This quick start guide describes the easiest way to mail cold leads: with your own self-hosted email server.

Have a list of leads that you want to mail? If you’re planning to use autoresponder software like Aweber or Getresponse, you already know that this is out of the question and will get you banned.

If you’re a My Lead Gen Secret member or just want to experiment with buying leads list and mailing them, this guide is for you!

Note: This is a long-term strategy that will only pay off if you’re willing to commit to building a list over time. Consider your new email server as part of the core of your online business!

Why a Self-Hosted Email Server?

The biggest reason why you need a self-hosted email server is because the popular autoresponders do not allow you to import email lists that you’ve purchased. This is strictly against their Terms of Service and will get you banned.

If you are an MLGS user, here are the reasons why you want to use a self-hosted email server:

MLGS caps the number of leads that you can mail at around 9,000. So if you have more leads to mail than this, you’ll have to contact support first to get the limit lifted from your account.

You can’t set up autoresponder sequences in MLGS built-in mailer so you have to log in every day to set up your next mailing.

You can only mail once every 24 hours using MLGS built-in mailer.

Your emails are automatically sent from the @myleadgensecret.com domain so there is no opportunity for you to brand yourself outside of their system. The emails might as well be coming from a staff member of the service as far as the leads can tell when using that built-in mailer.

You can’t mail the leads from the lead swaps because you can’t import leads into the MLGS built-in mailer. Click here to learn more about the 100K+ Lead Swaps that happen every week in a private FB group.

The bottom line? If you want a list that’s yours and not up to the whims of other companies regarding what and how often you can mail, you need a self-hosted email server.

Now let’s get into the steps of how to set all of this up!

Since this is a quick start guide, I’m not going to go too far into the technical details. You’ll have plenty of help from those involved in the set up process along the way.

1. Watch the Training

This training video below will walk you through the steps of the set up with live video of the email server purchase and setup process. I recommend you watch this first so that you have a better idea of what’s involved.

2. Purchase Your VPS

In order to host your own mail server, you’re going to need to buy a VPS. The recommended website for purchasing a low-cost VPS is ovh.com

Here are the settings to select when choosing the VPS to buy:

It make take around 1-2 business days for you to receive your VPS after checkout. Once you receive it, retrieve the access details from your email. It can be found in an email from OVH with the subject line “Your VPS installation”

3. Purchase Additional IPs

You’ll need some additional IP addresses for your mail server to ensure that you do not only use the actual IP address of the server when sending emails. Additional IP addresses help to reduce the load on the main server IP address. You can purchase additional IP addresses just by logging into your OVH account like you did when you purchased the VPS and selecting the option to purchase additional IPs from the left sidebar.

To start 2 additional IPs should be enough since you can’t do a ton of mailings yet.

4. Purchase a Domain Name

When creating your own email server, it is best to use an aged domain rather than a new one.

My favorite source for finding aged domains is the service Domain Hunter Gatherer. There you can find expired domains that are already getting traffic so that you can publish an opt-in page on the root domain (e.g. yourdomain.com) or redirect it to another site while using a subdomain for the location of your email server (e.g. mail.yourdomain.com).

Once you have your VPS, additional IPs and domain name, you’re ready to start the email server setup!

5. Setting Up Your Email Server

Since there are a lot of technical aspects involved in setting up an email server, we’re going to take a shortcut by hiring someone on Fiverr to get the job done for us!

You can hire my top recommended expert for this task here:

If you still want to use the root domain for another purpose as I just explained, make sure to tell him to install the email server in a subdomain (e.g. mail.yourdomain.com). If you’re wondering about the MailWhizz software, it is the software that you will use to store your list and send out email campaigns. It will allow you to send individual emails and set up an autoresponder.

The MailWhizz software will be provided as a part of the set up. However, if you prefer to have your own copy with your own license for it, you can purchase it here:

At this stage, you’ll need to wait a few more days for your Fiverr order to be processed. Then you’ll be ready to start mailing!

6. Join the 100K Lead Swap or Buy Email Leads

If you are an MLGS member you can get access to a lead swap group where all of the members of MLGS combine their newest leads into a master lead file with a fresh one shared every week from the newest leads.

This lead swap group will also provide you with all of the training that you’ll need from here on out regarding best practices in using your new email server.

If you are NOT a member of MLGS, at this stage, you will need to find some sources for some cold leads to mail. Here are the lead sources that I recommend for buying cold lead lists:

MLMLeads.com – Here you can buy Real Time Email Leads and Bulk Email Leads. They also provide free prospect training.

OppSeekers– Here you can buy Survey Fresh 8Q, Phone Verified Fresh, Phone Interviewed Fresh, Female Phone Verified, State Specific 8 Question Survey, Fresh Canadian Only 8Q, and Real Time Short Form Leads.

MLM Recruit On Demand – You have to refer people to get leads added here but you can join for a one-time fee.

Also Read: MLMLeads.Com Review: Where The PROs Go For MLM Leads

7. Clean Your Email Leads

Before you import your purchased bulk leads or your MLGS leads, you need to clean the list. By doing so, you’ll remove any undeliverable email addresses and spam traps.

This is a vital step that reduces the chances of you getting spam complaints once you start mailing. Spam complaints will kill your domain and destroy all of the hard work that you’ve done to set all of this up.

The recommended list cleaning services to use are RemoveBounce or KLEAN13.

However, if you are member of MLGS and get access to the lead swap group, you can submit your MLGS leads there and they’ll be cleaned for you with KLEAN13 at no extra charge as a perk for participating in the weekly lead swap.

8. Warm Up Your IPs

The private group and the Fiverr expert will provide you with some tips on how to warm up your IP addresses before you start mailing to a lot of recipients. You want to start out with a small number of subscribers and gradually scale up.

I also recommend that you purchase a warm up email sequence to send to your leads. A warm up email sequence is an autoresponder sequence that is specifically designed to build trust and get cold leads to open your emails.

In addition, it also starts off by omitting links from the first emails that you send out to reduce the chances that your emails will marked as spam. You’ll need to put off sending sales emails just yet to ensure that you can first achieve a high deliverability rate.

Here is the email sequence that I recommend for warming up your new email server:

Now all you need to do is start emailing your leads each day. As the leads open the emails, you should segment your list and put the ones that open at least a few of the emails from the warm-up email sequence on a separate “opened emails” segment. The “opened emails” segment of users are the ones that you should mail sales emails to with your offers and affiliate links.

What to Sell to Your Leads

Once you have some opens and you’re ready to start sending promotional emails, your best bet is to promote your own products and affiliate offers. If you’re not sure where to find affiliate offers to promote, use Clickbank, WarriorPlus, and JVZoo. Those are the best places to find affiliate offers that these leads might be interested in.

You can also create your own digital products to sell or promote business opportunities. The possibilities are endless with your new email list.

Also if you are a member of MLGS, don’t hesitate to promote that to your leads as well. Building your downline in MLGS will help you recoup the costs of the program and the costs you incurred to set up your own email server.

Next Steps

There are some things that you will need to watch out for along the way. Namely:

• Ensuring that your domain and IP addresses don’t end up on blacklists for spam
• Removing unsubscribes and bounces from your list of leads to mail
• Creating a suppression list, which is a blacklist of emails to avoid sending to because they failed previously or are blocked. For MLGS users, just import the invalid.csv file from the weekly lead swaps.
• Blocking domains in the backend of your mail server that are hard to inbox with for new email servers
• Periodically removing inactive leads from MailWizz to ensure that it doesn’t get too full (can be done with a cron job)

Now you’re ready to grow your online business! Comment below if you have any questions about this quick start guide.