Tourism Internet Marketing U

Effective Promotion Through Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists

Internet mailing lists are quick and easy ways to distribute information to a large number of people. There are thousands of publicly available online lists. You can also create your own Internet mailing lists to keep your clients and prospects informed of company events, product announcements, and press releases. In future posts of this blog we will cover:

• How to identify useful publicly accessible mailing lists
• Subscribing to the mailing list
• Writing messages that will be read
• Mailing list netiquette
• Creating your own mailing list

Connecting With Your Target Audience

Discussion mailing lists are publicly accessible and are focused on a particular subject. Participating in a discussion list relevant to your line of tourism business can help you attract new customers. Discussion lists are organized hierarchically by subject in a way similar to Usenet newsgroups. Likewise, the membership of each discussion mailing list varies. People subscribe to particular lists to participate in that list and to receive all of the postings that are sent to the group, generally because they have an interest in the topic. When you post a message to a mailing list, the message is sent out by e-mail to everyone who has subscribed to the list.

Discussion mailing lists offer an efficient way to distribute information to masses of people interested in a particular topic. The difference between discussion mailing lists and newsgroups is that while anyone on the Internet can visit newsgroups at any time and anonymously read any articles of interest, a discussion list delivers all messages posted directly to the subscribers’ e-mail. Only discussion list subscribers can receive these messages. To subscribe to a discussion list, you have to send a subscription message to the list administrator and request permission to join the mailing list.

For more ideas? Pick up a copy of  101 Ways to Promote Your Tourism Business Web Site! I know you’ll be glad you did.

-Written by Susan Sweeney