What is a mailing list and how do you create one?

A mailing list is a list of email addresses of people who have agreed to hear from you, so you can send one email to all of them at once. Keep a small list in your email program, or set one up in a newsletter tool once people start signing up through your website.

What is a mailing list?

Everyone on a mailing list, or email list as many people call it, should have opted in, which means they asked to be on your list. That sets email marketing to your own list apart from a bulk email sent to bought addresses, which reaches people who never asked for it.

There is a second kind you may come across: the discussion list, where every member can write to the whole group through a single shared address. Google Groups works this way.

How does a mailing list work?

Someone fills in a sign-up form on your website and gets an email asking them to confirm. Once they click the link, they're added to your list. If they change their mind, they unsubscribe and come off the list again.

You can also keep separate lists, or groups within one list, for people with different interests, such as new customers, customers in one region or people who only want news about one product range. Each group then only gets the emails that matter to it.

How to create a mailing list

Most of the work comes before your first email: what you'll send, where the list lives, how people join it and how you look after it once it grows.

1. Decide what you will send and to whom

Start with what you want the list to do and who it's for. The answer decides how often you write, what you write about and whether you need one list or several. Decide which of these your list will carry:

• A newsletter with news and updates about your business, products or services.
• Offers such as discount codes and sales for people who want them.
• Service messages that tell customers about something that affects them, such as planned maintenance.
• Member updates for a club or association, with its activities and events.

2. Choose a contact group or a newsletter tool

A contact group in Outlook, or a label in Gmail, is a saved set of addresses you can email in one go, such as your team, a committee or a handful of regular clients. You add and remove people by hand, and every email to the group goes out from your own mailbox.

Your mailbox can only send so much at once. If you host your business email with us, you can send 25 emails or reach 250 recipients every 5 minutes, and no more than 250 emails or 1,500 recipients in an hour. To send the same email to 400 people, you send it to 250 of them first, wait 5 minutes and then send it to the rest. Our mail servers aren't designed to send large volumes at the same time, so for a regular newsletter we recommend a specialised newsletter tool.

A newsletter tool takes over the work a contact group leaves to you. Ubivox, the newsletter tool we offer, can put a sign-up form on your website that adds people to your list as they sign up.

Our advice: use a contact group for people you know personally, and move to a newsletter tool as soon as people sign up through your website.

3. Add a sign-up form with double opt-in

Put a sign-up form where visitors see it, such as your homepage, your blog or your checkout, and say in one line what people get and how often. Then use double opt-in. Double opt-in sends everyone who signs up the confirmation email described above, and only people who click its link join your list. We advise this for every newsletter, because it makes sure everyone on your list really wants to receive it.

4. Write emails people want to open

Start with a welcome email for new subscribers. After that, write each email around one main message and one clear action for the reader.

Whether that email gets opened starts with its subject line. Pick one of our subject lines for newsletters or write your own, as long as it fits the message, and go easy on capitals and exclamation marks.

Every email needs a way to unsubscribe, either a link or an address to write to, because spam filters automatically block emails without one. Spam filters can't read images either, so they suspect an email that is only an image of trying to trick them: always write your message as text.

5. Keep your list clean

When an email comes back undelivered, it has bounced. Take bounced addresses off your list after each newsletter, so you stop writing to mailboxes that no longer exist, and take people off the list as soon as they unsubscribe. Keep unsubscribed addresses on a separate 'do not contact' list, so nobody ends up back on your list by mistake. Check which emails people open and which links they follow, and send more of what works.

How to create a mailing list in Outlook

In new Outlook, a mailing list is called a contact list, while classic Outlook calls the same list a contact group. In classic Outlook, select People on the side panel, then New Contact Group, enter a name for the group, add your contacts with Add Members and select Save & Close. In new Outlook, you create the list from one contact and then add the rest:

1. Open new Outlook and select People on the side panel.
2. Select a contact you want on the list.
3. Right-click the contact (or use the ribbon), select Add to list, then New contact list.
4. Select All contact lists, then right-click your new list and select Edit.
5. Give the list its name and add the rest of your contacts.
6. Select Save.
7. To email the list, select New mail, then Options, Show fields and Show Bcc, and type the list's name in the Bcc field and select it, so the people on your list don't see each other's addresses.

How to create a mailing list in Gmail

In Gmail, a mailing list is a label in Google Contacts. Give the label a name, put your contacts under it, and Gmail fills in every address when you type the label's name:

1. Go to Google Contacts.
2. Next to Labels on the left, click Create label.
3. Type a name for your list and click Save.
4. Tick the contacts you want on the list, click Manage labels at the top, click your new label and click Apply.
5. In Gmail, click Compose, click Bcc and start typing the label's name, then select it from the list, so the people on your list don't see each other's addresses.

Ubivox lets you design newsletters, add a sign-up form to your website and see how many people opened and clicked.

Mailing lists and the law in the UK

In the UK, you may only send marketing emails to a person who has agreed to get emails from you, with one exception. If someone bought something from you, or asked about buying it, you may email them about similar products of your own, as long as you gave them a simple way to opt out when you took their details and in every email since. The ICO, the UK's data protection regulator, calls this the soft opt-in.

Every marketing email also has to say who it's from and give a valid address where people can opt out. Because a mailing list holds personal data, you must follow the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK GDPR as well. Keep the list secure, and record when and how you got each person's consent. The rules on consent and opting out are set out in the ICO's guidance on marketing emails.

Your sign-up form should link to a privacy policy that explains what you do with people's addresses. Termly generates one for your website and automatically keeps it up to date.

Can you buy an email list?

You can buy one, but using it is another matter. Under the UK rules, the soft opt-in never covers a bought-in list, so you may only email the people on it if each of them gave very specific consent to hear from you. The ICO also advises checking where a bought-in list came from and how accurate it is, which is hard to do for a list of strangers. And even where it's allowed, people who never asked to hear from you are unlikely to care about what you send. So build your list from people who join it themselves.

How to build an email list

People sign up when they can see what they get for their address. The simplest way to show them is to give something away in return, such as a discount, a free guide or early access to new products.

A pop-up puts your sign-up form in front of more visitors. It's a window that opens over the page with the form in it. On a WordPress site, you can add one with WordPress plugins. Popup Maker and OptinMonster both do this. Keep it to one pop-up per page, and small enough that visitors can still see the page behind it.

Social media reaches people who already follow you, so share a post that links to your sign-up form. If you run a prize draw, say clearly that entrants are signing up for your emails.

Once people start signing up through your form, send your newsletter from an email address on your own domain, so your subscribers recognise who it's from every time it reaches their inbox.