Technique to building a huge emails subscriber base

[itz_styx]

no matter how you word it, its still risky and i just wanted to make sure people know what they are doing, since it seems here are a lot of new people not familiar with this stuff and they might get the idea that its perfectly legit to send 100k contact form messages. people already got into legal trouble for this. do you know the CAN-SPAM act ? maybe you should read it..

also as for spamhaus i know very well how it works and contact forms don't always use the php mail() function or just store it locally, they are offten connected to a SMTP/IMAP server, espcially at bigger companies who know what they are doing. anyways people ended up on that list for contact spam before, because the email they used was blacklisted by spamhaus and they happend to use a own domain instead of something like gmail.

now let me just quote you this short text about contact form spam as it explains the issue very well:

I received an interesting question from one of my Internet Marketing Law Center members about whether the US Can-Spam law applies if they access thousands of website contact forms and send advertising messages through these forms.


Many of us are well aware of this type of spam.

The answer is yes.

By accessing a website, and a contact form on the website, you know your transmission is intended to create an electronic message that is being received by someone.

That is enough to come with the law's guidelines.

There is no requirement that you use an "email program" to initiate an email message.

Note the CAN-SPAM law does not prohibit messages. It does prohibit many commercial messages with false or deceptive information, and which do not include instructions on how to opt-out from receiving further messages.

Additionally, if you use a contact form in this manner make sure doing so does not violate the website's terms of use. More than just the CAN-SPAM law can be at issue for unauthorized access and transmission of messages through a computer system.

did you give them a way to opt-out from your contact form spam ?

 

[DunDidIt2X]

no matter how you word it, its still risky and i just wanted to make sure people know what they are doing, since it seems here are a lot of new people not familiar with this stuff and they might get the idea that its perfectly legit to send 100k contact form messages. people already got into legal trouble for this. do you know the CAN-SPAM act ? maybe you should read it..

also as for spamhaus i know very well how it works and contact forms don't always use the php mail() function or just store it locally, they are offten connected to a SMTP/IMAP server, espcially at bigger companies who know what they are doing. anyways people ended up on that list for contact spam before, because the email they used was blacklisted by spamhaus and they happend to use a own domain instead of something like gmail.

now let me just quote you this short text about contact form spam as it explains the issue very well:


did you give them a way to opt-out from your contact form spam ?

You are completely misinformed my friend & IT IS PERFECTLY LEGIT TO CONTACT FORM MARKET!

All electronic messaging is governed by the Can Spam act. This does nothing in regard to prohibiting people from messaging 100's of thousands of people. The Spam act is very clear, which you can read here: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

Simply state these rules do not prohibit any one from messaging someone electronically without permission. In fact many people call the the spam act the I CAN SPAM ACT, since there is not a prohibition of soliciting people out of the blue. The rules set guidelines such as the following:

1. Don't use false or misleading header information. Your "From," "To," "Reply-To," and routing information - including the originating domain name and email address - must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
2. Don't use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
3. Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.
4. Tell recipients where you're located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you've registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you've registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.
5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that's easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn't block these opt-out requests.
6. Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient's opt-out request within 10 business days. You can't charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don't want to receive more messages from you, you can't sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you've hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can't contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.

Now since the website controls the information that they are asking from the person submitting the form, things such as address, location etc in my opinion are not necessary since the site is in complete control of what information they want from people contacting them(this was the advice of my attorney-though you should obviously consult with your own attorney about the matter).


Now in regard to the contact form there doesn't need to be a way to opt out....they have an open, very public and inviting line of communication inviting people to contact them on their website, so there is no need to have an initial option to opt out (though many people actually make statements in their submission) since the site is publicly inviting people to contact them. So simply put the rules that govern in the US are clear and can be simply stated like this:

Use your real info, don't be misleading, be honest in your message and if someone asks you not to contact them again honor it. Its that simple.

And now regarding spamhaus--YOU ARE INCORRECT! I have seen very large campaigns to millions of sites in a matter of a few weeks with absolutely NO issues with emails being blacklisted. Most likely if one of your clients had issues I would suggest that they were doing other emailing tactics outside of contact form marketing which caused their emails to be blacklisted. Without proof of what you are claiming I will call bullshit on it. I know otherwise as does many other business, individuals etc that use contact form marketing.

