Do you use Email Lists for Marketing Campaigns?

Anyone doing any serious Internet marketing has to have email campaigns as part of their overall marketing plan. Email marketing has sort of acquired a bad name over the past few years as spam grew at incredible speed. Many Internet marketers simply stopped using email as part of their on-line marketing as they feared being accused of sending spam. It’s important to remember that not all email marketing is spam. As long as the rules governing what is spam are observed, email marketing can be used very effectively.

To be spam free, a marketer should develop his/her own email list. As a cautionary measure it ought to be a "double opt-in" list. That means each customer not only opts-in to your list, but in a second step they confirm that they did indeed opt-in. So, the first step in any email marketing campaign is to develop a targeted email list. There are various methods being employed to build email lists, some good, some not so good.

So, how do you build your email list? Some will purchase a list either direct through their contacts or a list broker. I personally don’t care much for this method and can’t in good conscience recommend it. The issue here is that it is unlikely that anyone on your new list will have any idea who you are, may not have an interest in what you are promoting, and will be very likely to simply delete your marketing piece. Worse than that, they may even report you as someone who sends out spam. People receiving unsolicited email today tend to be a bit militant. Often they will never even see the marketing piece, as many Internet service providers have their own spam filters that will block delivery to the intended recipient. A much better method is to build your own opt-in list from past and present customers. People who have done business with you in the past are far more likely to actually read your sales message and do business with you. You might want to create an email newsletter of interest to customers and potential customers and have them subscribe to it. If you provide valuable content and items of interest to your target audience, they will readily accept an occasional marketing email from you, not to mention that you will have the opportunity to advertise your product or services right in the newsletter. Be sure you include all appropriate links to make it easy for your subscribers to find you and your products/services.

There are also available many service providers offering very large lists who offer to send "solo ads" to their lists. Sometimes these lists number into the millions. The problem here is that while they have millions on their lists, none of them (well almost none) actually read the marketing email sent them. Most don’t even see them as they are filtered out by their spam filters. These are really just throwing money away.

In any event, email marketing should be an integral part of your online marketing campaign.