Marketing with Effective eMail Lists
© Intersection Consulting

Gail Goodman has a great piece on how to build an effective email list to use in marketing. It's an especially timely piece considering the recent statements Seth Godin made about spam.

Let's face it… It doesn't matter what you say or how well you say it if the people you're talking to don't want to listen. If the fact that you're saying it at all ticks people off (that's spam), it's counterproductive.

Bottom line: people have to opt in.

My two favorite points from Gail's piece are that permission is perishable and it is not transferable. You simply have to have an "unsubscribe" function of some sort where people can take their permission back (and get off your list). Otherwise, you eventually end up with a list full of people who resent getting your emails. And the day you share your list with anyone else, your credibility and the good will of your customers disappears.