Of all the new online marketing strategies in use today, perhaps the fastest growing is email marketing. Email is high speed, simple and can be extremely effective especially for driving traffic to your home business website. Email is replacing regular mail from the post office in popularity. Many business people are realizing the importance of Email. Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing methods nowadays simply because virtually almost all people use email.
One of the most powerful tools in email marketing is the opt-in mailing list. To build an opt-in mailing list you inform people that they can subscribe to your email list on the signature of your normal work emails. Add everyone who has ever emailed you to your list. Basically, opt in lists are lists of email addresses of customers with their consent.
Because it is an option list, the customers are not compelled to provide their email addresses to the web site. Plus, the web site owners will not be accused of spamming because emails that will be sent to the customers have the consent of the customer. The bigger the opt in list the bigger the profits. The more customer names and email addresses you have on your list, the more chance you have of increasing your online home business sales.
If you are in the market to buy email lists you want to make sure that you are targeting the best possible prospects. So how do you properly target through email lists. We have all seen the ads offering 500,000 email addresses for only $29. Not only are these email lists inaccurate, leading to higher percentages of bounce-backs and non-opens, they are usually gathered through less than ethical methods.
If you buy email lists through these offers, you are wasting your money and you could be potentially violating CAN-SPAM regulations by sending email to these contacts. You have to find sources that properly manage their lists by constantly updating old email addresses and deleting contacts who ask to be removed. Most importantly, you need contacts who have asked to be included on an email list for products and services related to yours.
Double-opt in lists are even better because the person not only opts-in, but they must confirm their opt-in status, usually through an email confirmation. This also ensures that the email address that the person used to opt-in is valid.
Another type of direct email marketing is bulk email marketing. You must be very careful when considering using bulk email to market your products on the internet. Unsolicited bulk email is frowned upon by many internet citizens. This practice of sending unsolicited bulk email is referred to as “spamming. Spamming occurs when sending unsolicited email directly to a list of unsuspecting email addresses or newsgroups.
The simple fact is, unsolicited bulk email is considered bad “netiquette” by many internet users. If you send unsolicited email to addresses that do not want commercial email, you can get into more trouble than you would expect. This is because a large number of internet citizens do not approve of unsolicited email and will complain to your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Many ISP’s will discontinue your account when they get complaints from angry recipients of unsolicited bulk email.
If you want to play it safe with your home business online marketing campaign you should stick with “Opt-In” Direct Email. These opt-in lists are targeted email lists which offer marketers a “politically correct” way to reach their target audience on the net. Although this targeted direct email marketing can be more costly than unsolicited bulk email marketing, it is far more effective and you should reap the benefits through increased traffic and increased sales.