How Do Email Lists Work?
January 31st, 2010 | by Conrad Walton |I was asked by a client about how managing a mailing list with Aweber works. I’m sure that other people don’t quite understand what happens behind the scenes.
Aweber allows you to manage an email list. That list is really just a list of email addresses, with some information about each one. It’s like putting them all in a big bucket that they go into or jump out of any time they want, without any intervention from you.
How Do Email Lists Work?
Users can subscribe or unsubscribe any time that they want. From the user point of view, they start out by filling out a form on your web site (a “web form”) and submitting their name and email to Aweber.
They get an email that asks them to confirm that they are really asking for the subscription. If you didn’t do that confirmation loop, then anyone could fill out any form and subscribe anyone. This makes sure that the email address is real and that the person really wants to get your email.
They click on the link in the first email and that tells Aweber that they are real and give permission. They are then added to the list.
Every email they get from you will have a link to unsubscribe, so they have complete control over their subscription. This is required by law.
Everyone who is subscribed to the email list will get a copy of any emails that you send to the list.
There are two kind of emails that are sent. There are actually three, but we’re only talking about two of them now.
“Follow up” emails are sent on a schedule based on the date that they user signed up. You should have at least one follow up to welcome the user to the list. You set the number of days that each follow up email needs to be sent after the previous email was sent.
For example, the first “welcome” email should be sent “immediately” when they confirm. If you were to create a few emails as a training course, you set them to be sent at regular intervals.
You could have a 5 day training course and each email gets sent 1 day after the last one. You could create an email to be sent 14 days after the initial welcome email to ask if they had any questions or if they wanted to buy your new book.
The important thing to remember about these follow up emails is that they are all based on the day that the user signed up, so when each email is sent is entirely custom to that user.
“Braodcast” emails are sent to the entire list whenever you send them. You could write up something on Tuesday and send it then and the entire list gets it. These are what you would expect in a mailing list. This is like sending email to a distribution list on your own computer.
Strategies for what to write and how to send them will be in another post.
Tags: Complete Control, Confirmation, Create Email, Day Training, Email Address, Email Addresses, Email List, Email Lists, Follow Up Email, Intervals, Point Of View
