Email list hosting service & mailing list manager

3 Major Types of Mailing List

Posted on Feb 27, 2023

Photo of a business woman making an announcement in front of a computer with a megaphone

What is a Mailing List?

A mailing list is a collection of email addresses from people that are interested in receiving updates via email from an organisation.

How you choose to engage with the subscribers on your mailing lists really depends on the requirements of your organisation.

Some organisations use mailing lists for marketing purposes. They might send targeted email newsletters or promotional emails to help raise awareness or drive sales of their products or services.

But mailing lists can also be used to prompt discussion amongst subscribers and build a sense of support and community between the members of your list.

In this short article, we’ll look at some of the common usages of mailing lists and the different ways of using them within your mailing list manager.

What is the purpose of a mailing list?

By working with a mailing list in your list manager, your organisation can reach a large group of interested people with a single email.

Broadcasting to mailing lists can often be a cost-effective way for organisations to deliver an email marketing message to their target audience. Email marketing often has an attractive return on investment (ROI) compared to other marketing channels.

Depending on the quality of subscriber data you have within your mailing list, you can also personalise your email marketing communications and create a more relevant experience for your customers.

This can improve engagement and generate leads and sales from your broadcast emails.

But mailing lists are not only useful for email marketing.

They can also be used to generate discussion between members around a particular topic.

Two-way discussion mailing lists enable subscribers to reply to emails. It’s also possible for replies to be sent to all other subscribers.

This can help with collaboration and the sharing of knowledge and resources and can also help to develop a sense of community between the members of your list. The use of two-way mailing lists can also help businesses gather customer feedback and insights to help improve their products and services.

What are the different communication settings with a mailing list?

There are a number of different configurations that you can use with your mailing lists on your mailing list manager.

1. One-Way Announcement (Broadcast)

If you choose to set up a one-way mailing list, only your organisation can send messages to the subscribers.

Subscribers are not able to reply to or initiate a conversation with you, and there is no ability to generate a group discussion with other members of the list.

A one-way list is ideal when you have a message you want to communicate but don’t want a discussion around it. Examples of the practical use of one-way mailing lists include:

  • A promotional email from a clothing business, advertising their winter sale.
  • An email newsletter from a solicitor, which includes current news from the legal world.
  • A customer service notice from a broadband company advising and apologising for outages.
  • An email from a charity providing an update on their fundraising efforts.

2. Two-Way Discussion

Another type of mailing list is the two-way discussion list.

This is where both your organisation and your subscribers are allowed to post messages that will reach other members of the list.

Two-way discussion lists are typically used for encouraging conversation and collaboration. Examples of two-way mailing lists include:

  • An internal team within a business, who need to discuss an ongoing project.
  • Volunteers within a charity who need to collaborate on an event.
  • Students who have signed up to a particular module and want to share resources and ideas.
  • Members of a book club who want to share their thoughts on the books they read.
  • Athletes within a sports club who want to share schedules, training plans and upcoming events.

3. Moderated Two-Way Discussion

The third type of mailing list is a moderated two-way discussion list.

A moderated list is almost identical to a two-way list, except a moderator within your organisation will review all the user generated messages before deciding whether they will be sent to all subscribers or not.

This helps you maintain a level of control over the content and the quality of the messages being sent to your subscribers, whilst still enabling communication and collaboration between members. The benefits of running a moderated mailing list includes:

  • Avoiding off-topic or irrelevant messages
  • Avoiding spam, and making sure that subscribers aren’t abusing the list to promote their own products or services.
  • Avoiding inappropriate or offensive messages and making sure the conversation remains positive and respectful.

Are you ready to engage with your mailing list?

A mailing list can be a powerful tool for helping organisations communicate with their audience.

Whether you are looking to raise awareness, drive sales or build a sense of community, a mailing list can help you achieve your goals.

With a variety of communication settings, you can adjust your mailing list strategy to suit the needs of your organisation.

