In 2008 the number of South African internet users grew by nearly 10% - a suitably respectable growth rate. It is also fair to assume that most of them would have at some stage subscribed for email newsletters from businesses just like yours. How many of your customers have also subscribed for email newsletters from other businesses? Most importantly, will you be able to continue to provide your customers and potential customers with the same products and/or services?

Bulk emailing is a tool employed by many businesses to better communicate with their customers and potential customers. Many new customers are gained through bulk emailing.

The trick lies in basic human nature – more specifically, the power of repetition. By updating your customers on a regular basis of your new ideas, products and/or services or adjustments to your existing offerings, you are in fact letting them know that you are still in business and that they can call on you to satisfy their particular need. You may be the solution to their problem. That is what business is all about.

The key to this form of easily accessible communication is the use of a mailing list manager. This tool is an online service that enables and facilitates communication with your customers and potential customers through bulk emails and newsletters. Its reach is global and whether your customers are in good old SA, San Francisco or even Kathmandu is irrelevant. It is substantially cheaper than the traditional paper-based forms of advertising and other advertising mediums and also provides an enhanced advertising communication service with additional flexibility.

A further feature of this hassle-free online service manager is that it allows you to build your contact lists (subscriber databases) with ease. Visitors to your website can subscribe to your emails or newsletters (industry term: “opt in”) by completing a simple online form. You will then be able to add them to your existing subscriber database.

You are also able to schedule the release of your emails or newsletters on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis or as and when the need arises. The readers of your bulk emails or email newsletters should always receive content-rich articles and industry-relevant information. Be sure to keep your mailings targeted – they subscribed because they are interested in your business and its product and/or service offerings and the industry in which you operate. Keep your sentences and your paragraphs short to enhance readability – concise and to the point is the name of the game.

Sending regular bulk emails in the form of email newsletters also allows you to ascertain how many of your customers actually read your emails and how many of them went further and clicked on the links supplied in your email newsletters.

The mailing list manager is a powerful tool to effectively gauge your customers’ interest in a specific product or service and will give you the knowledge to convert visitors to subscribers and subscribers to paying customers by simply tweaking your newsletters and offerings.

Knowledge is power, as they say...