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List Building: Growing Pains and Your List

By Erin | March 9, 2008

With my tendency to skimp (hence the slogan, "internet marketing on the cheap"), I had to learn this lesson the hard way. For so long, I smugly ignored the warnings and sage advice to build your list by outsourcing its management to the pros. I wasn't ready to pay out monthly for a 1ShoppingCart or an Aweber, when I had everything "under control" on my own domain.

I'd started with phpList, an open source solution, and was happy with it, despite some tricky problems (as a software engineer, I was able to solve these myself, but it sure was a time sink). I also felt more comfortable knowing I wasn't dependent on the longevity of a company or the stability of their system—I performed regular downloads of my lists as CSV (comma-separated values) files, etc..

So, what changed and why would I now join the gurus in giving the same advice?

Domain hosts limit the number of emails you can send in an hour. This is the biggie. Somewhere around the 500 subscriber mark, you realize it's taking way too long to send out a single email. To be safe, I was further throttling it to 150 per hour, so it was several hours before the entire list would get the mail.
Lists on multiple domains require extra installations.
Sequenced or follow-up emails not easily achieved.
Poor deliverability. A good third of the list was not even receiving the mailings, and bounces were not accurately reported. I'd get an email back for a full mailbox or discontinued account and phpList didn't even bat an eye.
Intermittent language setting errors.

I must admit my selection of a true autoresponder was almost automatic. I'd heard the question asked so often on forums and conference calls that I went with Aweber, following the overwhelming majority opinion. It helps too that I was already up and running with various combinations of payment processors and product delivery systems, including PayPal, PayLoadz, and now the Rapid Action Profits script. If I hadn't been, I would've given serious consideration to 1ShoppingCart, which includes the whole kit-and-caboodle. Another popular choice is GetResponse.

So, if you've a little time to shop around, there you go. Just remember, you don't want to hit that magic 500 mark and have to ask them all to switch over. It's not pretty. I take solace in the fact that most that didn't respond probably weren't getting the emails anyway, but either way, this is so much easier and really takes the stress off.