Do you have a good responsive mailing list? If not, I hope you're in the process of building one, because it's definitely one of the best ways of ensuring a steady supply of customers who have done business with you before and want to continue to do so. Start by collecting the names and email addresses of your current customers. Add to these with things like squeeze pages where you give away free but valuable information in exchange for even more email addresses. Soon you'll have built up a relationship with a lot of people who will always be anxious to see what you have to offer them.

Building a list can take some time, however, and in the meantime, how do you use email to effectively market your product? One thing you definitely cannot do is send email to just anyone. Without their permission, you're actually performing an illegal act by sending advertising emails. They are called spam, and you don't want to be accused of sending it. It could result in the shutdown of your website or even your Internet access. Don't take the chance. Just don't spam. Ever. There are other ways to send email without your own list that are not illegal.

One of the ways you can still use email advertising is through safelists. A safelist is a group of people who have agreed to receive your promotional emails in exchange for you viewing theirs. Most safelists have both free and paid options, the differences being how often you can send or to how big a percentage of the entire group. The safelist itself is the opt-in mechanism that prevents any accusations of spam. Each member of the safelist agrees to receive email from the safelist, so you needn't bother with the opt-in mechanics. Take care, however. Different safelists have different rules. Some require you to include a disclaimer in your emails, disclosing the safelist name so that the recipient knows it's from the safelist. Others take care of that part for you. Just know the rules of your safelist and play by them.

There are pros and cons to using safelists. On the pro side you can reach a large number of readers at little or no cost with no fear of spam accusations. Those that are interested in your email subject matter will click on your links, becoming targeted traffic for your website. Of course, the emails themselves aren't targeted, as they go out to a large number of safelist members, usually with no targeting mechanism to hit only those with interest in your subject matter. Another "con" is that a large percentage of safelist emails are never opened up and read by the recipients. People join safelists to send emails more than to read them, so a great proportion of them get trashed before getting read.

But when working safelists, you're counting on volume to overcome these obstacles. The numbers of people you can reach with very little work means you're bound to make a few sales, assuming you have a product people will want to buy and have a good sales page. There are little tricks you can use to increase the number of those sales --tweak the subject line to get people to read the email in the first place, and the body to get people to click the link and get them to your website.

Building your own list is paramount. But while you're doing that, why not give safelists a try? They are very effective when used properly, and can even be used to build your list. Then, when your list gets big enough and responsive enough that you don't need the safelists anymore, you can discontinue them. But most of us don't. We find that they are a profitable, simple and cheap way to get new customers we may not have found any other way, There is room in our marketing plans for both our own mailing lists and safelists!