If you’re curious about the benefits of engaging with your mailing list, sign up for a free one-month trial of the Simplelists mailing list manager

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Using Simplelists for Email Marketing

Posted on Feb 1, 2023

Drawing imagining using Simplelists for group email marketing

In the digital communication landscape, email is one of the most traditional channels.

Nonetheless, in recent years, an increasing number of people have questioned whether email is still so necessary – or could be potentially replaced with less time-consuming marketing tactics.

Indeed, several new forms of communication have emerged over the years, mostly in the social media landscape, where the automation tools appear to be more user-friendly and simple-to-use than designing a lead generation and email marketing strategy from scratch.

Despite this, email marketing continues to grow in popularity and is a sure bet for ROI success.

Consider this: for every dollar spent on email marketing, you can expect an average ROI of $40 (source: Omnisend)!

However, approaching an email marketing campaign – particularly a group email one – without relying on a powerful mailing list tool can force you to deal with security, GDPR, and management issues that can seriously undermine your efforts and results.

This is why today we’ll look at:

  • What email marketing really entails in today’s business landscape;
  • The key advantages of an effective email marketing strategy – such as the possibility to segment your target audience and personalize your message;
  • How a user-friendly and powerful email marketing tool, such as Simplelists, can make the difference.

Let’s investigate further!

What is email marketing?

Email marketing, in a nutshell, is a digital marketing strategy that entails sending emails to a specific group of people to promote a newsletter, event, offer, product, or service.

Consider that by 2025, the number of email users worldwide is expected to reach 4.6 billion (source: Statista) – accounting for more than half of the world population, – with over 375 billion emails expected to be sent and received each day.

That’s why, to make the most of it, businesses typically create a list of email addresses collected via ad hoc lead generation forms, in order to:

  • Efficiently track and analyze their efforts, including using the right automation tools;
  • Better understand their target audience;
  • Focus on consent, segmentation, and personalization, abandoning the outdated outbound approach.

Nevertheless, email marketing can’t be a stand-alone tactic, but rather a component of a larger marketing strategy that includes other channels – such as pay-per-click, SEO, and social media.

So, let’s quickly compare a few different channels:

  • Social Media Marketing: Social media allows businesses to interact and build relationships with their potential customers, but the competition is fierce. Their ROI varies depending on the platforms’ algorithm, but it is typically $2.80.
  • Search Engine Optimization: With a ROI of $22.24, SEO is an essential tool for any business, because ranking higher on search engines means being more easily found by the potential customers.
  • Pay-per-click Advertising: PPC ads have an average ROI of about $17 and they help businesses leverage their search engine visibility. However, this is not a one-to-one channel, but rather an advertising tactic. Indeed, 64% of people believe that basic ads are frequently intrusive and annoying (Source: Optinmonster).
  • Email Marketing: With a stunning ROI of $40, email offers a better conversion rate than any social media channel, as well as a higher degree of personalization and audience segmentation. In the long run, in fact, an email strategy helps building a community of loyal customers and is the most profitable and cost-effective direct marketing channel for moving customers through the purchasing cycle.

As you can see, email is still the most effective digital marketing channel, and a combination of SEO, social, PPC, and email marketing can really help you easily build the most powerful digital marketing strategy – where email can enhance all the other channels, allowing you to retain and communicate with your customers individually.

Let’s take a closer look at the key email marketing benefits!

4 Major Email Marketing Benefits

Personalized Targeting

Have you ever felt frustrated and overwhelmed while attempting to segment your target audience and personalize their message?

A non-personalized approach – whether through ads, messages, or posts – can have a negative impact on your marketing strategy and result in:

  • Lower engagement and conversion rates, as you won’t be able to address your potential leads’ specific needs, making it difficult to pique their interest and convert them into customers.
  • Higher costs, because a one-size-fits-all approach would necessitate more resources to reach a broader audience;
  • Inefficient customer loyalty, as personalization and segmentation are the foundations for building a relationship with customers.

