Safelists… Can They Be Effective With Internet Marketing?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my time, and what tasks deserve re-assignment to other people, which ones I absolutely must do myself and which ones I need to drop altogether.  This led me to do some re-evaluating with my safelist marketing efforts. I currently have pro subscriptions at a number of the largest and most respected safelist services online including BusinessWorldList and iPostAd. I also use YourAdBlaster services, and have set up group accounts at over 1200 Yahoo Groups.. I use an advanced automated mailing system in conjunction with multiple Gmail accounts to deliver my messages to these members. If you’re interested in the software I use, just let me know, and I can point you in the right direction. It took me a bit of time, and a whole lot of trial and error, to set up a system for mailing effectively to such a large number of groups so the last thing I want to do is let go of this marketing method. But I have to ask myself… Is this working as well as it used to?

There’s really only one way to find out, and if you know me by now then you already know what I’m about to say… I had to test it. So I’m currently running what I’ve coined “Safelist Project X”. I’ve decided to do a no holds barred, 7 message test system spread over 14 days to see what level of response I’m getting from these services. Now, we already know that safelists are one of the least responsive forms of marketing online, but the number of prospects you can mail to at once, utilizing many of these services is staggering. I’m mailing to literally millions of people daily on these safelists. The statistics tell us that we can only expect a fraction of one percent of these people to actually respond, and that’s only if we’re doing our job of providing a well written e-mail, with a great subject line and offering valuable content. Let’s assume we are, for the sake of this test…

I’ve sent my first “Invitation to participate in the test” e-mail and had limited response. I’ll send each mail out 2 days in a row so that hopefully more members will actually see it. I’m sending out the second message this evening, and inviting feedback from the safelist members. I’ll be sharing my results over the next few weeks, so stay tuned and see if this marketing method may be worth your time and energy. Remember, anywhere you can target interested leads is great, but if you’re shelling out more every month in service fees than those leads are worth to you, or you’re time could be spent bringing in more customers with less effort elsewhere, then… well, you know.

If you have any input or experience with effective safelist marketing, please share your experience so that other members can benefit. I look forward to exchanging thoughts on this controversial topic…