Email/list marketing rules help needed

[Recruitment Nick]

Basically i have a few blogs that are slowly gaining readership and I am at the point that I want to be offering a newsletter on two of them and I have an info product in the works for a third.

Now I am aware that Aweber do a great service and intend to go through them, but first i want to be careful about not breaking any laws.

So what rules do I need to be careful about? Do aweber make it easy or give guidance to make sure that you dont break any laws?

What rules are there about keeping lists seperate etc?

I know this is a pretty broad and indepth question so I any advice you have to give will be greatfully accepted by this newbie!

[denniston]

Hey Nick,

Email blasts to a subscriber list are a GREAT way to keep your audience plugged into your blog. Every time you update your blog, send an email broadcast to your subscribers... you will be amazed at the results!

Not to step on any of our competitors' toes, but I'd love to mentor you on the in's and out's of the emarketing business and what you should and should not do unless of course you are tied to using a particular ESP. I am the creator of http://www.ContactBuddy.com and our "claim to fame" is our 100% email deliverability guarantee. No other ESP on the net is willing or able to make such a bold claim. ContactBuddy is geared mainly for marketers with list sizes of 25k+ so if you're on a budget and don't need that much capacity right now, I'd recommend non-Enterprise software which is http://www.IncomeBuddy.com

If you're the type to research something before you buy it, you can check the email deliverability for each of the following IPs at http://www.SenderScore.org:

ContactBuddy: 12.37.82.103
IncomeBuddy: 12.37.82.98
Aweber: 207.106.200.17
InfusionSoft: 63.226.35.153
GetResponse: 207.8.214.83

NOTE: You must register an account at SenderScore.org (free) in order to view the "Accepted Rate" for sending IPs.

They main things you'll want to look at is each IP's "Complaints" and "Unknown Users" ratings. They should both be "100" or very close to "100". If not, then the ESP is either not monitoring their users close enough (eg. they have users sending spam or un-targetted messages) or their bounce management infrastructure is not finely tuned. The other important rating you'll want to pay close attention to is their "Spam Trap Hits" count. It should be "0" and if not then this is an indication they do not require double opt-in which in turn is going to negatively impact the deliverability of your campaigns because your mail will be sent from the same IPs as the mail being sent by those parties abusing their service.

If I can help further, please let me know, I'm all about seeing YOU succeed at what you are passionate about in life!