So, why can a proper email marketing strategy – with the help of an efficient email marketing software – help you avoid such risks?

The answer is simple: The key is personalization, which is at the heart of mail marketing.

People, in fact, appreciate it when brands add personal touches to their messages – and email marketing, by definition, allows you to segment your target audience into specific lists that are based on different demographic or psychographic criteria, as well as easily get direct feedback.

A personalized email strategy, in fact, can drive more conversions than any other digital channel – with 66% of online consumers making a purchase as a result of an email marketing message (source: Monetate) – and it is much more efficient if it’s based on a well segmented opted-in list.

You might think it’s easier said than done at this point...

Please, hold on! If you want to segment and personalize your email lists based on various criteria, you should use an efficient email marketing platform.

We at Simplelists understand exactly how such a tool can make a difference for businesses of all sizes. That’s why our group email software includes features dedicated to email customization and segmentation, ranging from multiple lists management to styling.

All of these features would provide you with a full hosting service and management that eliminates the need for you to worry about technical details!

Sales and Lead Generation

As above-mentioned, email marketing clearly has enormous potential for enhancing sales and driving lead generation.

Indeed, if you rely solely on social media or search ads to increase sales, you should be aware that while these channels can help you attract new visitors – and reach a larger number of people at once, – they cannot always help you retain customers or nurture relationships with them.

On the other hand, email would give your company a direct channel to reach out to potential customers and nurture the relationship throughout every stage of the buyer’s journey.

To name a few, email marketing can help you leverage sales in the following ways:

  • Generating new leads through the creation of a well-structured landing page and opt-in form, allowing you to collect email addresses from both website, social, or ads, to then build a targeted email list that can really make a difference during new product launches;
  • Lead nurturing and helping leads move through the sales funnel by sending them highly targeted and personalized messages based on their interests and purchase habits, such as special birthday offers, welcome discounts, or abandoned cart emails, in order to create a one-to-one relationship and stimulate the brand loyalty;
  • Promoting new products, services, or business events through the right email campaign, including powerful calls to action and multimedia content.

As you can see, there are numerous approaches to driving sales through email marketing.

However, all of them would benefit greatly from using an email list management tool like Simplelists.

As a matter of fact, there are several technical details that can make you waste time and effort when segmenting and personalizing your email strategy, going from the design of landing pages to email footers, and email moderation.

What our clients appreciate most about our simple tool is that it allows them to quickly address all of these issues in no time by allowing them to easily customize their emails, subscription forms, footers, and even posting restrictions.

Whatever the size of your company, this can save you a lot of time and resources to devote to your sales or business strategy!

Screenshot of list settings for group emails in Simplelists

Would you like to learn more about how Simplelists can help you save time, money, and resources? Check out our YouTube channel!

Fidelization and Remarketing

Another significant advantage of email marketing is that it allows businesses to retain and engage existing customers, encouraging repeat business and driving visitors back to websites.

This is because the use of targeted and personalized offers allows for a one-to-one relationship, which gives birth to a proper customer retention and remarketing strategy that can engage customers who have previously:

  • Purchased your products or services;
  • Visited your website, blog, or landing pages;
  • Abandoned their online cart.

Indeed, did you know that sending three abandoned cart emails generates 69% more orders? (source: Omnisend).

However, fidelizing a customer means being present and providing a timely newsletter in order to be perceived as also an expert in your industry. In fact, retaining a customer entails more than selling products or notifying abandoned carts, but also sharing educational content.

With the right strategy, email drives customer loyalty and becomes a necessary channel to use in conjunction with:

  • A sales CRM system to streamline communication;
  • An email list management tool to speed up the email delivery process.
Screenshot of email delivery monitoring in Simplelists

Timely Campaigns

Have you ever struggled to find the right channels and times to effectively reach your target audience?

This happens to almost every business.

Selecting the most appropriate channels for a specific campaign in a constantly evolving tech market can be extremely difficult and may depend on a variety of factors.

