Opt-in Email Marketing...Is It effective?

Any Caveats?

[crobb305]

I am considering opt-in email marketing for my business. Some advertising companies offer email lists for purchase. Since this form of marketing is new to me, I am looking for words of advice and caveats to make this campaign effective. Is it safe to purchase email lists from advertising companies? How do I chose who to purchase from?

Thanks!

[crobb305]

I have gone through the site search and found this topic discussed before. It seems like a bad marketing idea from what I have read. I may not do it afterall. But if anyone has any success stories, I would like to hear. Otherwise, consider it a moot point.

[john_k]

You might want to check out some of the advice you can find at www.emailsherpa.com . They devote a lot of attention to managing email lists and how to make sure you are not annoying people.

They also have a weekly newsletter that has good information.

[robertito62]

I ran email marketing/ newsletters campaigns for about 2 years. Only double opt-in.

As a marketing tool, email has suffered deterioration. Specially in recent months.

I have no experience buying lists but I can imagine they are a lot less effective and a lot riskier than the lists you can compile for yourself. In my view, it is always smart to build a database of email addresses collected over a period of time, for whatever purpose.

[onlineleben]

Building your list can be slow, but you should do it yourself and not rely on any bought email adresses.
- Bought email adresses can never be as targeted as visitors to your own site that subscribe to your newsletter
- Bought email adresses can be harvested from websites and the recipient may be very annoyed by your email (SPAM)
- You may buy 100.000 email adresses but only 50 % work. Rest is not valid anymore, inbox full or whatever else

Double optin not only improves the quality of your list in regartds to valid email adresses, but also makes the subscriber aware of you sending mail to him.

The effectiveness of email marketing may differ from site to site. it really depends on your target group and on the way you sell stuff to your subscriber base.

Anyway, good luck!

[JollyK]

I agree that buying lists are not safe. I can't tell you how much spam I get where the person bought a list of "opt in" addresses. Unfortunately, to them, "opt in" means, "I sucked your email address off of a link on your website back in 1996" or "You posted to Usenet once so you must want to get email."

There is free and inexpensive software out there to build your own double-opt-in list. It's slower but much safer that way. Plus, if someone forgets they subscribed, you'll have records to prove to your service provider that the person asked twice to be on your list. And believe me, people do forget they subscribed and they will report you for spam. ISP's won't take "but I bought this list" as evidence that you're not spamming, whereas they might take your own records.