 

[itz_styx]

look dude i'm not going to argue about this, but your constant "you are wrong", "you are misinformed" blah blah doesn't help when you contradict yourself later on.
you try to make up excuses on why you "think" you can leave out required information or "in your opinion" you don't need to have a way to opt-out.. whatever.
then you claim i'm incorrect about spamhaus which is redicilous since especially xrumer users (the most famous backlink tool out there) know about the contact form spam issue and the program has filters to avoid posting on them to avoid being listed on spamhaus. if it wouldn't be an issue, nobody would bother to filter it out.

when you have seen large mailing campaigns that sent out millions of mails, then they were legit email lists which require opt-ins (and not contact form spam).
if it wasnt then well the sender was lucky that nobody complained, but that is very unlikely with that amount. just because someone gets away with something, doesn't make it legit.
but hey you are free to call this bullshit like you say and do whatever you want, my point was just that people who do this need to make sure that they know what they are doing.

 

[DunDidIt2X]

look dude i'm not going to argue about this, but your constant "you are wrong", "you are misinformed" blah blah doesn't help when you contradict yourself later on.
you try to make up excuses on why you "think" you can leave out required information or "in your opinion" you don't need to have a way to opt-out.. whatever.
then you claim i'm incorrect about spamhaus which is redicilous since especially xrumer users (the most famous backlink tool out there) know about the contact form spam issue and the program has filters to avoid posting on them to avoid being listed on spamhaus. if it wouldn't be an issue, nobody would bother to filter it out.

when you have seen large mailing campaigns that sent out millions of mails, then they were legit email lists which require opt-ins (and not contact form spam).
if it wasnt then well the sender was lucky that nobody complained, but that is very unlikely with that amount. just because someone gets away with something, doesn't make it legit.
but hey you are free to call this bullshit like you say and do whatever you want, my point was just that people who do this need to make sure that they know what they are doing.

I gave you the link to the ICANN Spam Act. Here it is again just incase you didn't see that https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business. Please show me where it says that you can not email, or do any other electronic message without consent?

In fact if you read your earlier quote your friend said: "Note the CAN-SPAM law does not prohibit messages."

And I have already consulted an attorney on the matter and I am 100% confident in my position. There has not been one lawsuit on anyone that I know that uses contact form marketing in the 3 years that I have been doing it, and I know a bit more than 1k people that have contact form marketed over these years. You can talk all this yada yada, but what you are saying is not correct. You must be one of those 0.05% of people that doesn't like other business to reach out to you on your sites contact form to offer you new business opportunities.

So, from the numbers THAT I KNOW FOR A FACT ARE REAL, you are among a very small minority of people that don't appreciate new opportunities knocking on your door through your publicly indexed website inviting people to contact you.

Thats pretty much all I have to say on the matter. I wish you the best of luck with your business, and I will keep growing mine day by day.

 

[itz_styx]

good luck, hope you have a good lawyer.

 

[DunDidIt2X]

good luck, hope you have a good lawyer.

I only use the best .

 

[trance92071]

good luck, hope you have a good lawyer.

You should do you research a little better bro, I have been using these types of methods for over 2 years with no issues.

Haters gonna hate, don't worry about this guys bullshit Skyebug77 keep doin what your doin.

 

[itz_styx]

lol now i'm a hater just because i wanted to advise people who may try this to be carefull.. you two are redicilous!
i never said stop, or that it doesn't work, nothing.. my whole point was to be careful as you didn't mention that in your OP.
again just because you never got into trouble doesn't mean its ok and now don't hate on me, because i don't make the laws.
i personally couldn't care less what you do and i'm certainly not offended by it! you can send direct spam mails as much as you like,
who cares its up to you. now you don't need to go cry for help from your little buddies to defend you

 

[DunDidIt2X]

very useful tips and method, thanks for sharing op

Yep for sure. Hope it helps you with your marketing.

 

[davids355]

Nice guide - the plugin you mentioned for managing your own list sounds good, I always think its more hassle than its worth sending out to large lists direct from your own server though - too many things to manage - in particular deliverability.

If you have a questionable list then fine but otherwise I would tend to stick with service such as mailchimp - free until you grow the list enough to make paying for service possible and then it scales in cost with your list.....

