Build a Mailing List You Own

Add an email signup to this site for [YOUR BUSINESS].

The signup says exactly what someone gets and how often: [YOUR PROMISE, e.g. new dates and new work, roughly monthly]. Do not write "subscribe to our newsletter" anywhere, and do not invent a promise I have not given you.

Collect the email address and [ONE OTHER THING, IF ANY — e.g. first name, or their city]. Nothing more. Every additional field costs signups, and you can ask for the rest later.

Put the box where people actually are: [YOUR PLACEMENT, e.g. in the footer of every page, and on the pages where people finish reading]. Do not add a popup that covers the page as soon as someone arrives.

When someone signs up, store their address along with the date, the page they signed up from, and the exact wording of the promise they agreed to. That consent record is what proves later that they asked to be here.

[IF I WANT CONFIRMED SIGNUP: send a short email asking them to confirm, and only add them to the list once they do. This loses some signups and gains a list of people who actually want it — recommended if I will ever send to more than a few hundred people.]

Show a clear confirmation after signup saying what happens next and when they can expect the first message.

Do not send anything else yet — the broadcast comes later.

Give me a private owner screen for my subscribers.

Show every subscriber with their address, the date they joined, the page they joined from, their status — active, unconfirmed, unsubscribed, bounced — and any note I add.

Let me export the whole list to a file I can open in a spreadsheet, at any time, with no restriction. This is the point of the list: I must be able to take it with me.

Let me remove a subscriber completely on request, not just mark them inactive. People are entitled to ask for that, and I need to be able to do it in one action.

Let me add someone manually, but require me to record where their consent came from, so the list never quietly fills with addresses nobody agreed to add.

Show me the total count and how it has changed over the last few months.

Only I can reach this screen. Make sure it is properly protected, not just hidden behind an unlinked address.

Keep the public signup working exactly as it is.

Add one segment field to my subscribers: [YOUR SEGMENT, e.g. city, which service they are interested in, customer or not-yet-customer, how they found me].

Set it automatically where you can — from the page they signed up on, or from a choice offered at signup — and let me change it by hand on my owner screen.

Let me filter the list by that field, see how many are in each group, and let me select a group to send to later.

Let subscribers change it themselves from a preferences link, so the list corrects itself instead of drifting out of date.

One field only. Do not build tags, scores, lifecycle stages or a pipeline — this is a list of people who want to hear from me, not a sales pipeline, and I have somewhere else for that.

Keep everything from the previous steps working exactly as it is.

Add broadcasts to my owner screen.

Let me write a message with a subject line and a body, choose whether it goes to everyone or to one segment, preview it, and send myself a test before it goes out. Never let a broadcast send without a test being available first.

Send through a proper bulk email delivery service, and tell me exactly what I need to set up — including authenticating my own domain so my messages are not treated as forgeries. Do not send bulk email directly from the app.

Every message must carry, automatically: a one-click unsubscribe that works immediately and needs no login or explanation, a link to change their preferences, and my business identity and address: [YOUR BUSINESS NAME AND POSTAL OR REGISTERED ADDRESS].

An unsubscribe must take effect at once and must never be undone by a later import or manual addition.

Handle addresses that bounce: mark them and stop sending to the ones that fail permanently, because continuing to send to dead addresses damages delivery for everyone else on the list.

Keep a record of every broadcast sent, to which group, and when.

Do not build automated sequences, drip campaigns or scheduled series. One message, written by me, sent when I decide.

Add a simple summary to my subscribers screen.

Show me: total active subscribers, how many joined and left each month, and which pages bring the most signups.

For each broadcast I have sent, show how many it went to, how many opened it, how many clicked, and how many unsubscribed afterwards. Put the unsubscribes next to the opens, because that comparison is what tells me whether a message was worth sending.

Do not track anything beyond opens and clicks — no reading time, no location logging, no profiles built from behaviour. These are people who agreed to hear from me, not subjects to study.

Flag it plainly if a broadcast caused unusually many unsubscribes or bounces.

Keep everything from the previous steps working exactly as it is.