How to Manage your Mailing Campaign

1. Once you have your potential partner database, the first thing you need to do is build a “generic” email message.
2. Next, tailor each mail and make it as personal as possible.
3. Use names to address people you are writing to
4. Write things in the mail that would convince them that you actually visited their site and are very keen in partnering with them
5. Tell them about how your services are very relevant to theirs and how they can benefit from exchanging links.
6. Always make sure that you have their link on your site before you write to them
7. Always show then where their link is placed on your site, so they do not have to look for it. Make it very simple for them to find their link.
8. Look for the best person to send your mail to. It could be the Webmaster, the owner of the site or sales and marketing person.
9. If they link to you first, link right back. If they ask you to link first, do it right away and send them a mail.
10. If someone asks for something extra like putting their link in the top 5, ask them for a similar action on their side. If the PR of that site is much better than yours, just get linked anyways.
11. Always ask people if they have other sites they would like to exchange links with. If you’ve done a good job for them they’re much more likely to offer you any additional sites they may have.
12. Consistency and persistence are important but with good judgment. Pursue people who showed some interest but disappeared due to some genuine reason. They’re not likely to re-initiate contact, so stay in touch with them. Send them another e-mail in a few days or the Monday of the next week. Remind them that they were interested in an exchange and that you’d love to go through with it. Sometimes it takes three or four e-mails to get them to finally link to you, but it’s worth it, especially if their site has high PR. As for people who never responded in the first place, it may help to resend the e-mail one more time a week or so later.
13. Fridays and especially weekends are not a good time to send your first e-mail. Most people don’t work weekends and your e-mail is likely to get lost or buried. E-mailing Monday-Thursday is good because it gives you time to get your link that week or to follow up in a day or two if they haven’t linked back and still get your link that week.
14. Don’t be pushy, demanding or rude. Never say “you need to link to us here”, or “we want this or that”… Don’t turn anyone away. Good links are hard to get. Be clear in your instructions so there’s no room for confusion or misunderstanding. Send them your linking info in each email to ensure they have it and will use it.
15. Stay very organized and develop a good system that helps you keep on top of everything, timing can be crucial. Once you start accumulating hundreds of sites, it’s hard to keep track, so have a good system/spreadsheet and develop good daily habits of monitoring your progress and keeping on top of things.