Thousands of companies use email as a key marketing tool, sending out promotions, newsletters, and coupons to increase sales. This is a very cost effective method of marketing. Companies who have caught on to the obvious success rate in these campaign can easily send out 500,000 emails in one day.

	E-mail marketing is not as simple as it may seem. It is more complex than just writing an article on a website or just posting on a forum, because for any email marketer to succeed, your emails must really reach out to your targeted audience. Therefore it is very important that you build, or obtain a quality, targeted opt-in list.
There are many brokers available in the market who provide quality email lists, however the best and most effective way of reaching out to your target audience is to build your own list. These opt-in lists contains email addresses of people who are your target leads i.e. those people who may be interested in buying your product/service.

I have received a ton of questions on the best methods to grow your site’s subscriber list, which is by far the most important factor in a successful campaign. There are many ways to build a quality list, you can start by building trust with your clients. Assure them that you won’t be selling their email to third parties, and do not spam your clients. Next, you will want a well placed opt-in area on your site, this should be in a highly visible area. Many companies will offer exlusive deals or incentives as a reason to subscribe. After you have these two important items in place, work on generating more traffic to your site and watch your list grow.

When talking about email marketing, it doesn’t take long for words like “opt-in” to appear. Yet I still receive numerous emails every month asking, “What is opt-in email marketing?”

It’s easiest to think in terms of mailing lists when dealing with email marketing. Email marketing is nothing but a good mailing list in the end. The list of an opt-in marketing campaign obviously starts empty. The only way to grow this list of email addresses is to get viewers of your site to “opt-in”. All you can do as a webmaster is assist an individual in the subscription request submission process.

This request must always be for a specific list, there can be no grey areas when dealing with opt-ins. For example, if a customer submits a form that says “Yes, please send me a copy of your monthly newsletter” you have permission to add them to the list of customers who will receive a copy of the monthly newsletter, use the list for the newsletter and nothing else. To continue sending them your monthly newsletter, you need their permission to do so (along the lines of “Yes, keep me up to date by adding me to your list of monthly newsletter recipients”).

“Permission-based” basically means the same thing. Marketing material is sent only with permission, and is often customized to the subscribers personal interests and preferences.