 

[DunDidIt2X]

Nice guide - the plugin you mentioned for managing your own list sounds good, I always think its more hassle than its worth sending out to large lists direct from your own server though - too many things to manage - in particular deliverability.

If you have a questionable list then fine but otherwise I would tend to stick with service such as mailchimp - free until you grow the list enough to make paying for service possible and then it scales in cost with your list.....

Have you ever tried Mail Poet? Its pretty simple and user friendly to use. You can also get a free send grid account, connect it to the Mail Poet plugin and be able to send from their mailing server through your WP admin section. I think they give like 12k emails a month free.

But mail chimp is a good source to use for newsletters too. There is also reach Mail one can use. They have a good email filtering tool thats free.

 

[Bluerockerr]

This is one of the better laid out set of plans I've seen on doing this. Thanks for sharing!

 

[DunDidIt2X]

This is one of the better laid out set of plans I've seen on doing this. Thanks for sharing!

Yep. Glad to hear you can benefit from it.

very useful tips and method, thanks for sharing op

Glad to hear you were able to gain something from this. The biggest point I can stress from all of this is to actually strategize your marketing and try to think outside of the box when thinking of ways to promote your offer or services.

 

[RTP77]

Acquiring a solid email subscriber base from scratch is one of the most challenging things when first starting out in Internet marketing. Sure one can scrape google for emails or purchase an email list from some provider but there is nothing better than an actual targeted and opted-in email list that is responsive.

While there are a ton of sections in this forum detailing various methods for acquiring an email list, I thought to share a methodology that has worked not just for myself but for countless others that I have also privately shared this methodology with, all of whom have been tremendously successful with generating large email subscribers lists that are 100% opted-in.

There are a ton of ways to build such email lists, some more traditional than others that may be more blackhattish, and anyone reading this (especially noobs just starting out) would certainly benefit from searching through this forum or watching videos on youtube on ways to generate huge email lists. I for one have learned a lot over the years on this topic, spending countless hours reading forum posts, watching videos and talking with others and would suggest to anyone just starting out to do the same. You can learn so much by a simple search in youtube?.just start searching "Building Targeted Email Lists, Email Marketing How To, Get Email Leads " and you will find lots of great methods to try that actually work depending on what you are promoting and the audience you are targeting.

I am going to share with you a strategy which has effectively helped me build HUGE opted-in email lists. Now, before I break this method down let me state that this technique as described herein may not work for everyone, as offers and audiences all vary and this method is just a general idea and the method should be adjusted to meet the campaign goals and objectives you may have for your email campaign; but the overall method as I will explain it, if properly implemented is effective for building HUGE email lists.

Things To Have:

• A Wordpress Website
• Contact Form 7 Plugin
• Mail Poet- A free wordpress plugin that will allow you to manage your email list including sending large email lists directly from your server.

After these are all set up, it?s now time to get the thinking cap on and come up with your campaign concept to capture email leads (the CTA) and the method to generate the traffic to the site.

Idea On Capturing the Lead

Your concept on how to capture your leads is one of the most important phases of developing a successful strategy. The creative ideas behind your strategy for the site?s call to action is something you must come up with as there is no way I can do all the creative work for you, but what I can do is share with you an idea that has worked for my own campaigns while building a huge email list with more than 15K opted-in subscribers in a very short period.

The first place to start when developing your campaign strategy is to clearly define your goals. Usually the basic goals start very simple. For example
a)Generate X amount of visitors to the landing page.
b) Capture X amount of leads from these views.

In this specific example we were trying to capture leads for businesses or individuals that were interested in learning more about online security as we had specific website security products that we were pumping out as an affiliate offer. With my goals set high, I had to come up with something that would grab the users? attention and get a response back from them. What I came up with is a short 10 question survey on Online security and Privacy Rights issues.

It was important to keep the survey very short and simple. Of course the survey was anonymous (so users did not have to submit any personal details at all), so even a short glance from a visitor would show that there would be no personal risk to answering the questions. I used used contact form 7 to create the anonymous survey.

Anytime I create some type of lead capture system I always create 2 or 3 capture points and in this example I created 2. The first email capture point I placed on the 5[SUP]th[/SUP] question of the survey, which asked the question about how much the visitor knew about online security with multiple choice selections of ?none, a little and a lot?. Once this question was answered, no matter the input a dynamic question would generate asking the visitor if they would like to learn more about online security and privacy rights. If they answered yes, then a dynamic email field would generate and the user there inputs their email address (this was the first capture point).

