Free eMail Marketing For Small Businesses

DiTesco 2712 Views, , , , ,
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eMail Marketing For Small and Home Based Businesses

I am sure that all of you already know that email marketing is a great way to communicate with your loyal audience and potential customers. It is how internet marketers keep their customers and prospects coming back.

However, and understandable, there are still many of you that still find eMail marketing a tedious task, because of the things you need to do, such as, building a list, creating your Opt in email marketing forms, formatting your email newsletters, scheduling, etc.. Also, let us not forget the matter of finding out which service we can use, and preferably free.

What if, I told you, that you can do a simple non-annoying email marketing, free, opt-out, while at the same time getting some backlinks, grow email list, and within the process increase traffic potential? Would that be of interest to you? If you responded yes, read on.

What Is Posterous?

I’ll keep this simple as it is not my intention to be very detailed about Posterous. In a nutshell Posterous is a blogging platform that is free, allows you to post your articles via email (via web is also possible), and autopost the same article to a variety of free services, such as Twitter, FaceBook, Tmblr, and more..

It is a great service as people can subscribe to your Posterous and vice versa (sort of “follow” or “unfollow” kind of thing). In addition, within the process of posting articles, you can create links to anywhere you want, thus improving your link building campaign and increase traffic potential. Posterous is a reliable and credible platform and has good graces from search engines.

Here’s a quick example. I reposted an excerpt of Optimize Your Content For Search Engines on Posterous?

posterous ditesco

So far I got 343 views. Not a lot, right? But hey, it still got that amount of views and most likely some clicked on continue to read the story, landed on my blog and who knows, maybe I did make a conversion Winking smile

Obviously, you only want to repost only an excerpt of your latest blog post (or not, use your imagination) or simply write an article there, just like you would on any other blogging platform. Better, send an email of “something” to Posterous, and it gets posted and then sent to your subscribers. And did I mention that they can be reposted to some of the popular services out there? All this “domino marketing effect” is free!

posterous autopost

email Marketing with Posterous

Recently, Posterous has introduced their simple email marketing engine. You can now automatically send your posts to your subscribers as instant email newsletters. Here’s how it works.

Step 1:  Add your friends, customers, etc.. email addresses as subscribers via the ‘People’ tab.

email marketing posterous

Hint: You can also import a list from a CSV file.

Step 2. finished, that was fast!

posterous subscribers

Posterous will then send invites to the people you sent, and wait for them to confirm. Once they do, they immediately get included in your email marketing list. Did this last week and I already got 172 subscribers, not bad!

Isn’t this type of Email marketing spam?

Well, I am sure you are part of some community that sends invite to join your group or something of the sort. Posterous email marketing is just the same. You invite people to subscribe to you. If they don’t want, they don’t confirm, period. Simple, active and effective. Nothing spammy there in my opinion, provided you continue posting quality content. Different from RSS subscription via email. In any event, you can always improve your skills with this free marketing training.

Don’t forget, just anything else, it is always good to re-promote your posts on Posterous and ensure that your content are properly optimized. The more promotion you get, the merrier.

Post an entry > subscribers receive email > they like > they read = you get more exposure and increase your chances to convert. Magic!

That’s it! What do you think? Is this something that you feel you can do? I am convinced that this is a good choice to start with, even if you only want to enhance your link building campaign. If you already have a list and using an existing email marketing service, then you should take care to ensure that you are not duplicating your efforts. Launch your email marketing campaign with Posterous, and to your success!

DiTesco

DiTesco is a Business and Inbound Marketing Consultant, and founder of iBlogzone.com. iBlogzone's main objective is to help startups and small business owners achieve success in their online ventures. | More About Me and my Digital Marketing Services in SP Brazil.

28 thoughts on “Free eMail Marketing For Small Businesses”

  • I like that you can add your contacts email addresses as subscribers… I don’t know how that would work in terms of spam compliance, though. Do you know? I would like to keep in touch with everyone I’ve been meeting via networking, but would like to be able to send them something once via email and then have them opt-in for future ones.

    Although, one lady I met in January just adds people to her database as she meets them. I’ve never unsubscribed as she only updates once per month. I’m thinking that could be the perfect solution. Thoughts?

    Cheers,
    Tia

    • Hi Tia. As far as I can tell, it is only considered SPAM if it is an unwanted email. The fact that adding your contacts and sending them invitations to subscribe does not automatically make them a subscriber. If for some reason they accept and later wish to opt-out, the email sent by “Posterous” via yourself (only your posts), is clearly marked with an “unsubscribe” option.

      What the “lady” is doing in my view is not totally ethical as she appears to just “add” contacts and sort of hope for the best, lol. In Posterous, the email recipients will have to “confirm” that they accept before being added as a subscriber. I think there is a difference right there 🙂 It is ethical as you send invites to people to subscribe and provide them with the option of accepting and later unsubscribing, if they want. That is why I like it. It is a more “active” form of growing a subscribers base, rather than waiting for it to happen.

      What do you think? Do you somewhat agree 😉

      • Agreed. I misread the first time – if it just sends them invites to subscribe, that is perfect!

        Yes, what the lady is doing is borderline unethical; in the old days, no one would think anything of it, since in fact people are giving her their business cards, right? I think it’s very common, though, among people who do not know much about Internet marketing. At least her emails come with an unsubscribe link. I’ve gotten looped into ones that don’t even give you the option to unsubscribe. Very annoying! 🙂

        • It IS unethical, it is borderline illegal.

          • I hear what you’re saying, but it’s a pretty sad day when adding someone you met at a networking event to your newsletter is considered illegal.

            Thank God we live in Arizona, where we have more important crimes to worry about!

            Again, not talking about me. I don’t even have a newsletter. Still, this is the way people do business out here. I’ll let someone else call the police on her, since I like what she sends!

