[Mike Halliday]

Planning a marketing campaign for January, anyone know the best way to buy (or get for free) local email address?

[Richard Cole]

Are you talking about commercial or domestic?

You need to be very careful with sending unsolicited emails Mike or else you might find your website blacklisted, so use a company like mailchimp and make sure your list has opted in for receiving emails from you.  Can't help you recommending where to buy a list but your best bet would be by building your own list either from your existing database assuming you have collected emails or by offering an incentive to capture data from your website, i.e. free report on carpet cleaning or inquiry about special offers, they get the report or offers when they fill in their email address, you could also use an alternative version of this to write to all your existing customers who you do not have email addresses for and invite them to email you back for exclusive special offers.

[Mike Halliday]

The problem is I want all 3 of us to sit down on any free days with our laptops and blast out emails, so I need 100s straightaway, I can't wait and collect them.

I used to look on the YPs website and cut & paste address the n print them directly onto the envelope when I used to use normal letters

[davep]

If you had hundreds it wouldn't take 3 of you to send them off. Plus odds are if you buy them they would already of been bombarded with unsolicitored emails of other buyers of emails.

[Ian Gourlay]

If it is commercial I was looking through Richard Gordons Book on Contract Cleaning
He said the best way was to look on companies websites figure how they configure  their emails then phone receptionists and ask who is responsible for cleaning contracts then blast an email to that person. That would keep three people busy with research an action

If you want the local people I was told by a young woman entrepreneur doing dog collars that you join local facebook groups and then lob an email through facebook.
I am sure it is more suttle than that but there was a womans entrepreneurs course on Social Media going on in the next room when I was at a meeting the other day and that was the jist of what I was told while getting a coffee. I think you have to become friends first etc

[garry22]

Mike, why would it need three people? Are you going to be sending these out manually or are you using an autoresponder service?

[Mike Halliday]

Garry I'm using 3 men becuase there are 3 of us and I remember last year when it was freezing and I could'nt be arzsed to go out leafleting so I'm looking for ways to create business sat in front of my log burner.

I thought 3 of us sat with laptops surfing the web looking for email address's and sending out a pre-written fancy marketing email with pictures and links to various pages of my website

[garry22]

The reason is asked is that most of what you want to do can be done with software (let's face it. it's a soul destroying job).

The exception is if you want to find individuals' email addresses. You may need to go to a list broker for that. I've got software for deep search but it does not scrape UK info. I have another that extracts general emails e.g. info@ etc.

If you send bulk emails then you could upset your ISP but realistically, a manual send should not cause a problem.

As an aside, my burner logs are kept in a polytunnel, which is now trying it's hardest to be the first one in space!

[Mike Halliday]

Just had an idea as I sit here drinking my morning latte,

I've just searched for hotels in East Yorkshire On google, I looked at some hotels and I realised that a lot of business use word@ theirname .com as thier email address

eg; enquiries@bridgehotel.co.uk

I know if any word is put before @ then my web address it goes to my email box, so could I search for business then rather than try and find thier email address just put enquiry@wedaddress and send that?

[Jamie Pearson]

You can buy a list from a data company.

I was offered uk facilities managers for £149 the other day.

I asked for some sample data for scotland and 3 of the 10 are already customers so I know it's fairly accurate.

[Mike Halliday]

Just contacted this company to see what they offer in my area

http://www.emaildatauk.com

And set up a mailchimp account

http://mailchimp.com/

[Ian Gourlay]

you could also try www.marketingfile.com

[Blacky]

Mike, I am a bit confused.  You've been in business a long time now.

Surly you will know that the numbers don't work for what you're planning.  Im also confused at the fact that you employ 1 man on leaflets.  Again the numbers cant possibly work.

You must be running a loss on your efforts.  You know what works, so why make this mistake. Or are you hud winking others into this fruitless method.