How to turn bulk email into opt-in?

[toturnto]

I have a tremednous b2b email list. I need your advice - what do I need to do to make this list be called opt-in and not to receive complaints? I know that many opt-in companies has started with bulk in fact.

[Robino]

Opt-in means people decided they wanted to be added to your mailing list.

How did you obtain the list?

[Dreamquick]

You need a double opt-in list to avoid the majority of complaints and to be taken seriously - to all intents and purposes user-supplied opt-in data is just as unreliable as opt-out because you aren't verifying that opt-in request.

In other words you need to have captured the information supplied by the user (the first opt-in) and then positively confirmed that the user has supplied a valid email address and that the owner of that email address actually wants to be included (the second opt-in). If any step of the process does not return a positive result (ie it bounces, or the user does anything other than confirm their earlier opt-in request) then you reject that item.

Whether you can turn your B2B list into a useful opt-in list depends on a number of factors including level of targetting, age and how it has been used previously.

If has been captured properly, well maintained, used responsibly in the past and offers good targetting then it's likely that you'll be able to forge it into a good list with a little effort.

On the other hand if it's just a random collection of business email addresses dating back several years which has been over-used and hasn't been maintained then you're going to have a hard time cleaning up that information to an acceptable level.

- Tony