Key Concepts: Adult Email Lists

Email marketing is an important marketing channel for adult companies and affiliates. Before you can use this important channel though, you’re going to need to build an email list. This page offers a basic overview of adult email lists, and shows you where to find more information about this topic.

What is an email list?

This should be pretty self-explanatory, but with respect to adult affiliate marketing an email list is a collection of email addresses that you have (hopefully) received through your website, or sometimes through your other marketing campaigns — such as your booth at a trade show.

Although this may not be what you want to hear right now, you want your email lists to contain only the email addresses of people who want to hear from you. When your list contains only people who purposefully gave you their email address so you can send them emails, you’re going to get amazing results with email marketing.

How do you build your lists?

The best way to build your email lists(s) is slowly over time. You’ll want to utilize your own websites and landing pages to invite visitors to sign up to receive your emails. Since most people already receive too many emails, we recommend utilizing freebie incentives to encourage email list subscriptions. See below for where you can find more information on this topic.

Why are email lists important to marketing adult industry products and services?

Email marketing is an important marketing tool for almost any industry, and the adult entertainment business is no exception. Email lists are a basic asset you need before you can start your email marketing campaigns, and the bigger your (appropriately built) lists, the better.

1. Email lists are an asset that has actual valuable. As you build your own lists you’re creating an asset that you own and that you can now monetize. As an adult affiliate marketer you’re essentially renting your list to the affiliate programs you’re using, but you’re maintaining control of the list and of the customer relationship.
   
2. Email lists allow for offer repetition. If I were to ask you to sign up for a paid service right now, and you’d never heard of it before, what are the chances you’d do it? Even if it were Netflix? Probably low. Now what if I had been telling you about that service repeatedly for a month or two, carefully pointing out a new benefit each time I brought it up? The chances of a sale increase. Email marketing makes this repetition possible at a reasonable cost.
   
3. Email marketing gets amazing ROI.  Advertising is expensive, but if you’re successful in building your own email list of engaged subscribers, you have a cost-effective way to market to those individuals on a regular basis. Research shows that a typical brand gets back $42 in value for every $1 it spends on email marketing.
   
4. Advance email marketing techniques can help you really target your messages. Once you get the hang of basic email marketing, you can start to segment your email lists into sub-lists based on the proven interests of your customers. You can also run split tests on a portion of your email lists to determine which of your messages are performing best before you send a campaign to your entire list.
   

More reading about this topic

Adult Email Marketing Best Practices

Building your own email lists from scratch

Buying email lists: why this is always a bad idea

Renting email lists: how to do it right

Email send reputation and why it really, really matters

Spamming is the kiss of death

How often should I send adult email offers to my lists

Important thoughts on email list maintenance

Software for managing adult email lists

Unfortunately many email marketing platforms prohibit adult industry content in their Acceptable Use Policies. If you’re looking for an industry-friendly solution for email marketing, take a look at YNOT Mail. Those with more advanced technical skills can also setup and maintain your own email servers, but make sure you sign up for feedback looks, monitor blacklists and create a plan for reputation management.

These Key Concepts pages are part of our YNOT Adult Affiliate Marketing Guide and provide you with a quick explanation (in plain English) of the basic concepts you’ll need to master in order to become an effective adult affiliate marketer. To learn more about these topics, click through to our in-depth guides linked under the ‘More reading…’ header above.