Using Safelists to Your Advantage

A safelist is a group of people who have agreed to receive messages from one another. It is an off-shoot of opt-in lists that were prevalent in the early days of the Internet. There were numerous opt-in groups in which members agreed to send to and receive emails from other members. Most of these emails were commercial in nature. As the Internet expanded the people started abusing this system. They started giving junk-mail addresses or non-existing addresses. Frequently an autoresponder address was given so that as soon as a message was received, another message was sent to the sender immediately. Abuse of opt-in lists rendered the system meaningless.

Safelists have overcome the weakness of the earlier system. The purpose of using safelists basically remains the same - members agree to receive information from other members. But this is done more effectively.

The safelists are generally operated from a web site. If you wish to send your message to other members of the safelist you will have to go to the web site and post your message there. This ensures that someone personally sends the message. The frequency of sending message is regulated so that members do not overload other members.

The safelist management takes proper care to maintain their list of email addresses. Whenever there are incidents like bouncing emails, full in-boxes or spam filters by which emails are not delivered, such email addresses are properly dealt with. All members are registered by double opt-in method. The safelists take particular care to maintain valid email addresses.

As a member of the safelist you can be reasonably certain that your message will be delivered where intended. You do not have to worry about spam complaints. Your messages are delivered without "send to" address - the recipient of your message will not be able to send instant reply to you by hitting reply button.

You will get your messages from the safelist and not directly from other members. Since you are interested in getting your message delivered to other members you will ensure that your in-box is not full and you receive the messages sent to you. But how many of them you will read is another matter.

You may receive hundreds of messages every day. This will depend upon the number safelists you have joined, their policy and the number of members they have. It is unlikely that you will read or even open all the messages. This may not be physically possible and you may also like to see that your in-box is not full. Therefore you will be in a hurry to delete those messages and keep room for the next lot. Over a period of time you may not even feel the moral obligation to read the messages sent to you. Just remember that other members will also be passing through this phase.

Safelist marketing is really a game of numbers. You may not be able to read all your messages, but you will possibly see some of them. Likewise you can expect other members to read just a few of the messages they receive. Your message is sent to untargeted recipients - you are not aware of their profiles and their interests. Some of your recipients may be interested in what you have to offer and some of them may be tempted by your subject line to open your letter. The more the number of recipients you have, the more you are likely to reach the persons interested in your offer. The headline or subject line of your message plays a crucial role in drawing the right persons.

Many people have reported substantial success with safelist marketing. As noted earlier it is a number game. If you seriously wish to benefit from this source, you have to be consistent. You can join several safelists and send messages every day in rotation to these safelists. It is important to keep up this schedule, send message to several hundred or thousand recipients a day, and let the number work out its magic. A compelling headline in your message will be most useful in attracting attention. The body of your message should attract the reader to click on your link. It is estimated that by sending message to 50,000 or 100,000 people, you can expect to find one or two subscribers or customers.

There are free as well as paid safelist services. The paid services will give you some advantage over a free service, such as higher frequency of posting, composing your message in HTML etc. You can join safelists as a free member, analyze the results you are getting from each safelist and then decide to upgrade in the safelists which are giving better results.

Safelists are not considered among the top marketing methods such as PPC, article marketing, solo ads, ezine ads etc. Yet they are thriving. Clearly people are getting benefits out of them. You will know how effective safelists will be for you only when you try them. You can try free for a few weeks and see the results. Then you can make a decision about continuing with it.

When you decide to use safelists, you should resolve to give them a fair trial. Only then you will be able to make a good judgment about them. Just remember the punch line when using safelists - be consistent.