            Cheers,
            Tia

            • OK then, why not take 5 minutes, contact the person, remind them of who you are (in her case not YOU persay lol) and ask if they would like your newsletter?

              Otherwise you might at well go through the phone book and add names. 😉

              FYI: Autoresponder services, ISP’s and the FTC really don’t care where you live. LOL

  • Interesting stuff buddy. I use Aweber myself, but this sounds like a secondary option to catch others in the meantime; when I have the time.

    • Hi Dennis. This is a good option for marketing posts or articles and to get people to your website. Often I noticed that for some reason people tend to read their emails first before anything else, and if you have something really compelling, this might just be a good source to attract them to your “page”. From there you do the “convincing” 😉

      • That IS what I use Aweber and or feedburner for…what’s the diff.?

        • There is not much of a difference. I use MailChimp for example to send “specific” campaigns (not spam). Example of this is the recent venture I am involved with Michele. We launched WordPress Junkies and I sent a special announcement of that event for my subscribers.

          RSS. Ok, lets say that a new guy has zero subscribers. What will he do? He will have to build his subscribers by waiting for someone to actually subscribe. If he has a list of email contacts, even if it is small, he can send an invite to each one of them. It is a more “active” approach. He can then use Posterous to “spread” not only his “blog feed” (RSS) but can also post anything he wants in his Posterous website. That is the limitation of RSS, it will send to your email subscribers only what happens in your website.

          Another example. Say I have two websites. You are a subscriber of one and not of the other. Using this method, I can post on Posterous what you are not subscribed to via RSS, and still receive a newsletter, if you accepted my invite from Posterous. See what I mean 😉

          • Gotcha. Intriguing indeed. 😉

  • DiTesco,

    Do you ever sleep? You are everywhere. I have to admire that.

    I looked at Posterous but did not take the time to really follow through. Must of been one of those tooo frequent times that there seems like too much to get done and adding something else that means a long term commitment doesn’t sound like much fun.

    • Hi Shiela. Actually, it does not look as it seems because I use amplify.com to populate all those “micro-blogging” platforms, such as Posterous, Tmblr, etc. All you need is “virtually” a click of a button and then select “parts” of a post and hit submit. That’s it. Sometimes, though I prefer to manually post some excerpts to control the backlinks better, but that is little time spent, and the benefits are great.

      For example, take a look at this post http://ditesco.posterous.com/article-marketing-seo-strategies. It got 500+ views and it was posted via amplify 🙂 No work done at all.

      And yeah! I do sometimes take a moment to sleep, lol. All the best

  • Hey DiTesco – That looks interesting.. you got 343 views by just posting an excerpt of your post on posterous.. and yes, could you use posterous to update a blog post in wordpress… cause thats what i can figure out from the screenshots

    with regards to email list building, i still need to check out it..

    • Hi Sandeep. Yes, you can update a WordPress blog from Posterous but only if it is .com. Self hosted from what I know are not yet possible so that0s unfortunate. What you can do is check out the service that I told @Shiela and everything should be pretty much “automated”.

  • Hi DiTesco,
    Posterous looks great and I hope it can help me to launch my email campaign. But there is lot more to learn about it.
    Thanks and Regards

    • Learning more about it is already a good start. Just make sure that you do 🙂 And if you are just in the beginning, I think it is a great way to start to build a list while also improving your link building campaign. All the best and good luck, should you decide to use it.

  • This is an interesting twist to the Posterous mini-blogging approach. I started using the method of posting excerpts on a few of my Web 2.0, with a ‘continue reading’ link back to my blog but the email marketing integration is a winner, especially since it can import email and permit people to opt-in, with an invite – I don’t see it as spamming.

    I love trying out new methods that don’t sap one’s time and productivity and this one is in.

    Hey, over 300 views to a single post is a good response rate, I think.

  • For me, Posterous is essentially one of the most amazing and progressive tools I’ve seen and worked for some time. It works on multiple platforms and it’s level of privacy is unquestionably rock-solid.

  • Looks like Posterous is an invaluable tool to have in your arsenal. I don’t run that many email campaigns per year, when I do I have been using Adweber or Mailchip to handle everything. It would be well worth it as the cost is free… Thanks for sharing! Tracy

    • Hi Tracy. I think it is worth the try due to a number of reasons. See my discussion with @dennis and you will see why 😉 Thanks for stopping by

  • This is a very good marketing tool to give a try, but my only fear is this, are you sure this service will be free for all?

    • It is free for anyone who has a valid account on Posterous. So you have to register first and then you should be good to go.

  • Is there a limitation of how many contacts you can add? Otherwise, I’d bet some people could enter their harvested lists and use the Posterous servers to send the requests and collect the subscribes.

  • Great idea TiDesco. I’ve been using Posterous off and on and were unaware of the list import. will have to give this one a look see.

    How do you get older posts to be sent?

    • Hi Tony. Sending old post could be done via their email feature or you will most likely have to post them manually. The later could be tedious but it allows you to edit your older post and add links to it, whilst maybe giving it an extra touch of “compelling-ness”, LOL

  • I don’t think so that anyone will consider it as a scam, don’t why did you think that people will may consider it as a spam.
    I think this tool can be best used if you first personally interact with everyone or most of the people in your network and make your self familiar and then send the invitations to subscribe. Proceeding in such way can be time consuming but I am sure it will give good results.

    • Hi William. Actually you bring a very interesting point here and that s to send invites to people you at the very least have interacted with somehow. This can be your FB or Twitter connections for example. Doing it this way will increase the chances of people subscribing to you. At the end of the day this is what I actually did as I have sent invites to friends and business partners that I have had some “contact” with in the past. I sent 184 invites and got confirmation from 172. Good result I must say 🙂

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