In fact, while a B2B company may find their target on LinkedIn, a B2C retailer may prefer Instagram or TikTok. However, there is one thing that all business types have in common: email marketing.

Email is unquestionably one of the digital channels that allows anyone to create a truly timely campaign to support the:

  • Promotion of events, including workshops and webinars;
  • Seasonal campaigns and product launches;
  • Time-limited offers, such as discounts or free shipping, which create a sense of urgency and encourages impulsive buying;
  • Trend-based campaigns which are based on popular topics.

Having said that, it’s clear that email campaigns can help you reach the right people at the right time, providing far more value to the target audience.

Why use Simplelists for your Email Marketing Strategy?

Last but not least, we’d like to show you how Simplelists, our user-friendly email list tool, can truly help you reap the benefits of email marketing by allowing you to:

Let’s take a closer look at why you should use Simplelists for email marketing!

It’s user-friendly

A screenshot of an example group email being sent to a Simplelists list

Simplelists, as the name implies, is a truly simple tool that doesn’t require you to be techie to understand and use its interface.

You can simply write an email and send it to everyone on your list with a few clicks, saving you a lot of time and money, and freeing up time for other business tasks!

Keeps your emails out of spam

A screenshot of Simplelists email delivery and bounces page

Spam filters are one of the most difficult aspects of building an email list.

Simplelists can help you avoid your marketing emails ending up in your subscribers’ spam folders, assuring you a high level of list management, customization (whose low levels often leads to spam), and deliverability.

To emphasize the significance of selecting the right tool, we can tell you that segmented and effective email marketing campaigns can result in a 760% increase in overall revenue (source: DMA).

So, to ensure that you get the best results possible, our tool includes a dedicated email delivery feature that gives you access to:

  • Email delivery reports, which include full receipt information on successful and unsuccessful email deliveries;
  • Email delivery failures, which help you track all bounces and drawbacks.

No adverts!

Would you like to get rid of advertising?

This is one of the major disadvantages of using free email marketing tools or providers that typically place advertisements in your emails.

It is not only annoying, but it may cause your emails to:

  • Go directly to your subscribers’ spam folders;
  • Be perceived as spammy;
  • Shift the focus from your content to the ads.

That is why Simplelists emails are free of advertisements and allow you to send the most professional and effective messages!

Lets you send HTML emails

Finally, another way you could use Simplelists to improve your email marketing campaigns is by designing and sending eye-catching HTML emails.

Our tool, in fact, will not limit you to the use of preset templates, but will allow you to easily customize and create your emails the way you want, so that you can:

  • Reflect your branding;
  • Gain more design control;
  • Send more engaging, safe, and trackable emails.

Conclusions

As we’ve seen today, developing a valuable marketing strategy can be difficult and time-consuming.

Emails provide numerous benefits, ranging from lead generation to remarketing and branding, but only through the use of a valuable email list tool you can make a difference for your company and achieve the desired results.

And Simplelists is here to assist you with this!

Ready to simplify your mailing list management and save a ton of time? Sign up for Simplelists one-month free trial now!

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A reminder of our features

Posted on Mar 6, 2018

Simplelists is designed to be quick, easy and simple to use. It also has a selection of powerful features for users who want more from their email management software. People who sign up to Simplelists do so for many reasons. They may want a way to manage group email discussions, use email for marketing purposes, or send regular updates and other information to list members. We are often asked what Simplelists can do, so this short post is a reminder of our features.

