like sites that offer you to e-mail their members as it is not true.