We used to have a sizable list, over a hundred thousand and it ended up not making sense for us--costs of maintaining a list like that are high.

We used Constant Contact and while at first happy with them ended up unsatisfied as they don't make it easy to delete non-performing emails or emails that don't open. The outcome is a growing list, which costs more since Constant Contact charges on a scale of number of emails.

Email campaigns had to be sent out with relative frequency or people would forget who we were and spam complaints would rise. This meant we needed to create a email broadcast calendar to plan out the campaigns.

Campaigns needed content so we paid to have it written.

We found that over time we simply couldn't justify the cost given the revenue we could track. The traffic spikes were really nice for ego but not money.

Thanks for the reply dertyfern. That is exactly the type of information I was looking for.

We use Feedburner to manage and send our newsletter. It is free and scales to essentially unlimited recipients. They also do a good job of keeping the list clean.

The one trick, you need to basically publish your newsletter as an RSS feed for it to work. But that actually makes life pretty easy once it is all set up.

We promote our newsletter sign-up on our registration page and on the header of the site on all pages. We get maybe 10-15 sign-ups a day. It is really dependent on how you market it and where you promote it.

Interestingly our list only gets about 50% that complete the double-opt in. That means if 20 folks enter their email to subscribe, 10 will actually click on the confirmation email link to complete the subscription. Not sure if the problem is delivery, spam folders, or folks just not realizing they need to click the link. But even though it hurts our subscriptions numbers, we know we have a solid legit list.

Ours has grown over the past 2 years to about 7,000 subscribers. We send out a newsletter weekly, so we keep folks engaged. We automated the process of creating the newsletter to pull content ideas from various sources around the web. So when it comes time to send a newsletter, I only spend about 10 minutes putting it together. Then Feedburner sends it out at the next interval.

We don't monetize our newsletter (yet). It is just an investment for the future in case we need it.

I would recommend doing it if you can find a way (like we did) to automate most of the work, otherwise like dertyfern said it can become to cumbersome to manage.

Interestingly our list only gets about 50% that complete the double-opt in.

As high as that? On other boards I have seen people having lots of problems over mailing lists. Non delivery, or delivery to an unvisited spam folder, of opt-in messages is a common issue, then of course people change their minds or just don't get around to it.

Interestingly our list only gets about 50% that complete the double-opt in

I suppose it depends on the type of site. I personally remember a lower number but don't disbelieve that 50% is possible with niche sites.

The problem ultimately is the burnout rate of email addresses. You get to a point where if your emails aren't amazingly compelling to readers they stop responding, which means your spending level on copyrighting/graphics shoots up putting more cost burdens on the overall program.

I remember that when our list was small there was naturally less burnout since everything was new and recipients were happy to read emails. As the list grew, the burnout grew.

Here's where it begins to get really costly: when burnout grows (less emails respond) your natural inclination is to pear down the list--makes sense.

But most third party email list vendors don't make it easy to delete non-responding emails and as new emails are added a cycle develops, costs go up and response percentages dip.

I'm totally convinced that email marketing works. It's just a matter of opportunity cost: where to put effort and money to maximize opportunity--for us it wasn't email.

As high as that? On other boards I have seen people having lots of problems over mailing lists. Non delivery, or delivery to an unvisited spam folder, of opt-in messages is a common issue, then of course people change their minds or just don't get around to it.

I guess I had nothing to compare it to, but if 50% is good, then I shouldn't complain. =)

I base it off what Feedburner shows as our actual email list (that you can download) versus active subscribers. The full list is about twice the size of our active list, so I figure we lose about 50% from the e-mail opt-in process.

In the past I tried resending the confirmations to batches of folks who never confirmed, but it never boosted subscriptions, so I figured either the messages were not getting through or the user had changed their mind. Needless to say I don't try to resend confirmations any more. It seems to be a waste of time.

There is definitely a lot of obstacles to consider with newsletters. We would not do it if we did not have such an automated process. Once you get past the opt-in blocks, you then also have to consider the reality of open-rates. From what I've read a 25% open rate is a pretty general average. Which means if you send out a newsletter to 1000 people, on average only 250 will actually open it. This is not because your newsletter sucks, it is just a law of averages. Folks don't always have time to read every email, or they are out of town, or they see it and just forget to open it and next think you know it is buried underneath other new mail.

So in reality you need quite a large list to be able to drive some serious traffic via a newsletter. We tend to get close to 2,000 "opens" of our newsletter that gets sent to 7,000... so we are close to average.

My goal is to grow our list over the next 5 years to the point where I no longer "need" search engines to help drive most of my traffic... that is the ultimate value of a newsletter in my opinion. Not necessarily monetizing it, but an investment in the future of your business.

My goal is to grow our list over the next 5 years to the point where I no longer "need" search engines to help drive most of my traffic...

That was my thinking with the newsletter for my site. The site is currently well ranked for a high traffic term in all three search engines. It is nice now but I know that, like the mice in the "Who Moved My Cheese" book, it won't last forever. So I thought it might be smart to try to create a customer list now while I still have the rankings and the traffic.

So I thought it might be smart to try to create a customer list now while I still have the rankings and the traffic.

A great reason to dive into a newsletter. Just be smart about it. Don't make it spammy, keep it informative and it will do well. Some folks will say you should only send a newsletter out monthly, I think that is way too far in between. Folks will forget about you. I do it weekly. I use to do it twice a week and got no complaints. If the newsletter is informative, folks don't mind getting it more often.

Good luck, and check out Feedburner. Like I said before, it is free. Can't beat that. And if you want a more sophisticated mailing program later on, you can always export your subscribers from Feedburner at any time.

Good luck, and check out Feedburner. Like I said before, it is free. Can't beat that.

I will check out feedburner. Thanks for the suggestion.