I placed the second email capture point at the end of the survey asking the visitor if they would like to receive the results of the survey once published, and again if answered affirmatively a dynamic field would generate for the user to submit their email address (Please note, that if the user previously submitted their email in the first capture point the logic of the forms would not generate this second capture point).

With the lead capture system in place I was now able to capture leads specifically for people looking to learn more about online security and privacy rights.

Traffic Generation

With the lead capture form idea in place as detailed above, you should be able to come up with a creative idea to capture leads in your niche so you can build your 100% opted-in email subscriber list. But now what do you do? This is the part that most people get stuck at and often give up.

You can create tons of things on a website, but the bottom line is if you cannot get the traffic to the site then no matter how ingenious your idea may be all your efforts will prove to be a waste of time. There are a lot of ways to generate traffic, some more effective than others. This forum is filled with thousands of techniques some more traditional than others. For starters it is often best to keep to the basics looking to generate traffic from classical sources like linked in, Facebook or even paid advertisement if one has the money. Personally, I am an old school marketer that believes in the power of direct marketing. What I mean by this is just don?t be passive, building a site and waiting for google to rank you or sitting around waiting for someone to refer someone to your site. You have to be proactive and directly engage people and groups; else if you just sit around you will have a 97% chance at failure.

Now for this specific campaign I targeted website owners and webmasters. I made this choice because I believed web owners would be a very targeted audience that would be interested in online security and privacy rights, especially after the past year and a half of hacking affecting so many people across the world wide web.

With the lead capture system as described above in place and ready to capture emails, I began our contact form marketing campaign. Contact Form Marketing is where you directly contact webmasters through the contact form of their websites directly. This form of marketing has grown tremendously over the last couple of years. One can do contact form marketing manually or as in our example we used a publicly available contact form submitter to submit to 10?s of thousands of webmasters in a very short time frame.

In a two week time frame we were able to generate more than 25k form submissions with more than 15k of these having emails also submitted through one of the capture points. Needless to say we were very pleased with the results of the campaign.

Disclaimer?While we were successful with our campaign we are only using it here as an illustration on how to build a HUGE email list fast and effectively and this method as written may not work for the product/services you are offering. This is where your own creative genius needs to come into play as your own thoughts and ideas should be unique. Just spend some time brainstorming and come up with ideas and test them out. Not all ideas work the same and not all products/services can be marketed the same way. If your creative, come off as genuine in your marketing with an idea that captures people?s attention, then people will respond.

There are many methods to building email lists.

The best advice I could give to anyone just starting out in IM, that wants to build a good email list is to try many methods. Do a little research and cross test the methods to see what works for you. As I mentioned above, spending a little time reading this forum or watching youtube vids will go a long way to helping you think of ways to generate traffic and capture the leads that you want.

P.S. Mod if this is wrong section please move to the correct section

This seems like a really good technique. Do you think it would work on consumer offers?

 

[DunDidIt2X]

This seems like a really good technique. Do you think it would work on consumer offers?

This is really more of a B2B method, since it involves contacting webmeisters on their websites. But you could actually do something similar on Facebook. Maybe create a competition or a survey and collect emails during registration.

Also might try twitter with this technique too.

 

[RTP77]

This is really more of a B2B method, since it involves contacting webmeisters on their websites. But you could actually do something similar on Facebook. Maybe create a competition or a survey and collect emails during registration.Also might try twitter with this technique too.

I see, this is interesting. What application did you use for your test?

 

[DunDidIt2X]

I see, this is interesting. What application did you use for your test?

Sent You a PM. Check you inbox

 

[RTP77]

Sent You a PM. Check you inbox

Got it. Thanks. Another question, where did you find your offer to promote?

 

[DunDidIt2X]

Got it. Thanks. Another question, where did you find your offer to promote?

Researched online various services in the niche we were looking to make good money in, then directly contacted owners that provided these types of services via their website contact form.

 

[RTP77]

Researched online various services in the niche we were looking to make good money in, then directly contacted owners that provided these types of services via their website contact form.

Thanks for all of your help it was very helpful.