As a follow up to my earlier post on marketing tips, if you want a mailing list, you need software to let your customer enter his/her contact information as well as a way to send that customer email.
If you’re like me, you probably think that it would be preferable to build your own newsletter software. After all, it can’t be hard, and even if I don’t write it myself, there are free scripts out there that you can just plug into your website. Why spend significant money on some service when you can do it yourself?
According to an Indie Gamer forum post about newsletter software:
The problem with php self-automation is that one subsciber who (perhaps even accidentally) lists you as a spammer might get your server blocked for everyone. Imagine all of your emails being labelled as spam by google, hotmail etc.
So while you could offer the service yourself, it’s risky. Maybe do-it-yourself is fine if you are hosting the list for a group of friends, but if you’re running a serious business, you probably don’t want to worry about being labeled a spammer, dealing with spam laws, or taxing your servers with sending out lots of emails at once.
According to the forum post, Plimus offers its vendors a mailing list service. Also, people seem to like MailChimp and Your Mailing List Provider. I’m looking into these options myself. Anyone have other options they swear by?
[tags] email marketing, marketing, business, indie [/tags]