This part 2 of the Successful Farm Email Lists [1] series.

Everyone who uses email has sent out a broadcast email to friends or family by separating each address with a comma or semi-colon. This might work for personal use, but as your list grows using the techniques described in part 1 [2] of this series you need a more professional solution because you do not want to expose your email list to each member and your emails will be blocked as spam.

This is not something you can do on your own unless you are willing to dive into the minutia of web programming; I think for most farmers, farming is enough of a challenge! There are many providers who can help you move your email strategy to more professional realm.

Constant contact [3] is one of the popular email marketing services for small businesses. For $15/month, the services allows you to market your farm to 500 email address or $30/month for up to 2,500 addresses; see more pricing information here [4]. One very nice feature with this service is that it makes templates available that help you spruce up each email you send.

Newfarm.org published an article [5] last year on one farmer's experience using PHPlist [6] through their web host. This is an open-source software that you must install on your webserver if you are running your own website, though some hosts offer the service free. When you are deciding on a host for your farm website [7], ask them what extra software packages they offer with their hosting plans: PHPlist may be part of the deal. I have worked with PHPlist in the past and found the interface to be a bit confusing, but if you remember that this is free software and you are willing to put some time into learning the program it will work well for you.

Zookoda [8] is a free service for blog writers to integrate emails into their marketing approach. The service summarizes the posts on your blog over a specified period of time and then sends a broadcast email to everyone that has opted in to your email list. I write often about farm blogging [9] here at Small Farm Central and this could be a good way to integrate blogging with emailing for your less tech-savvy audience.

Small Farm Central [10] includes a simple, but robust email sending system. Visitors sign up for your email list through your website and their address is added to your email database. The control panel [11] allows you to compose your email using the rich text editor and send it to your entire list; the emails will look like they were sent directly from your email address to the recipient. This ensures that your list will not be exposed to each member. The Small Farm Central software takes your composed email and sends each one singularly to each recipient, something that would take hours to do manually! This service comes bundled with the basic Small Farm Central site [12]. 

Next time in the successful email list series [13], I will discuss how often to send emails, what to write in them, and how to integrate the emails with your website marketing strategy.

Photo by DTL [14].