subject: Safelists: Advantages And Disadvantages Of Using Them As A Marketing Tool [print this page] For every brilliant idea that promises to make our internet marketing strategy stronger and leaner, there are always pros and their accompanying cons. The same is true with safelists. If you're planning to use safelists as part of your marketing campaign, it's wise to know how they can benefit you and how they can be ineffective.
For starters, let's take a look at safelists and how they have evolved as part of our arsenal as internet marketers.
A safelist was basically born out of the weakness of opt-in email groups. While very effective in its early stage, opt-in groups have begun suffering from abuses that it has suffered from recently: junk mail addresses and even fictionalized addresses have affected the system in a negative way.
The safelist works in essentially the same way: people who agree to become members further agree to receive information from likeminded members. Since safelists are operated using a website, a member who wants to send a message to other safelist members will have to log on to that site to post. Simple, right? Now let's take a look at its pros and cons.
Safelist Pros
Members of safelists register using a double opt-in method.
The safelist ensures that it is a member who personally posts and sends the message, not an autoresponder.
If you're a safelist member and you send out a message, you can be assured that whoever receives your message will not complain about you spamming them. You message gets to where you intend them to go.
You can e-mail to one, five, ten or a thousand using free safelists and paid safelists. In the game of numbers, even a small percentage of one thousand can ensure a good amount of traffic (and even sales) directed to your site.
Safelists give you the opportunity for convenient (and sometimes free) product testing. And the response is immediate. Compared to ads or articles, for example, you dont have to wait until your product ad is displayed or published.
Free safelists can pay commissions for referrals while paid safelists offer higher commissions.
Paid safelists require low membership fees and even offer ad tracking services. You can also send emails more frequently. Paid safelists also allow you to post using personalized messages.
The safelist is also regulated so that the frequency of sent messages is monitored. This ensures that members are not overloaded by too many messages or even spam.
The e-mail addresses in a safelist is carefully maintained so if bouncing e-mails and spam filters are encountered, offending e-mail addresses can be located and dealt with. The result is that the safelist is able to maintain only valid addresses.
Safelist Cons
Safelists, for all their recent popularity, are not considered as one of the most reliable and results-oriented marketing tool, unlike PPCs, ads and article writing. However, many people trust them and are actually using them.
Safelists are still affected by the numbers game you can send and receive thousands, but among these there is always a possibility that only a small percentage will respond or even read your message. You can send the best-written ads in your message and still get ignored.
You might soon find your inbox filled with hundreds and thousands of offers from other members.
Statistics also affects safelists in that if you're not careful, your message could be sent to some recipients who may not be interested in what you have to say, since you do not know their profiles.
You need to keep to a schedule initially if you want to attract more customers or subscribers. That means in order to benefit from safelists seriously, you will have to join several and post messages every day to several hundred or even thousand. This will allow you to let the numbers work in your favor.
Most of the persons on the receiving end are not interested in your ad because they are too busy sending out their own.
Safelists can be a very effective way of promoting business online, as long as you know how to use them. The trick here is to choose safelists that are targeted so you get the most out of your every effort. For example, if you're targeting homeowners, avoid safelists that have mostly businessmen and marketers for members. To ensure an effective campaign, market only to people whom you think will be interested and dont waste your time on those who won't notice you.
As with every new marketing tool that comes around, dont jump into safelists blind test the waters if you have to. Give free safelists try for a while to see how they work. If you find them beneficial, progress to paid safelists only after you already have a feel of the system. If you use safelists correctly, you can get around the cons of this method and benefit a great deal from the pros.
