Blogs vs Mailing Lists

What’s the difference between a blog and a mailing list? Why are they different? Do you need both if you’d like to generate more clients online?

Traditional internet marketing wisdom says that the “money is in the list”; every single email address you have is effectively someone’s permission to contact them - which is a powerful tool.

But let’s look at blogs…every subscriber you have is effectively someone saying “Yes, I like what you write so I’d like to be updated every time you do”.

So in effect you have 2 different sets of subscribers saying the same thing - “Yes, please I’d like you to keep in touch me”.

There are a couple of crucial differences:

• With mailing lists, you know the name and email address of the subscriber (as long as they’re being truthful); with blogs, you don’t always know the name and email address of the subscriber (unless they’ve subscribed via email and they’re being truthful)
• Many of the mailing list services enable you to get a rough idea of how many people actually open your emails; with blogs you have no idea whether people actually read each of your posts.

So does the name thing really matter other than being able to personalise an ezine or email sent from a mailing list, so that you address the subscriber personally? I’m not so sure it does now that most people know the emails aren’t written personally from you to them but are likely going out to hundreds or thousands of others.

The big benefit of mailing lists and ezines over blogs is that you do have far more accurate stats about whether people open and click on anything in your email.

But if both sets of subscribers are saying “Yes please do keep in touch” - you now have their attention. And that’s the crucial thing.

In both cases you have a subscriber who has paid enough attention to you, said “yes” to you on one level and is potentially willing to pay you more attention in the future. Do you want to divide that precious attention between two different mediums?

(BTW - a blog and a mailing list can be used very effectively to promote a business in combination but only if each has a clearly defined role and strategy).

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