Tip for eBay sellers - build an instant mailing list!

[Mindy]

Hi everyone!

Interested in building an instant mailing list? Here's an idea for you eBay sellers who use PayPal as your preferred method of payment.

1. Log into your PayPal account, and click on "History".

2. Under Reporting Tools, click on "Download my History".

3. Choose the dates you want (I'd go back one year), and leave the selection on "Comma delimited file" so you can use it in a spreadsheet application such as Excel, and click on "Download History".

4. Choose to either open the file, or save it to your hard drive.

5. In the spreadsheet, look at column "M", which shows the e-mail addresses of your customers. Voila!

6. Copy and paste the e-mail addresses in whatever program you use, and you have an instant mailing list!

You can send your customer list a special offer or invitation. Be sure to write in your e-mail that they are a prior customer, and that you will only be sending follow up e-mails if they "opt in" to do so (give them a way to do that, such as simply replying to you with a note that says "sign me up"). You don't want to be accused of spamming!

Hope you find this useful!

Mindy Prian

[Lynn Terry]

Great tip, Mindy!

Thanks for the detail - I'm sure many will find this useful

[Gary H]

I wouldn't recommend this. It's totally against eBay's policies.

I don't think either eBay or PayPal would look very kindly upon it.

[alice]

[Mindy]

[Dieter Kling]

[Lynn Terry]

I agree that it's a fine line... but one follow-up email (within a reasonable amount of time) should be fine. This is done with website purchases on a regular basis...

A good debate - and I look forward to hearing other's thoughts on this!

[snowman2004]

Hi there,

I would say that sending unsolicited mail to customers is totally unacceptable - even if you could get away with it. Its poor customer service and it is SO open to abuse no responsible eBayer should become involved in this kind of stuff.

Heres what I think -

1) I buy from eBay on a regular basis. Potentially, I could end up on 20 - 50 mailing lists a year. OK, I can subscribe, but its a pain....
2) Anything seen as spam could earn me negative feedback
3) If people have forgotten that they traded with me they might not be pleased to receive something that appears to be unsolicited email.

Spam is still a problem for many people. I get between 40 and 70 spam emails each day. They are automatically filtered out into a 'spam file' but I have to check the file to ensure nothing important ends up in there.

But here is some alternatives......

1) Put a newsletter sign up box on your About Me page
2) Put a link to your sign up box in the signature of all your emails,
3) Create an email newsletter that people will want to subscribe to with interesting articles and your special offers etc

What do others think?

Ray

[alice]

[Lynn Terry]

[Mindy]

I posted the question on the eBay PowerSellers board, and most PowerSellers are in agreement that sending an e-mail to customers after the transaction has been completed is considered unsolicited and not a good idea!

HOWEVER, here's another great suggestion. You can consider doing a postcard in the US Mail, which is cheaper than you might expect and would probably be more effective than an unsolicited e-mail. You can send customized postcards for as little as .244 cents each, which includes postage! Here's the link: . You can obtain your customers' mailing addresses in the same way I described in the first post - mailing addresses are in column "R" in the resulting spreadsheet when you download your history from PayPal.

Thanks for the lively debate!

Mindy Prian

[Mindy]

And, of course, don't forget to include an invitation to join your mailing list in every e-mail you send relating to an eBay transaction - i.e., end-of-auction e-mail, thanks for your payment e-mail, and shipping confirmation e-mail. Three legitimate opportunities to get your customer to opt in!

Mindy Prian

[snowman2004]

Hmmm...

The postcard idea is great.....

Unfortunately, I think in the UK you can get into a lot of trouble creating a database of peoples names and addresses - I think you have to register the database under the Data Protection Act, here. Its not impossible, but there may be a fee involved and you have got to agree to keep the addresses safe, secure, etc

Could there be something similar in the US?

Ray

[Mindy]

Interesting question. Can you download your customer information from PayPal in the UK? If PayPal allows you to do this, how can it be regulated? Since PayPal is a financial institution presumably bound by all kinds of laws and regulations, how could they allow users to download information that the users could ultimately get in trouble for having?

Mindy

[Lynn Terry]