When
you’re first starting out, there’s often a temptation
to simply purchase an opt-in email list. Lots of people sell
them and you can easily pick up a million or so addresses for
just a few bucks. But while that may appear to be a fast, easy
way to build up customers, the names on the list may not be
up to date and they are not even opt-in contacts at all. To
say it bluntly, emailing people from a list like that is called
spamming.
Similarly, there are also programs that automatically crawl
the web, recording every email address they find. These will
let you quickly build up a huge list of email addresses. But,
nobody will thank you when you stuff their inboxes with marketing
material. Forget about them; they’re not worth the effort.
It’s much safer, and much more effective, to take the
time to build your own real opt-in list. |