Help with mailing lists

ArtistMark

Hi,

I have been meaning to sort out a decent mailing list system for ages and need a bit of help.

I have names addresses and email addresses on various bits of paper and saved on old emails etc but I need to store them in a logical way. What software can I use (preferably free software) that will make the list easy to manage and use?

Also does anyone have any ideas on how to capture the details of people who are interested in hearing more about my business? Maybe a way of getting people to sign up to a mailing list via my website or via facebook or twitter. What about in person? Many artists and crafts people use guest books but not many people seem to complete mine and if they do they often don't leave a full address.

Any help or suggestions, I am sure there are people out there who would like to receive invitations to exhibitions I am taking part in but I don't know how to keep in contact with them.

Cheers!

steve1980

You can use mail merge (Word) if you have postal addresses, you can create an Outlook group for the email addresses that you hold.

Do you currently have a website? If so do you have a contact form or a subscribe function on there? If not then ask your designer to put that on there for you, should take them about 1 minute if that.

galileo74

try using mailchimp.com. you will need to get some order into your lists and set it all in an excel file.once done - mailchimp will take care of you:
send to some or all your contacts.
as for capturing data: you will need to find a nice programmer and it would take him about 3 minutes to do this.
just ask people who visit your site to enter their email address.
you can also make it mandatory so that everyone will have to give you their details.
hope this helps.

Savvy_Sue

galileo74 wrote: »

just ask people who visit your site to enter their email address.
you can also make it mandatory so that everyone will have to give you their details.

Or not. I get REALLY annoyed when sites 'insist' on me giving MY details which they do not need: for example 'requiring' a phone number when I do not wish to be phoned, or 'requiring' my full address when I never wish them to write to me, and they do not NEED these details in order to answer my query.

OP, what do you use for email at the moment? You can add quite a lot of detail to most email clients, certainly Outlook (eugh) and gmail. ATM we use Excel spreadsheets and either mail-merge or copy email addresses and paste them into gmail (using the BCC field! Please! Send me an email with 500 other email addresses showing, send my email to 500 other people, and I'll ask you to remove my details in a jiffy!)

We also use mailchimp, and that seems to work well, although it's one of my colleagues who uses that.

paddyrg

This site is a really good example of a site not asking for details it doesn't need - username and password, or for a contact list, email alone is enough.

Please look at services like constantcontact though as they will help you stay legal with optouts, and are whitelisted for bulk mail as they take abuse very seriously. Bulk mail via your own email account will likely be blocked at source, or only a percentage get through. You can thank the penis pill brigade for that.

ArtistMark

Thanks for the responses.

I do have a website, but I designed, and built it myself so I can't just ask the developer to add a contact form! I have to work out how to do it myself, which will take more than three minutes!

I don't want to compel people to enter their details, but perhaps offer them an option to add their details and receive notification of events etc. I will be giving out invtations to private views of exhibitions a couple of times a year not sending out sales bumpf, people actually like to be kept in form and do ask to be notified it is just a question of managing their details. Like you SS I hate having to give out information when I don't want to be contacted.

I use outlook express for email, but have recently lost all the contacts saved on that thanks to a computer virus so I'm wary of that sort of thing.

I have found a website called freecrm.com that I am inputting all my client details into now so that I can manage the details and store them securely. Any other suggestions or tips would be appreciated though.

Thanks