Email list is the most treasured element of email marketing. It is made of precious customers who are interested in email marketers' service or products and are willing to receive promotional newsletter in their inbox. In the growing clout of spam mails, it has become essential that the email list is made of genuine customers who have specifically asked for the promotional newsletter in the inbox.

It's reported that 70 per cent of the customers buy products or show interest in various services in the US due to the influential role played by the promotional email-newsletter. The greatest advantage of email marketing is that the customers acquiesce voluntarily to receive such promotional newsletter.

Email marketing is also one of the most cost effective medium of promotion. This makes an email marketer greedy and he/she bombards as many email addresses as possible . It might be also to the customer who never opted for the service or to the email list acquired through the third party.
 
 
You will lose on your genuine customers.
Might end up being tagged as a Spammer.
The email generally ends in the junk pile.
You might be reported to the Federal Trade Commission and then law might ruin your business.
All the efforts put in creating the campaign turns futile.
No return on investment (ROI).

It is the customer who is the KING; remember you are luring him not the other way round. Luring is not done by setting the trap but making the customer trusts you. It is always the best policy in email marketing to ask the customer, "Am I welcome?" Make sure you make the customer aware that he or she is signing-up for the service. If he or she does sign-up, do not yet rejoice; go in for 'Double-Opt-In' and the confirmation.
It's always better to take the long route than the short cut. Better to provide with the option of double-opt-in than just stop with single-opt-in. Double opt-in helps in verification, whether the customer is genuinely interested in the product or service newsletter. It also helps in scanning of the pranksters.
If the customer signs up for the newsletter, make sure to send an email confirming of the desired request. Ask the customer either to click on an option for confirmation or provide some way of knowing his confirmation.
 
 
 
There are vendors who sell the customers' list. This is a dangerous process and you should proceed with caution. Please confirm the legitamacy of the company selling. Ask them if they will allow you to test the list. The testing process should allow for you to take random small (5000 or less) samples and send 3 or 4 5000 email campaigns over a month. This will allow you to evaluate the complaint levels of this list. If you are purchasing a list of 20,000 emails you should not expect to have more than 1 complaint.
It is always advisable to develop in-house methodology to gain the email list. In fact our ListBuilder feature allows you to easily capture your prospects and customers that signup to for your newsletters or promotions. The greatest advantage of such a process is that it is of your prospective customers, authenticated and you are sure of it being permission based.

Provide with the option of sign-up for the newsletter service in your website. Give details, options, samples of the promotional, informative newsletter to the web site visitor. If the visitor gets interested, they may end up signing for the service. Do not forget to send the confirmation mail, after the recipient signs up for the service.
Ask the customer to leave behind their address and email ids after a purchase order.
Ask your counter staff or the customer care to lure the customer in filling-up the opt-in form to get product or service information in the inbox.
Whenever you send a direct mail, ask the customers if they would like to receive information through email.
Encourage customers to become members of your business or web site that enables them to receive personalized information through email.
Ask them to register and give email id on the website by offering incentives.
Ask them to write down the email id on information form.
Ask them to write email id down on every address change form.
Provide space for email id in payment of amount slip.
Ask for the email id after end of customer inquiry call.
Ask for it after every trade-show, seminars, and presentation.
Ask for it on comment, complain and registration form.
Ask for it on the resend-coupons in the newspaper or magazines advertisement.
Ask for the email address in the re-order and renewal forms.
 
 
 
Please make sure your email recipients want to receive your emails.
Please confirm this acceptance by some opt in process. Preferably by requiring all new newsletter subscribers to double opt in confirm that they want to be on your list.
Be very careful about buying lists, even those lists that claim to be “confirmed double opt in”. Remember these people on this list most likely DO NOT know who you are, therefore, they are more likely to get you black listed.
DO NOT EMAIL HARVEST…AS YOU ARE MOST LIKELY TO GET BLACK LISTED.
If for some reason you have any doubts about any list you have uploaded, please test small subsets (no more than 5000) of your list to confirm that you are not going to get excessive complaints.
Utilize our “Opt in” link within our editor to begin to get all of your subscribers in a confirmed opt in basis.
You can also use our “Subscribe” link in our editor to get people to subscribe again to your newsletter.
DO NOT SEND TO BOUNCED EMAILS…THIS WILL HELP REDUCE YOUR CHANCES OF YOUR EMAILS GETTING FILTERED. WE HAVE AN OPTION…IN THE STEP 1 OF THE CAMPAIGN PROCESS IT’S A CLICK BOX WHERE YOU CAN CLICK TO NOT SEND EMAILS TO PREVIOUS HARD BOUNCES. THIS IS A VERY GOOD PRACTICE. IT DOES NOT DELTE ANY EMAILS FROM YOUR LIST…IT SIMPLY LOOKS AT THE LAST TIME YOU USED THIS LIST AND DOES NOT SEND TO THE PREVIOUS BOUNCED EMAILS.
 
Do not swap lists with an unrelated business, even though they might be a friend or business partner.

New Abuse Report Section
We have added a link in the Reports section called “Abuse Report”. By checking here you can see if you are creating Abuse complaints. Please review this new section to see if you are getting complaints on your email campaigns
 
 
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I hope you have found the above information helpful. You can email me at service@bmesrv.com or visit me on the online chat between 9:30-4:30 EST.

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