Simplelists features

 Manage members

  • Add members to your list You can add members to your list in bulk from a spreadsheet or .csv file. You can also easily download your list members’ email addresses to a spreadsheet.
  • Set posting permissions You can select who can send emails to your list. This can be: all members, selected members or just yourself.
  • Manage replies You can decide whether replies are sent to the whole list or just to the person who sent the original email.
Set restrictions
  • Moderate messages You can choose to hold messages for approval before they are sent to your list
  • Restrict email size You can limit the size of emails, strip attachments from emails, and more.
  • Control list viewing You can keep members’ names and email addresses hidden or let them be seen by other members.
Customise your emails
  • Add a personalised footer You can do this to personalise your email and include information about you or your company/group.
  • Include HTML You can include HTML in your emails, enabling you to customise your emails.
  • Include members’ names You can personalise your emails by automatically adding members’ names at the start of an email.
  • Archive emails You can archive all emails - they can be accessed from a custom website at any time.
  • Daily digest summaries These can be useful for busy lists. Instead of receiving emails when they are posted, members receive one email every 24 hours.
Control subscriptions
  • Set subscribe and unsubscribe options You can choose whether new members can join your list, and whether this requires approval.
  • Add a subscription form You can add a subscribe form to your website. It is fully customisable, so you can change it to match your website perfectly.
Integrate with websites
  • Brand your landing pages On all landing pages you can replace the Simplelists heading with your own logo or branding.
  • Synchronise your account with websites An API is available, which allows you to synchronise your Simplelists account with other websites.
  • Integrate emails with your domain A multiple list account can be integrated with your domain so that users receive emails from your domain, rather than Simplelists.
Automated list management
  • Notification of bounced emails When an email to one of your members bounces, you will receive a message to let you know.
  • Automatic processing of bounced email addresses List members with emails addresses that bounce emails repeatedly are automatically removed from your list, saving you time.
  • Automatic spam management If a list member marks your email as spam, they will automatically be removed from the list. This ensures that repeated emails are not marked as spam, which keeps delivery rates high.

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Group email made simple - a reminder of our features

Posted on Jul 23, 2017

Simplelists is designed to be quick, easy and simple to use. It also has a collection of powerful features for users who want more from their email management software. In this short post, we remind our customers of the power of Simplelists and let those who are thinking of joining us know about the range of features available.

Simplelists features

Fast setup

With Simplelists, you can set up your list in just a few minutes. You simply log into your account and then add people to your list. All you need is their name and email address - you can add people manually or in bulk from a spreadsheet or CSV file. Once a person is added, they will appear as a list member. You can also download your list members’ details to a spreadsheet with a click of a button.

Set restrictions

You have the option to choose who can send messages to your list. For example, you can allow all members to send emails, select members who can send messages, or make sure it is just yourself that can send messages. You can also choose whether replies are sent to the whole list or just to the person who sent the original email. To ensure quality emails are circulated, you can opt to approve and moderate emails before they are sent to the list. The size of emails can also be limited, and attachments can be stripped if required.

Customise your emails

You can let list members’ email addresses be seen, or keep them hidden from other members. Other features include: the ability to add a personalised footer; send your emails in HTML rather than plain text; and personalise your emails by automatically adding details such as the recipient’s name in the email. Once sent, you can archive your emails and access them from a custom website at any time. If you have a busy list, daily digest summaries are a useful feature - instead of receiving emails when they are posted, members receive one email every 24 hours.

Customise subscriptions and integrate with websites

You can choose whether new members can join your list when they wish, or whether this requires approval. Similarly, you can set unsubscribe options, allowing members to leave your list when they choose. To allow members to join your list easily, you can add a subscribe form to your website (this form is fully customisable so you can match it perfectly to the design of your website) and you can easily replace the Simplelists branding with your own logo or branding on all landing pages (where members go when clicking on email/form links). An API is available to enable you to synchronise your Simplelists account with other websites and a multiple list account can be integrated with your domain so that users receive emails from your domain rather than Simplelists.

Automated list management

When an email to one of your list members bounces, you will receive a message to let you know. To save you time, list members with email addresses that bounce messages repeatedly can be removed automatically from your list. If a list member marks your email as spam, they will automatically be removed from the list. This ensures that emails are not repeatedly marked as spam, keeping delivery rates high.

Once your list is set up, you can email everyone on your list from your normal email address. Just send them message to [yourlist]@simplelists.com. It really is that simple. If you would like to try out Simplelists, you can sign up for a free single list account today.

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