I have been in email marketing for ages. I have been in interactive marketing for ages. And I have been in social media marketing for, well, ages (if you take blogging into account).
I set up this blog with the help from some great people, we set up the Social Marketing Forum, its hugely popular Facebook page and also a Facebook page for this blog.
The last thing I wanted to implement was a newsletter and it's here (see subscription form on the left). The first one will be sent next Tuesday 10 AM EST. It’s an overview of the latest blog posts, for now.
Building a list
As an email marketer you know how to build a list. So I set up a form on the blog, one on the Facebook page (yes, they still need work), I will start doing what I preach etc.
But first I wanted to do three other things:
1) Send a personal email to some of the people I know and trust via Gmail
2) Send a personal email to the people that are nice enough to follow us daily via FeedBurner
3) Send a personal mail to all the people who have taken the time to fill in our survey, prior to the launch of the newsletter
Seems like a nice way to get started. I could have thrown everybody in the email marketing list, but I refuse to do that. I want people to opt-in, even if they have expressed interest in the newsletter.
So I started to send some invitations this morning in the name of the bloggers on this site. However, in my enthusiasm I screwed up with the first mail.
Mistake one: the sender address was ‘info’. Mistake two: I sent a mail putting some friends and contacts in the ‘To’ field instead of the BCC.
Now, what I was doing was not really email marketing, it was sending personal mails but, even then, I screwed up.
I apologized and I realize its time I become a bit less enthusiastic.
Even experienced email marketers screw up sometimes… What can I say? I'm only human and glad to be 🙂
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