How to develop a mailing list for free

January 17, 2008

Would you lWould you like to keep your customers informed about new products or other news? An easy way to do this is to develop a mailing list. Developing a mailing list can be simple if you have a basic knowledge about your website host. The basic idea is to have a website that offers a service such as a free newsletter or free product upgrades, so that you can capture a customer's email address with their permission. This forms a relationship between you and the customer so that both of you benefit. Read on to learn how to create a mailing list.

1. You will need to determine if your website hosting plan includes a MySQL database and if it supports PHP. If not, then you can visit a free mailing list server and sign up for an account. Copy and paste their HTML code in your site.
2. If your hosting plan does include a database and PHP, you can download free scripts that will help you set up a mailing list. Go to a webiste called free-php.net and search for the term "mailing list." This will take you to a script that sets up the database and the web pages needed.
3. Another option would be to use a Frontpage, if your server supports Frontpage extensions. You can create a form in Frontpage which captures data to a text file. Then, import the text file into Email Marketing Professional. Do a Google search for "frontpage forms results tab delimited file" to learn how this is done.